random frustrating crashing

[sarah_earney]

I'm beginning to feel like I'm hitting my head on a brick wall with this: VW keeps crashing, (naturally at the most inopportune moments) and I can't figure out why. I'm seriously considering sacrificing the twirly age and going back to VW12.5.

Sometimes it happens when I've zoomed out of one area, and go to zoom into another, it pauses, then gives me the marble of doom, then crashes. At this point it never recovers from the marble of doom like some other programmes do. Sometimes when I think it might be about to do this I hit apple-S between the zooming out and the zooming in.

Sometimes it happens when I switch from one drawing window to another (using apple+~).

Sometimes it seems to be when VW is feeling overloaded (like I've asked it to move a line, then switch to eyedropper and pick up attributes from another line a bit too quick - when I say a bit too quick, VW12.5 could keep up, I'm not overly speedy).

Sometimes it happens 5 times in 15 minutes, sometimes it'll go for a couple of hours without misbehaving.

I've got a maximum of 3 files open at one time, these files are 997k, 1.6MB and 1.7MB file size, it's a small house extension so it's not like I'm drawing anything huge or complicated. These 3 files are referenced into each other with layer referencing and I'm enjoying being able to turn the whole page around. It doesn't only happen on this project.

I can't find any particular discernible pattern, which means I can't work around it. It's driving me mad and causing me a lot of lost time. I have set autosave to save every 5 minutes, but I'm still having to restart the programme each time and wait for the error report to send. Is anyone else having this problem? At all?!

Thanks.

---

iMac intel, 10.5.8, VW2010 architect SP2

[bcd]

It crashes a lot for me to.

I've got into the deplorable habit of Cmd-S every few minutes and I regularly run TimeMachine - It is frustrating but I haven't tried to repeat or log it - just restart and off we go again.

It's not happening as often for me - but it does happen too often.

[D Wood]

Repaired permissions lately? HD>Utilities>Disk Utility>Repair Disk Permissions.

Emptied the Trash?

DiskWarrior is worth buying and running weekly IMHO.

Any other non Apple, non VW programs running in the background?

Were the files started in VW2010, or in 12.5 and upgraded?

Why do you have 3 separate files for a small house extension?

[sarah_earney]

Permissions repaired every month or so, ran it again yesterday and it was still misbehaving afterwards.

Trash is empty.

Only Mail is running in the background. I do open other stuff (Word, Acrobat Reader) but they don't just sit there open, I close them when I'm done and get back to drawing (and yes, properly application closed, not just the window of the document).

Files were started fresh in VW2010, though the document template from which they were all created was originally a VW12.5 file. It only has classes and their colours/lineweights set up though, there is no geometry in the template.

3 files - habit. We try to have 1 way of setting up drawings whether it's a small house extension or a large leisure centre - plans, elevations and sections are all in separate files, referenced into each other so multiple people can work on a project at the same time.

[Ozzie]

Make document template 2010

[D Wood]

Sarah, more questions:

How much RAM have you got in your iMac?

What size is the hard drive, and how full is it?

Are the 3 files all on your iMac or are they on a server?

Is anyone else accessing the files you are working on?

[sarah_earney]

Hi David,

the machine has 2GB of RAM, the harddrive is 240GB, of which 120GB is used, and all 3 files reside on the server, we don't work with anything local.

Thanks,

Sarah

[D Wood]

Sarah

I'm stumped I'm afraid, unless 2Gb RAM isn't enough, or upgrading to Snow Leopard in case it works better with VW2010.

Maybe some other expert can chip in ...............

Incidentally, your initial signature has disappeared - go to My Stuff at the top of this page and create one, makes it much easier for helpers.

[Ozzie]

perhaps 2gb ram is not enough

save the file to local and try from there as an experiment

does that make a difference or are you still crashing?

[VincentCuclair]

I've got into the deplorable habit of Cmd-S every few minutes and I regularly run TimeMachine -

I too have become used to crashes however i work with fairly heavy files....... a little tip: I have set my options for autosave every 40/50 actions and to save over the original file......it's worth the wait!

It's one thing to have crashes, it's another to lose work because of them.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Vincent C