Common Pitfalls and Best Practices
Starting a New Project
You can start a new project by cloning an existing one. But the best way to start a new project is to clone your most recent data template. Follow these steps to start a new project by cloning a data template:
- When you first open gINT 7, it opens to kind of a nothing screen. What I mean is, you’re not entering data or outputting it, you’re just kind of in limbo. So you need to click on the input tab first. It will open the last project you were working on, which is fine.
- Go to File->New Project->Clone Data Template
- It will default to the templates directory that is specified under your File->System Properties.
- Choose your latest gINT template. (Remember, a data template is nothing more than a blank project database)
- It will then prompt you for the name and path of the new project database you are creating. You can put this anywhere; usually in your project directory (I use a “gINT” subfolder). Or you can store all of your gINT data in one project.
That’s it, you can begin entering data!
Ye Old Project
One very common problem we have had with gINT is revisiting an old project where the logs were entered many months ago, and then either updating something or adding more borings and trying to output. If you have updated any of your report templates or you are starting your projects with a different data template, then they might not output correctly.
With most programs you are used to saving one file to a directory. Then when you want to work on that file again, you just have to open it up and off you go. With gINT, you need to not only find the project database that contains the data, but the correct LIBRARY FILE that was in use at the time of the creation of that project file. Herein lies the reason for the above-mentioned problem. One of gINT’s strengths is that you can tweak a report template once and have the improvements reflected on all of your logs. But as you are probably now seeing, this also can cause problems when revisiting old projects.
Solutions and ways to avoid the problem:
- First of all, whenever I edit the library file and change templates or something of that nature, I try to contain those changes in a new version of the library file. I simply add a version number to the library filename and keep them all in the same directory. To do this, make a copy of your library file before you open gINT, and give it the new version number. Then open gINT, and switch your library file to the new version and make your changes.
- If you make any changes to the database structure (adding tables, adding fields), create a new template file. It’s sometimes helpful to use a similar numbering scheme for your data templates as for your library file.
- Always create a new project file from your most recent data template as described below.
- On hard-copy and electronic output, default gINT reports contain something called “Tracking Codes” on the first page of most every log, graph, or fence. It contains information on the path to the project file (a *.GPJ file) that contained the data being output, and the template file (a *.GLB file) that contained the blank templates being used. The name of the template that was being used is also shown. This should give you enough info to go back and find the correct template in the correct library file to output your old reports again.
