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Video card woes


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Hello Paul -

Thank you for your thorough explanation of what is happening with this issue.

We recently installed VWA9 on a machine in our office that has an ATI Radeon card and have seen the Video Card Woes problem go away. Again, I don't understand anything about programming, but it seems strange to me that if the problem is attributable to the drivers that it would somehow dissappear with a new release of VectorWorks. I am not trying to place blame on Nemetschek, but I am interested in an explanation.

Here's another related observation with VW9 installed on our Mac with a ATI Radeon card: Occasionally (once every couple of hours) the selection handles disappear without warning and for no apparent reason. The file we are working on at the moment is quite large - 15MB. We have not nailed down a series of actions that causes the problem. A file close/re-open solves the problem. Strange.

Thanks again for the update.

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d. s h a f f e r

a r c h i t e c t

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Here's my solution:

I returned the Radeon for a full refund, cancelled the VW upgrade (actually postponed) and totally forgot about the glorious Mac OS X. Hardware upgrade is also put on the back burner.

Sticking with ol' reliable VW8.5.2/ AR3/ OS8.6/ ATIxclaimVR4MBVRAM/ PM9500/ G3/333 is the answer for me. There really isn't any noticeable slowdown after removing the Radeon drivers tested. I suppose the biggest difference would be in 2D/3D games, but my machine is not intended for gaming anyway.

So until all the bugs are ironed out in all these softwares, the bleeding edge does not jive well with my bottom line.

The reply from P.Pharr is greatly appreciated!

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quote:

Originally posted by doug shaffer:

We recently installed VWA9 on a machine in our office that has an ATI Radeon card and have seen the Video Card Woes problem go away.

Occasionally (once every couple of hours) the selection handles disappear without warning and for no apparent reason.


You'll note that in my original message I categorized the ATI problems as intermittent. This is very typical behavior for intermittent problems. For example, suppose the driver does not initialize some variable they are subsequently observing to determine whether to draw to screen. Then drawing to screen becomes random. You are seeing the randomness of a buggy driver. The very fact that it works in VW 9.0 is random - as we made no change to this code.

Paul

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Paul -

Thanks for the quick response. I did notice that in the first paragraph of your statement you used the term 'intermittant' when describing the problem with the ATI card. However the next paragraph of your statement said this:

"With the NVIDIA card, this problem affects VectorWorks versions 8.0.1 through 9.0.0. With the ATI card, it affects versions 8.0.1 through 8.5.2"

To me, this implies that Nemetschek thinks that the problem no longer occurs at all with the ATI card and VW9. I just wanted to give you my most recent observations regarding the Radeon card and VW9.

Regarding the 'randomness of a buggy driver', perhaps I can understand your logic. However, it still seems strange to me that if 'no changes were made to the code', why does the problem occur only rarely in VW9 where as in VW8.5.2 it occured all of the time? Is it possible that some portion if the VW9 code that is seemingly unrelated to display issues is conflicting with the display code?

I'm only trying to help.

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d. s h a f f e r

a r c h i t e c t

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is reply #80! I simply cannot believe that there is still no solution to this problem. What is the current state of reaction?

This IS a seriuous problem. It has been six months I am forced to be working without 2d-acceleration at my 4000$-computer. Ridiculous!

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About the missing handles. We also experienced this problem with VW 8.5.2. We solved the problem with reducing the colors to 256. Maybe you can try this when the other methods do not work.

One note about those people who always complain about their Mac or PC platform. THE GRASS SEEMS ALWAYS GREENER IN OTHER FIELDS THAN YOUR OWN. I am working multi-platform and I can assure you that both PC and Mac platforms are fine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This reply is for bringing back this issue to the top of this list.

Besides of all these woes this list is about, I still believe in VW as THE best tool for my work. So the frustration I share with the hundreds os people in this forum is personal.

Do we have to wait for a solution, or should we forget it and turn to 8.5.2 with older videocards or even to autocad?

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I agree that this post should be kept near the top. One day I will buy a better video card, but I won't do it til I know it will work.

In the meantime things are working OK with the ragepro. You might want to get one while it's still possible. I see that apple stopped offering them as an option.

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Originally posted by Pharr:

This can be considered an "official response" if you like.

Here is what we know:

This is to put down my experience with this video problem. Whilst the information given was useful to a lot of people I can't say it really related to my expereince. I've just upgraded to VW9 Architect on my beige G3/233 running OS 8.6. The installation upgraded all the ATI drivers for me which is where all the problems started.The windows get obliterated by patterning when scrolling inside them. Turning off the 2D accellerator is apparently impossible. Whenever I restart after turning it off I find it miraculously turned on again.Turning to 256 colours is no good because you can't render anything (it only works at thousands). In 8.5.2 i got round it by turning off the accellerator. Now this fix is apparently denied. Whose idea was this one?

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IRONIC TWIST! I am the instigator of this very interesting conversation, but I have to excuse myself now. You see, a semi-truck ran into the building where I work. It took out one of transformers which caused a massive surge which destroyed the computer I worked on. My NEW G4, OS 9.1, QT 5.0.1, 640 MB RAM, 466 MHz, ATI Rage Pro 16 MB machine suffers none of the 'Video Woes' I initially sought help with. Problem solved.

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I'm happy to report that I received the following response from Apple's video engineering folks today:

"The fix for your issue should be the in next system update, due out shortly."

I can also confirm that the fix for these issues is in the next VectorWorks update, also due out shortly.

I'm sorry that these problems are still present after so long, but we have been working hard on all fronts to get a fix out as quickly as possible. It looks like all of our efforts will pay off at once.

Thanks,

Paul C. Pharr

CAD Software Manager

Nemetschek North America

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just installed the new GeForce2 MX drivers 2.1.1 that were pulled from the Apple support page and they work fine with my G4 533 and Vectorworks 9. I don't know if I have killed any thing else yet but I have drawing handles and all the GeForce extensions are on. Now it would be nice to get the long awaited update.

Bob Tiedemann

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quote:

Originally posted by rjtiedeman:

I just installed the new GeForce2 MX drivers 2.1.1

Strange, I could only find an Update 1.1.1 under

http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/68/wa/viewDocument?extKCID=75115

Where did you get it from? With my Geforce 2 MX, 1.1.1 does not solve the problem. So please leave the link of the updater to download. I'm thanking you in advance (otherwise tell me the number of Steve Frushour's truck)

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quote:

Originally posted by rjtiedeman:

I just installed the new GeForce2 MX drivers 2.1.1

Strange, I could only find an Update 1.1.1 under

http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/68/wa/viewDocument?extKCID=75115

Where did you get it from? With my Geforce 2 MX, 1.1.1 does not solve the problem. So please leave the link of the updater to download. I'm thanking you in advance (otherwise tell me the number of Steve Frushour's truck)

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Two things.

I like how all the posts on this topic are shown as being 4 months old, but the main board says this topic is recent.

I have a windows 98 pentium 2 400 with 128meg ram and an STB NVidia TNT 16 meg video card.

Renderworks renders great, Opengl only renders jagged triangles all over the screen. If you remove all the doors and windows it works fine. Insert one door, and wamo, the whole screen filles with polygons and triangles all over the place.

I think NNA needs to seriously address these Video card problems. I am not going to use Renderworks to check my model every time I need to look at it. That will take me forever and is a complete waste of my valuable office time.

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