Problem description

When materials of a global material database are shared between a PLAXIS 2D and PLAXIS 3D version, an error might occur when trying to access the materials. After encountering this problem the material database will not be accessible anymore through the latest installed version. This issue occurs due to additional information included for the materials in the latest versions of PLAXIS 2D and 3D. When trying to access the materials in the PLAXIS Input program it will result in a bug report:

When looking more into the details (show bug report), the first line in the call stacks will refer to an error in

TNumericalBlock.CopyValuesToBuffer

The combination of versions in which it is possible to encounter this issue are listed in the following table:

Table 1. Combinations of installed versions where the issue might appear

PLAXIS 2D 2015.00	PLAXIS 3D 2013.01 or earlier 3D PLAXIS versions
PLAXIS 2D 2015.01	PLAXIS 3D 2013.01 or earlier 3D PLAXIS versions
PLAXIS 2D AE.02 or earlier 2D PLAXIS versions	PLAXIS 3D AE.00

The issue does not occur if you have the latest version installed for both programs (2D 2015.01 or later and 3D AE.00 or later).

Solution

This issue is now resolved in PLAXIS 2D 2015.02, and PLAXIS 3D AE.01.

In order to solve the problem with your existing database files, please open the Plaxis program with the oldest version, which is installed in your computer.
The simplest solution would be to remove the materials from the global database that were added in the older PLAXIS version after installing the latest version.

If this is not possible, then, do the following:

1. Select to create a new project in the non-latest version (e.g. PLAXIS 2D AE or PLAXIS 3D 2013)
2. Then open the material datasets window and select the option to "show global" on the right top of the window
3. You can copy all the soil materials, which are saved in the “Global materials” to the “Project materials” by using the arrows, which are in the middle of the window.
4. Save this project (the project will be a plain project which will only contain materials)
5. Find the location of your global material database (see picture)
6. Please go to this location in your computer and delete the and delete the referred file
7. You can now open with the non-latest PLAXIS version the project you just created (step 4) with the materials and put the materials back in the global database. In this way you create a new and updated global database.