more memory?

[Rosebud Studios]

I'm getting alot of warnings about lack of memory. Currently using 8.5.2 on a Mac (biege)G3 with 172MB of ram. Suggested size is about 20MB, Minimum set to 24MB and I just increased the Preferred to 96MB from 80MB. My files are less than 1MB usually around 775K.

My way of working is to check my design from different angles and sometimes rendering as solids. Does this use up my memory each time I change view and rerender until none is left. If so how do I avoid "the last two operations have been aborted--you are out of memory" messages? Do I need to close and quit Vectorworks every 20 or 30 minutes to recover my memory? Seems like a very time consuming way to work. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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[MikeB]

Try reducing your prefered to 25 to 30 Mb. From what I understand VW uses free ram to render, not allocated ram. If VW eats up all of your ram there isn't enough left for the system to use to render the image.

Also if your running OS 9 it can and will take up to 60 tp 70 MB on its own.

So if you allocate 90 +/- to VW the system has 70+/- that only leave 12+/- for what ever else ( rendering ).

I know this is true for the quick draw and Ray maker engins, and honestly the quick draw engin is as fast or faster than the solid rendering option. Its also more accurate.

Just so you know I use a G4 with 256Mb ram and a 400 Mhz processor. My VW allocation is 35 to 40 Mb, My models are up to 12 Mb and regular 2-D drawings are from 250 Kb to 5 Mb, with a 35 Mb allocation I can open several files at once.

Good Luck