VectorsWorks freezes sort of....

[mike mcneil]

Every so often VW will sort of freeze me. Actually I can still do most operations on the drawings via the toolbars, but most of the menu commands are greyed out and the keyboard shortcuts do not work. So I can't actually quit VW or save my file. The only way to quit VW is to force quit via the Finder. Then, I must check the backup file to see how much work I have lost. The funny thing is the preference for automatic backup still works in the background to back up the file, and the Finder does not say that VW is not responding. After I force quit and start up VW again everything seems to work fine. Has anyone experienced this? If so, is there a way I can exit out of VW while saving my file so I don't have to redo an hour of work every time this glitch happens?

Thanks,

[CS1]

Don't know the solution for your problem but I find VW often has random problems which require closing down and sometimes loose a fair amount of work so I have my backup set to save every 5mins and keep the last 12 backups, this way I have a backup every 5mins for the last hour. This isnt so great for large files but better then nothing.

[M.CH]

Has this happened since you installed 10.5.4?

How much RAM do you have?

Trash the VW preferences and reset them, see if you still have the problems.

Have you run Permissions recently?

[islandmon]

This could easily be a VRAM issue considering that the VW Process is not hung.

[gmm18]

In response to CS1's frequent auto back-ups,

I went to opposite way, rather than increasing the frequency of

auto back-ups, I actually just turned off auto back-up altogether.

I found that my machine was slowing down partly due to VW running

the auto back-up process, right when I am in the middle of something,

what a pain...

So I'd rather have the control in my own hands, I just hit the keyboard

shortcut, Command(⌘)-S, often. I have incorporated it into my workflow,

I don't even have to think about it, I just hit it, especially before and after

a complex operation.

Also, at least once per day, usually more, I do a Save-As, just for safe

keeping.

[Ray Libby]

If you set Autosave to Operations instead of Minutes in the pull down menu it will not interrupt an action. I think it's a big mistake to not take advantage of Autosave.

[Gytis]

I I think it's a big mistake to not take advantage of Autosave.

I strongly second this. I may be paranoid, but I autosave a backup copy to new location AND manually save my original file like gmm18 describes:

I just hit the keyboard

shortcut, Command(⌘)-S, often. I have incorporated it into my workflow,

I don't even have to think about it, I just hit it, especially before and after

a complex operation.

I hatessess re-doing thingssess....

[M.CH]

I found that my machine was slowing down partly due to VW running

the auto back-up process...

How much RAM do you have?

[M.CH]

If you set Autosave to Operations instead of Minutes in the pull down menu it will not interrupt an action. I think it's a big mistake to not take advantage of Autosave.

Is it not the "Confirm before save" checkbox that needs to be deselected so you can carry on working uninterupted.

Also if you autosave every 15 minutes and keep 30 backups you will have a file for every 15 mins for the whole day assuming 7.5 hours solid VW work.

What is really needed is autosave in one timeframe and backups on another, so you could have a 10min save and an hourly backup.

[Ray Libby]

It's been a while since I used by minutes, but in the past AutoSave set to minutes will save at the time specified and interrupt the workflow, like kick you out of editing a text box.

Fast hard drives are important too. I have two 10.000 rpm drives in raid 0. My files rarely exceed 20mb, but they Autosave so fast I don't even notice.

[D Wood]

I agree with Ray, I found timed saves disruptive and annoying, but saves after a certain number of keystrokes has worked flawlessly for years.

Getting back to Mike's original complaint, it may be a Mac maintenance issue:

Run Utilities>Disk Utility>Repair disk permissions.

Do you leave your Macbook on over night? If not, I suggest doing so about once a week. If you don't want to do that, try a program called Macjanitor.

You might also want to look at a program called Diskwarrior which rebuilds the directory.

[mike mcneil]

I am sure this happened once while in 10.5.3. But it was a rare occasion, and I am rather new to VW. So I didn't really think anything of it.

I have 4GB of RAM on my MBP. I regularly repair disk permissions after any install of new software and trash system as well as user caches plus I shutdown at least once a week. I will try to trash the VW preferences. But this has happened maybe three times in the past couple of weeks and I am not sure what action is actually triggering this.

Thanks for the suggestion.