Charlie_P Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 Afternoon all, hope you are all having a lovely Easter. I seem to be making a habit of creating unrenderable drawings at the moment; everything looks reacts fine in wireframe but as when I try to render using openGL the program goes through the usual symbols...geometry.. at the top right of the screen but then crashes before render occurs. Looking at the crash logs (I now have a fair selection) they are always EXC_BAD_ACCESS ... KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE , always thread 0 crashing, always gleAddCommand +53 with a similiar addresses (0x1834b868, 0x18347868, a number of times), the same address occurring under the eip listing for the processor report. Looking at Apple's website there is a technote ref the crashreporter Technical note TN2123 which seems to point to a memory handling error. The error output in the application support file (/users/username/library/application support/vectorworks/12/) shows "warning : _74_122 - Handle variable is NIL." Looking about a bit it looks as though this may be linked to a 64 bit problem, but that's no more than a quess. There is also a suggestion that repairing permissions may help so I'll try that. Anyone got any other good ideas? Thanks in advance, Charlie Quote Link to comment
Petri Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 Dear me! Is this some sort of a religious board? I had no idea... Logging out for good. Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 7, 2007 Author Share Posted April 7, 2007 Sorry to alarm you Petri - my celebrations are strictly alcohol based Quote Link to comment
Abacus Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 Petri, Sorry to see you go, I'll miss your words of wisdom, your tact, and your thoughtfulness. Hopefully someone can fill the inevitable void. Have a diplomatic day Quote Link to comment
dontevenjoke Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 C'mon Petri, Like Hotel California, you can log out but you could never leave...Where else would you get the kudos you get here? Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 I have seen similar crashes, but not for a long time. In my case it was nearly always related to a) the file having benn imported from a funky DWG file, b) one corrupt object (this is tricky, you gotta search for it!). Try creating a brand new file, and duplicate the design layers, classes, etc. Then CUT & PASTE IN PLACE, one layer at a time, from the old file to the new. After each nw PASTE IN PLACE try rendering. This will either cure the problem or *might* assist you in localizing the corrupt object to a specific layer. Also, on Monday, I'll bet you could send the file to Katie and see if she (or someone at NNA) can determine what's up. Petri, please don't go. I for one will miss your constant cheerfulness ;-) Quote Link to comment
Guest Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 You could also try to verify and repair disk permissions to see if that heals the problem. Alternatively, reboot the computer, too. It may be a matter of clearing out the OS cache. Quote Link to comment
ccroft Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 Memory handling error? I'd head over to VersionTracker, download Rember and run continuous Ram test for a few hours. Flakey ram does happen, and with 3 gigs you have a higher risk than some, especially if you've gotten it from third party vendors. Good Luck! Charles Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 8, 2007 Author Share Posted April 8, 2007 (edited) Thanks for the response Peter, the files were all VW drawn - no import; the corrupt object possibility - I tried, for a start, dividing the drawing into a number of chunks, the idea being that if one misfired I could tunnel down through in ever smaller lumps to the roque object. On first division all parts rendered OK. When I put them back together they didn't. Charles - tried Rember, first time I've met it, looks like a useful tool. Left it running for 6 hours, all OK. Katie - full shutdown and restart is a daily occurence, I also do logouts a couple of times a day, it really keeps VW up to speed. The disk permissions I hadn't done in a while so when I ran disk utility it found & fixed a load of stuff. Also ran Cocktail to manually clear all caches and run all the cron scripts. And for a start things rendered. Unfortunately five minutes later, they didn't, same error file as before. Incidentally VW created about a dozen .txt files on the root directory (i.e. filepath is /) with filenames that read like a filepath - /users/username/application support/vectorworks/12/plug-ins/VW_mech/data/... the final part being a selection of VW Mech plugin names. All of these were zero K files. I deleted them during the cleanup exercise and they haven't reappeared. Peter, I'll try your rebuilding exercise in full as a next step. Thank you all for your help so far, any further suggestions welcome. Charlie Edited April 8, 2007 by Charlie_P Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 8, 2007 Author Share Posted April 8, 2007 Short update... It may have been a corrupted class. As I was rebuilding the file I flattened the class structure by putting everything into "None" and it rendered; so far so good but I'm not saying that I'm cured just yet... Charlie Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 Hi Again Charlie. Glad you seem to working it through. One thing to note: It used to be (and probably still is, but I'm not entirely certain) that if you modified and/or deleted either the "None" or "Dimension" class very bad things would happen. You may have noticed that every new VW's file will contain these two classes. So I have always beens very superstitious about these, as in, it is TABOO to mess with them. Further, though... I have seen corrupt classes, but again not for a long while. One of the things that might cause corruption is a bad font. So this *might* be something to look into... Keep on keeping on... And good luck! Peter Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 8, 2007 Author Share Posted April 8, 2007 Hello again Peter. Yes I am aware of the religious nature of None and Dimension, that's partly why I stuck everything in None - it was as near as I could get to a "clean" class, i.e. least chance of corruption and lowest possible number of classes in a file. The plot thickens somewhat. I'm getting some partial success in that openGL will render under some settings but not others; low & medium OK, textures OK, anti-aliasing - nurbs - high - very high are all no go in any combination. Renderworks is bits of both. Sometimes FQR works, sometimes it's just a complete stall (activity monitor shows no cpu use, VW unresponsive, leave it for an hour - no change); other RW modes have been similar but I haven't comprehensively tried this problem on them (I tend to use GL for a quick look and FQR for output; reasonably swift on a quad core) My feeling is that there is a glitch in the way VW interacts with GL. Just a feeling as I haven't tied it down fully yet, but it's a memory addressing problem and it may be a 64 bit related; it's probably something to do with my installation, my next step is a clean install of VW. We shall see... Thanks again Charlie Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 (edited) Just a thought/theory: do you by chance have a whole bunch of "nurbs" objects or 3d "sweeps" in the file? Do you have any at all? If so, what happens if you create a new class and place all of those (types of) objects into it, then try to render? Also, if you haven't tried it yet, you sould do the CUT & PASTE IN PLACE into a new, clean file, just for kicks. Or, there are some folks who swear that creating a new file, and then using a Workgroup Reference to bring in the layers (and all contained objects) from the funky file works for this sort of thing. I'm also sort of curious, how large is the file? Has it been worked on over a (long) period of time? If so it is quite probable that the data is fragmented on the hard disk. Another good reason to do the cut & paste, or maybe even just do a SAVE AS, which (as I understand it) ought to resave the data all in one sequential run... Also, I'm wondering if this could have something to do with your hardware? Any third party RAM? Etc, etc... By the way, I hope we haven't offended Petri with all this talk about "religious classes", which is after all quite appropriate for Sunday School session ;-)) Edited April 8, 2007 by CipesDesign Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 8, 2007 Author Share Posted April 8, 2007 Afternoon Peter, Yes a whole lot of nurbs/sweeps. The file as it stands now - after cutting and pasting in place from the old file - is all 3d and around 400 mb. Haven't tried WGR yet, that may well be next. Could it be the hardware? Always possible, certianly. I tried Rember overnight and nothing showed up (see earlier post) but I'll try a ram transplant from another identical but younger computer within the firm and see if that makes any difference (my ram came via Crucial, the transplantable stuff was Apple fitted). Another variable to close down. I too hope we haven't offended Petri... Incidentially I can't produce GL rendered viewports under any setting at the moment, same crash occurs. Hmm... Thanks for all your help, I shall press on; progress is possible even in this reduced state. I've only got a few more views to go and then I'll resort to the more serious surgery (ram swap, clean install, visit the pub) Cheers Charlie Quote Link to comment
Michael_Eschenbach Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 you might try to purge all unused objects as well to get the file size down..... I also had a file recently that had a bad wall, which created all sorts of havic. after deleting it and installing a new wall.... all was well.. best of luck Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted April 9, 2007 Share Posted April 9, 2007 Are you using any Legacy Plug-in objects ? Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 Good afternoon islandmon, only non-standard plugins are Animationworks related (10 of them). I'll try removing them and see how I get on Thanks for the suggestion Michael, I've been hunting for rogue objects but as the problem is affecting a number of files it wold have to be particularly bad luck. As to the number of objects I'm afraid they're all needed (yes I am using symbols), it's a complex drawing. Thanks for all suggestions thus far, Charlie Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 Islandmon - no change, still chokes on GL, renders ok under FQRW on current drawing (this hasn't always been the case, see earlier, but there's no hard and fast rule) Cheers Charlie Quote Link to comment
Ray Libby Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Have you tried updating your video drivers? Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Charlie. Have you sent the file to NNA? I'll bet they would like to get their hands on it, do some testing... Katie, could you let him know if there is a way for him to ftp it to you??? P Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 Hello again Peter. No, haven't sent anything to NNA yet, but... Progress. I've done all the things outlined in the previous posts, and good suggestions they all were. Believe it or not what I hadn't tried was reducing the load on the graphics card. So, a bit of background to the monitor - 30" Dell (I know, I know, but I couldn't stretch to a ACD and I need pixels.) running at 2560 x 1600 and millions of colours. I changed the colours to thousands, and everything functions again. GL renders as it should under all settings. Question is why? Obvious answer is a memory handling issue but there my knowlege ends. There is also the black magic response that it's because I've got a (whisper) dell (/whisper) plugged into a mac and it took umbrage. Thanks for all the suggestions, Charlie Quote Link to comment
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