FORSCAN best practices and procedures?

[Firn]

As the experienced hands well know FORSCAN is a powerful tool but is a bit like trimming a bonsai tree with a chainsaw.

Being a newby I didnt have a good procedure for using forscan but am working on it.

That said, how do you use forscan? When and how do you do saves? What is your folder structure? Any other "best practices" for using this powerful but dangerous tool?

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[21st Century Truck]

As the experienced hands well know FORSCAN is a powerful tool but is a bit like trimming a bonsai tree with a chainsaw.

Being a newby I didnt have a good procedure for using forscan but am working on it.

That said, how do you use forscan? When and how do you do saves? What is your folder structure? Any other "best practices" for using this powerful but dangerous tool?

THIS here thread below (1st post) is a very good intro. Enjoy!

http://www.2gfusions.net/showthread.php?tid=4573&highlight=forscan

 

[Firn]

THIS here thread below (1st post) is a very good intro. Enjoy!

http://www.2gfusions.net/showthread.php?tid=4573&highlight=forscan

To be honest, this is a bit of my concern. That is a really good tutorial on HOW to use FORSCAN, but in a quick scan it appeared they didn't recommend saving the module until AFTER they had made changes.

With out trucks getting OTA updates, and worse sending the on-vehicle As Built data BACK it is super easy to end up with an unrecoverable situation. It's WAY too easy to screw it up with no way out and forscan has almost ZERO safety net.

I guess what I am asking is now the how to on using forscan, but how do you manage it outside of forscan.
What folder structure do you use? Do you back up all modules before starting, or just the ones you are changing? Naming conventions?

What works for managing saves and changes, not strictly how to interact with the software itself.

I wanted to post this since I don't see enough focus on "save often, save early, save always".

And sorry if it is in there, I only did a quick scan and will read it all tomorrow.

 

[21st Century Truck]

To be honest, this is a bit of my concern. That is a really good tutorial on HOW to use FORSCAN, but in a quick scan it appeared they didn't recommend saving the module until AFTER they had made changes.

With out trucks getting OTA updates, and worse sending the on-vehicle As Built data BACK it is super easy to end up with an unrecoverable situation. It's WAY too easy to screw it up with no way out and forscan has almost ZERO safety net.

I guess what I am asking is now the how to on using forscan, but how do you manage it outside of forscan.
What folder structure do you use? Do you back up all modules before starting, or just the ones you are changing? Naming conventions?

What works for managing saves and changes, not strictly how to interact with the software itself.

I wanted to post this since I don't see enough focus on "save often, save early, save always".

And sorry if it is in there, I only did a quick scan and will read it all tomorrow.

Gotcha.

I used to write down every change, in two columns, i.e. the module code line, the FROM and then the TO.

I used to do this by hand on a special notebook.

Never looked back thru that notebook, after several years of use. This was on my 2015 Fusion Energi and on my son's 2013 Fusion Energi (now both long gone).

Now, on my 3d Ford since those Fusion days, I write the FROM and the TO columns down, sometimes. Just in case something doesn't work... as occasionally, it doesn't. BTW - this method was instrumental in eventually proving to myself that every time I did a well-documented change, and it failed to work, that it was (so far) always my fault in skipping some detail of the attempted change.

Separately, I do back up and rescan the car's modules to the laptop. I use this convention: Carname YYYYMMDD so that I can quickly sort and find the latest sequential scan for the given car. I've found that with the car name (i.e. "Lightning") and YYYYMMDD, my memory always jogs me to what I was trying to change, when, as I practically never change more than one or two settings per session. This works for me.

Hope this helps.

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