You may notice that you’ve saved a model to a database, but now you have multiple copies of the same Model Name in the .DAB file (similar to the image you referenced).
This is normally caused by the Model Name exceeding the character limit.
✅ What’s happening?
The number of characters is limited to 78, including spaces and the folder path (as shown below).
It is strongly advised that you try to keep both the file name and the model name to as few characters as possible (under 25 for each would be recommended).
When creating cutting lists, going to Supply & Install etc., the software tries to save the model away and since the length of the model name is truncated, a number of models with the same name can be created within the one Database.
The model name is too long and is truncated.
🧩 The Cause
This is caused by the fact that there is a limit to the total number of characters in a file name and these include the full path (78 characters including spaces and the drive and folder path name).
That is, in this example –
C:\AppliCad\Roof Wizard\User\LongFileNameTest\Really long job name example that gets truncated
and you end up with:
C:\AppliCad\Roof Wizard\User\LongFileNameTest\Really long job name example tha
🧹 How to fix it (delete the duplicate entries)
If this problem does happen to you, you will notice that when you try to select any of the models it will jump back to the model on top. However, usually the one at the bottom would be the latest version of it and will be the one that you will want, since it will be the most recent version of the model.
You need to delete the other versions in there (unless you have a reason for keeping them) and to do this you will need to do the following:
Turn the Right Hand menu on if it isn’t on already (use the Menu On/Off button in the pulldown menu of the software).
Right click a couple of times to cancel the current menus, until it says Main at the top.
Then select CAD towards the bottom of the page.
Select the File option.
Select an option called DL-Model (delete model).
This may appear straight under the file menu, or
at the bottom of the list there will be a Next option which will go to another menu with DL-Model listed (this is due to different screen sizes, and the menu wraps to the next page).
That will bring up this dialogue again and will allow you to click on the top model and delete it.
Keep deleting the models until only the bottom one remains.
Then go to File > Open in the top menu and open it up again and then save it away with a shorter name using File > Save-As.
Keep model names as brief as you can, and so that they still make sense to you.
📌 Important note about folders and the ..\User directory
Also note that the software expects to find all the information it needs to operate in the ..\User folder. This means that you CANNOT use sub-folders for organising your jobs.
Treat the CAD database name like a sub-folder and the model name as your job, if you need this structure.
Typically, for most of our users the CAD database name is the customer's name and the model name is the job address. This seems to work very well.