Computer specs for RenderWorks

[vjm]

I teach VectorWorks and RenderWorks to interior design students at a university in the UK. I am experiencing problems with RenderWorks. It works fine when I only try to render 1 object, e.g. a piece of furniture but the programme crashes everytime I try to render an entire room.

The most powerful computer I have used RenderWorks with so far was an Apple Mac G5, 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of memory, 1 x power PC 970 (2.2) PCU, 512KB cache and GEForce FX 5200 Graphics card. Still, it crashes.

Does anyone know what the minimum recommended specs for a computer should be to use RenderWorks or is there any other reasons why this problem persistently occurs?

Thank you,

Valerie

[alanmac]

In my opinion although low specification compared to the top Macs you should only have a issue of speed with regard to the rendering, a higher spec should just do it faster.

I suspect that there is another reason for this but leave that to the technical people at NNA to answer/solve. Hope they come to your assistance soon.

Alan

[Dave Donley]

Hello vjm:

Does the model use an office chair symbol from the symbol library? There is a known crash that happens when rendering with NURBS (Final Quality RW or Custom RW with NURBS checked) that will be fixedin the next major version.

Try rendering without NURBS on to see if that is the problem.

Your machine specs are plenty good to run RW.

[vjm]

Hi Dave,

The problem occured on many different models and different computers. It is possible students would have used objects from the symbol library. I will create a drawing myself, map it and render it to see if the problem still occurs.

As we have many machines with different specs throughout the university, what would be the minimum requirements you would recommend?

Thank you for your help.

[Travis]

Dave,

And all this time I thought my crashes were because I was *sitting* on the office chair. . .

[Kevin]

This thread underlines a basic need of VW users. This chair issue is a known bug. What we need is a database that list these bugs.

I have experienced this very chair bug and only found out the solution by sending my file to NNA tech support. That was many months ago.

If a new user experiences this bug and does a search on this board for a solution, he most likely will not find it. The answer is in this thread but look at the Topic Title: "Computer specs for RenderWorks". I doubt that this Thread would ever come up in a search for why Renderworks is crashing.

I will make a post to the wishlist for a separate forum for known bugs.

[Kurt Magness]

what office chair are we talking about ? i wonder why it hasn't been removed from the library. What other symbols have this problem ?

[Kevin]

Kurt, I am sure that the next release of VW will have the chair removed or repaired. But between releases there will always be bugs which is why we need a Bug Database.

If I recall correctly, Dave said that it was the "Arms" of the Office Chair that caused the problem. If your Renderworks file crashes, look for office chairs as the culprit. Delete the Chair or delete the Arms.

[fsung]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

What other symbols have this problem ?

---

I had a problem earlier with 4'0-4'5 1/2" wide round-top windows crashing FQ and Artistic RW. Other top shapes render fine in the affected range, as do round-top windows narrower than 3'11 31/32" or wider than 4'5 17/32".

Note that this was only a problem in VW 11 running in OS X 10.3.7. They rendered without a hitch in VW 10.5/OS X 10.3.7 and in VW 11/XP Pro.

[wv_vectorworker]

many people are still using older Macs, powerbooks, iBooks, etc.

I am using a rev.1 G5 1.6Ghz with 768MB ram. works a dream.

my G4 1G also works just fine, just a little longer time spent watching the virtual world unveil before me.