Frequent Crash To Desktop

[Asemblance]

Since installing Vectorworks 2023, I have been suffering significantly more crashes than with 2022. The most common appears to be a result of having multiple files open simoultaneously; presumably the system is running out of Memory. It hangs and becomes unresponsive for about 20 seconds, then Vectorworks simply ceases. No error message, no crash report, just silently disapears.

 

This is typically upon opening a third or fourth file. The files are not huge, and this is on a practicaly brand new high end desktop machine running up to date Windows 11, with 32gb of RAM. Vectorworks SP5 installed (but has been an issue through every service pack so far).

 

Is this a known issue? Why has this only started occurring on vwx2023?

 

Also worth noting; 2023 seems generally less polished than 2022. When first opening the programme, the vectorworks logo in the loarder appears pixelated. The new welcome screen starts in a window which is bigger than my WQHD (2560x 1440) monitor and so is partially off screen (perhaps optimised for 4k only?).

 

In use 2023 also seems slower to redrawn information when moving around, starting pixelatd and then gradually sharpening; slower and less useful for moving around a drawing compared to 2022.

 

The whole experience of 2023 has been pretty disapointing so far. Has anybody else noticed these issues?

[Jeremy Best]

Based on what you've relayed so far, it sounds like the current graphics card driver installed for your Radeon RX 580 is either too old for Vectorworks 2023 or it is partially corrupt. 

 

Downloading and installing a current driver would only account for the first possibility, so I recommend you perform a clean installation of this driver. As of today's date, this looks like what you'll need. (Verify this yourself using the info on the page). 

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/rsx2-install - As mentioned in the instructions, select the 'Factory Reset' option to perform a 'clean' installation of the graphics card driver. 

 

Please report the results back here so others can benefit. 

[Asemblance]

Hi Jeremy,

 

Thanks for the response - apologies I've only just seen it.

 

The signature I was using was out of date - I've just updated to show the correct specs for my current systems (both suffer from similar problems). Drivers are up to date on both, and between them covering Windows 10/11, and NVidia/AMD GPUs. The same issues and crashes occur on both systems, and were less frequent in 2022 on both machines.

 

[Dave Donley]

The pixellated panning and zooming sounds like the Accelerate Graphics preference may be off.  Is it on, and are you using legacy non-Unified View with your drawings?  Non-Unified View also would show slower performance than Unified View which is the default for awhile.

 

[Jeremy Best]

Hi @Asemblance, I'm glad Dave jumped in because I never think of that setting, hopefully because I've not had any cases that related to it! If that setting doesn't resolve things here are my suggestions:

 

For the benefit of other patrons here: If this wasn't happening with both your installations/computers I would suggest you try that clean installation of graphics card drivers. Because updating them won't replace any corrupt elements that aren't being supplanted by updates to the software. But, as this is happening for you on two seperate computers here's what I suggest: 

 

Establish if the HomeScreen window being over the edge of your display is a function of how it has been set/positioned. If you can't make it fit the display's bounds properly then it might be caused by something outside of Vectorworks, such as Windows Display settings.

 

I use an external 2560 x 1440 display too and looking at the size of the text and UI elements in your screenshot I suspect you're using unconventional scaling and/or resolution. See what happens when you use the 'Recommended' options for both of these in Windows Settings > 'Displays'. Although I can't find or invoke it today, I'm sure I've seen a warning from Windows 10 along the lines of, 'some applications might not display/behave normally at this resolution/scaling.'