Manchester sometimes unable to write automation? SOLVED

I was mixing a song today and started writing volume automation. It went fine for a good while then all of a sudden, Splat Manchester 64 bit stopped writing the automation envelope. Neither the mouse nor the control surface could write any automation.
 
 I went to another song and found that automation worked fine, so back to the problem song. I found that not only could I not write automation, but I couldn’t change a dotted thin envelope line to linear, that was greyed out. Automation “read” works fine with the widget and the control surface. I created a new audio track to see it it would work and it didn’t.  I had to manually write automation to finish.
 
I then went to a new song and started mixing and found the same problem – writing automation was not working. I then opened 32 bit Splat Ipswich – same problem. Then I opened Sonar 8.5 and it worked fine, I finished the mix saved it to a new name  and then opened the same song back in 64 bit Spat Manchester, I found that I could now write automation in that file that was saved in 8.5.
 
Yet when I went back to the same song file that couldn't write automation, it still wouldn’t work. So it appears that saving in 8.5 maybe reinitialized something when I saved it.
 
So then I went back to the first song that I had this problem with writing automation and opened it in 8.5 and wrote automation, saved it to a new file name and opened in 64 bit Spat, I tried to write automation and it didn't work. So this time writing automation and saving in 8.5 didn’t fix the file.
 
So has anyone noticed these automation problems? Could it be some button I accidently pushed or keyboard shortcut? In the Mix Module there are 2 buttons associated with automation, one for read and another for write. Those buttons don’t help any to fix this.
 
When I right click the volume widget I can see a check by both read enable and write enable. The edit filter is set for Volume automation, so are there any others parameters I need to check out or is this just a bug?
 
Next I reverted back to an old image file of Splat 64 bit Ipswich and found that file still would not write automation, so it appears to be a corrupt file and has nothing to do with Manchester, unless Manchester caused the corruption. Many months ago I had the same problem and had to create a new song file and copy all the data into it. In other words it appeared to be a corrupt file.
 
Is Manchester causing a file corruption, making it unable to write automation?
 
Any suggestions or similar stories?

The solution is auto punch now works with automation. So if the auto punch button is pressed then automation won't work except in the auto punch region. It seems to me that information should be in several spots in the automation Help file. I only found it in an obscure section listed above. I'd be surprised if many users would draw that connection between automation and auto punch.

stevec
Good find! 
 
And enjoy using Automation Lanes.    I was skeptical when they were first introduced and was fairly certain I'd just keep using automation in the parent track.   Yeah, I was wrong - I almost exclusively use automation lanes.    Go figure.   

You're so right, I absolutely love automation lanes. It really cleans up the visuals and makes our work more accurate, because you can see so much more clearly what's going on.
 
I also like that I don't have to keep hitting Shift click to keep changing modes. No reason for it anymore. You can stay in the automation mode and edit the audio track or adjust the size of the waveforms. Automation lanes for me is the best improvement in a long time