Contact Technical Support

Email Ensures Effective Support

Every Contact requires a Token

Use email to contact tech support

Manifold Technical Support provides support through email. Please review the main Support page before contacting tech support, for links to quick tips that can solve most problems right away.

Manifold Viewer is a free product that is supported by the community, not by tech support. Hey, it's free!

Manifold provides technical support for the current release of Manifold System with the latest update installed on machines fulfilling all requirements in the Requirements page.

Important: Technical support for Manifold System can be obtained only by using a technical support token using the instructions below. Any question of a technical nature, no matter how trivial, requires use of a tech support token.

Holidays: See the Holidays page for a list of holidays observed by Manifold. Technical support is not available on holidays.

No token is required to send in a bug report, provided you do not ask a tech support question as part of that bug report or ask for a reply. For information on how to submit bug reports, please see the Bug Reports page.

Step 1: Determine Technical Support Category

Any question of a technical nature falls into one of three categories. Determine which of these three categories describes your question:

  • Activation Support - You do not need a technical support token for most activation questions for Release 8 or Release 9 if you follow the instructions in the Activation Support page. Please read that page carefully to learn how to get priority support for installation and activation questions without use of a technical support token.
  • Standard Email Support - Questions regarding interactive use of most Manifold System features. Excludes questions on geometry linked from external sources, scripting or programming, Release 8 IMS or web applications, customization, License Server, runtime licenses and SQL.
  • Developer Email Support - Questions on any Manifold System feature in any edition, including any questions excluded from standard email support.
This page continues assuming your question falls into Standard or Developer support categories.

Step 2: Obtain a Support Token

You must have a support token of the required type for each question you ask. Development category questions require at least three standard tokens per question. A support token is a long string of upper case letters and numbers that looks like a Manifold serial number. See the About Technical Support Tokens page for examples and information on tech support tokens.

Some Manifold System licenses may include two prepaid tokens for Standard Email Support (low cost products do not), which are provided in the same email message that provided the serial number for that license. If you do not have any tokens available, you must buy the tokens you need from the Online Store.

A token can be used once, for one question. If you do not recall whether you have used a particular token, check the status of that token on the Status Page to make sure it has not been used, revoked or is not the required type.

Step 3: Collect Necessary Information

Tech support needs to know important details about your system to help you rapidly and effectively. You must collect the following information to provide to technical support. Write this information down in a text file as you will not be able to send screen shots to tech support.

Launch Manifold System and choose Help - About in the main menu. Write down the following information from the About dialog, exactly as reported by the dialog:

  • Manifold System edition (first line in the dialog).
  • Build number (second line in the dialog).
  • Extensions listed (if any) in the installed extensions box.
  • Serial number ending in a series of X characters.
  • CPU.
  • Physical memory.
  • Operating system.
  • Running mode (32-bit or 64-bit).

If you are asking a question about activation, please also provide all required information as set forth in the Activation Support page.

Please make sure to provide all necessary information with your first contact. If tech support must ask you for missing information, that not only wastes time but it also wastes support tokens.

Step 4: Contact Tech Support

Compose and send an email to tech@manifold.net using the following instructions:

  • The subject must begin with Manifold Support Request followed by short summary of the question, for example, "Manifold Support Request - Shapefile projection problem"
  • Do not cc: any third parties on the email.
  • Do not request any email system receipts or flag the email as important.
  • Do not attach any attachments of any kind (images, vcards, etc.) to the email.
  • Do not use HTML formatted email. Send email as ordinary text.
  • Send email only from an email address that can accept a reply from manifold.net email addresses.
  • The first lines of the body of the email must include the technical support tokens you will use for this question.
  • The next few lines of the body of your email text must include the information collected from the Help - About dialog and, if you are asking a question about activation, the information required by the Activation Support page.
  • Ask one question to which you wish the tech support token (or multiple tokens in the case of developer level questions) to be applied. This question should be specific and include complete and detailed information on anything you did from which the question arises. For example, if the question has to do with importing a particular file, state exactly how you have attempted to import that file including a step-by-step description of each command or dialog you have used and the settings employed in each such command or dialog.
  • If your question involves a problem that can be duplicated by using a drawing or data set that can be downloaded from the Manifold website, provide a URL to the download and give a step-by-step description of how the problem can be duplicated using that file.
  • Conclude your question with a list of User Manual topics or web pages you have read to try to find the answer in Help.
  • To avoid wasting tech support incidents, please utilize an email account that does not block, discard or reject emails from manifold.net email accounts. See the Email Problems page for tips if you suspect any problems in your email system.

Very Important: All of the above information is important. Without all details an engineer cannot solve the problem quickly.

Please provide all of the above information within a single email. If you do not provide all of the above information or if you otherwise send in a non-conforming support request and receive a form letter from tech support asking you to provide all required information, or pointing out some other problem that prevents processing your request, please re-submit your question as a new, complete, standalone email that includes all of the above information in a single letter. To avoid errors, tech support will not try to parse threads you forward from other people. Please contact tech support using a new, original email message so all information is clear.

Additional Information

Tech support may contact you with questions as part of the processing of an incident. Please respond within two business days to those questions, answering all questions asked. Incomplete responses or late responses may result in an incident being closed.

To get the most value from a technical support token, please make sure to provide full information as required above. Requests for tech support that do not provide required information will waste the token being used.

Make sure to ask only one question with each support incident. Requests for support that ask more than one question will have only the first question answered. Do not pose rhetorical questions: tech support must treat all questions equally and cannot guess when you are serious about a question and when you are not.

Tokens are automatically charged in some circumstances, usually after a courtesy reminder. For example, Manifold provides free updates on the condition any questions about free updates require an incident, providing a clear notice in the updates page: "If you have any questions regarding the download or installation of an update, that requires a technical support incident." As a courtesy to users, questions about an update which do not include a token will normally receive a reminder that a token is required and that a token will automatically be charged if the user continues the thread. Continuing the thread in any way will use up a token.

Users must write from an email address that can receive email from manifold.net email addresses. If users write from an email address they cannot use to receive email responses from Manifold, tokens will end up being automatically charged to deal with the resulting chaos. See the Email Problems page for tips.

See the Support FAQ for answers to frequently asked questions regarding technical support and additional information.


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About Manifold

Manifold is a deep technology company creating advanced, parallel algorithms, next-level technology, and computation know-how that powers faster performance and smarter operations.

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