Crashes, Corruption and More

[sbeers]

Scenario - Our office

Mac OSX 10.4 running Vectorworks 10 and Vectorworks 12 - Fundamentals Only. Running both because old projects are in 10 and new ones in 12 (we missed the 11 update all together)

20 users - G4's & G5's all with 1+ GB of ram.

Crashes/Freezes - Vectorworks 12 just crashes, freezes, becomes unresponsive. Force Quit is the only option. No rhyme or reason we can put our finger on. (Please note - we are not using 10 and 12 at the same time, only one program is open at a time).

Corruption - You save a file and when you go to reopen it it says it is corrupt. Autosave feature saves 0k files, manual save sometimes saves a 0k file. Sometimes files mysteriously go from 5000k to 20k, of course it is now corrupt, too.

These files are all ones that we converted (10 to 12) BUT have worked just fine for a period of time. Some of the files we converted 10 to 12 are still just fine and dandy.

Suggestions? HELP

[jnr]

For what its worth, if you can get 12 stable, its worth bringing the 10 files along. Someone else on this board pointed me to Matt Panzer's Viewpak (www.panzercad.com) which will convert views to viewports amongst other features. I was working with the same scenario and eventually felt hamstrung by working in an older version. Matt's product was an absolute godsend and easily worth the 30 bucks. It saved me hours of work and I have retired the old version. BTW I had trouble with freeze-ups on a new machine on a PC. It turned out to be a conflict with the NVIDIA software which I simply turned off and so far, 12 has been stable. Good Luck.

[michael john williams]

JNR

Do you mean NVIDIA software and graphic cards are not compatible with VW?

[Jim_Allen]

NVIDIA cards are compatable with VW, at least on PCs I have had no problem with crashes after I did the 12.0.1 upgrade. Have you done the upgrade?

Jim

[alanmac]

Do you mean NVIDIA software and graphic cards are not compatible with VW?

All graphic cards can have issues with software, not just with VW.

You'll see quite often the advice to check you have the latest drivers for your card installed, given out by Katie etc.

I've even read some cases were different older issue drivers have been recommended to get a system stable, not for VW, but other software such as Maya etc..

The two main companies involved in producing the chipsets nVidia and ATI both edge forward of each other in speed and capabilities from time to time.

Its true that under certain software programs one is favoured over the other, but I've never seen this in relationship to Vectorworks.

Of course any card "problem" is only relative if you have made some change to your system, such as installing a piece of new software, updating existing software in some way, or introducing a new monitor.

If your system is running stable then there is no need to look for new drivers, but if you do, ensure you've got copies of the old should you need to revert back.

As regards VW's compatability with nVidia cards, no more or less than any other piece of software from my knowledge and experience.

I run with preinstalled ATI cards on my two machines. Mac and Windows, whilst my semi retired old Dell has an equally old nVidia card with no issues at all in VW.

Alan

Edited May 18, 2006 by alanmac

[Mark Farnan]

I take it you are saving directly on to the server - is that true? Are you running MacOS 10.4, or (more likely) MacOS 10.4.5 or thereabouts?

As mentioned on a couple of other threads

(http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=33507&an=0&page=7#Post33507)

(http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=33795&an=0&page=1#Post33795)

We think that when you get the "file corrupt" dialog, that the file is not really corrupt at that point, and that it only becomes corrupt when you shut down VectorWorks. If this were true then you could:

a. jump out to the Finder and copy the file to a safe place before you click ok on the dialog and close VectorWorks, or

b. force quit VectorWorks when the "corrupt" dialog is displayed.

Could you try one of these methods next time you get the problem and let us know what you find?

Thanks,

Mark

[jnr]

As to the Nvidia question, so far if I keep the Nview softare shut down, Vectorworks stays relatively stable. The conflict does not appear to be with the drivers but this software. This has happened before with Vectorworks, most notably w/ version 8 +9. After the .5 release, the issue seems to go away. I hope this is the case with 12.5