My Mac Still Won't Auto Sleep Now With Vectorworks 2017

[Bruce Kieffer]

When VW 2016 is open, background or foreground app, my iMac will not automatically sleep as set it is set to do in the Energy Saver system pref. If I quit VW 2016, then my iMac goes to sleep automatically. I never had that problem with 2015. I do have autosave turned on, which was on in 2015 too.

[PVA - Admin]

That's the issue here, I can no longer replicate it after 2016 Sp2 on my MacBook Pro, where I am even able to make it happen now on 10.10 and 10.11 on our test machine, but even on that same machine it doesn't happen in 2016 SP4 or in 2017. Support will have to take a closer look.

[PVA - Admin]

For reference, these are the test settings I used on my machine, similar were used on the test machine (an iMac a few generations back):

[rDesign]

@JimW- I took a long lunch today, but before I left I fired up Vw2017 and walked away. No VWX files or any other apps were open. I have the same Energy Saver preference settings as you.

When I got back 3 hours later, my MBP was still awake. So I took a look in the Activity Monitor and I noticed the following, which to my untrained eyes might help explain the Vw-induced insomnia Bruce and I have been experiencing:

Note that the 'CineRender' process is marked as 'Preventing Sleep'.

Edited September 24, 2016 by rDesign

[Bruce Kieffer]

Good investigative work Tim!

I looked at my Activity Monitor and I see the same thing. I doubled clicked it in there, quit the process, and low and behold my computer went to sleep for the first time in years! Now how do I fix this permanently?

[Bruce Kieffer]

When CineRender is quit, RW will not work. I think this is a serious problem that needs attention. There's no reason that rendering should stop my system from auto sleep.

[AlanW]

This may be a real dumb question as I am not a mac user, but why not turn it of and allow it to get some real sleep???

[zoomer]

Alan,
normally on Mac that sleep mode works very very well. Much better than I was used on Windows.
Macs are optimized to really need not much energy in that state and can awake internallly to do
some System Organisation things and so on.
If you start to work on a Mac you will soon adapt that feature.

But for me Cinerender is no problem.
Normally that "prevent from sleep" feature is only used when rendering. You have this as a setting in
C4D. Otherwise it would start to sleep while rendering over night because of no user input.

[PVA - Admin]

My tests were just done by launching Vectorworks and then waiting for sleep, let me see if doing a render first then attempting sleep changes things.

 

(If you were ACTIVELY rendering then of course sleep should be prevented, but not if there were no active render jobs.)

[rDesign]

As JimW correctly stated - if you are actively rendering, or exporting a PDF, or Vw actively doing anything in the background- of course it should be prevented from sleeping. But with no VWX files open and not doing anything, there is no reason why it should not be allowed to sleep.

In my example, I opened Vw itself with no open files, and walked away. No renderings or anything that should have prevented it from sleeping. But it still was awake after 3 hours. The display was asleep, but the hard drive was not.

You can tell when a Mac is asleep by a slow pulsing ('breathing') of the power LED.

Mac Sleep Indicator Light Behavior - Apple Support

Edited September 24, 2016 by rDesign

[Bruce Kieffer]

I'm not rendering. I can tell my iMac is awake because I can hear the hard drive and other stuff running. Also when it is asleep and woken, I hear the Messages (always open) log in sound.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Bruce Kieffer

[Pat Stanford]

Are you sure that the machine goes to sleep when VW is not running? Could you have something else that is causing the problem and just thinking it is VW? Have you tried quitting everything else except VW and seeing if it sleeps then?

If this has all been discussed earlier in the thread I apologize.

 

 

[rDesign]

@Pat Stanford- No worries - it is curious that only @Bruce Kieffer and I seem to be the only ones with this problem.

But I am 99.9% certain that it is Vw2016 and 2017 which are preventing my Mac from sleeping. To make certain that nothing else could be causing it, these are the steps I followed:

1. Restart computer;
2. No other applications running, not even Mail;
3. Time Machine turned off;
4. System Preferences > Energy Saver: set to sleep display after 5 minutes, compiter sleep after 15 minutes, checked 'put hard disks to sleep whenever possible'.;
5. Start Vw - either 2016 or 2017;
6. Close the default blank VWX file created in 2016, not needed in 2017 as no default blank file is created;
7. Wait at least time specified in energy Saver settings. The display will go to sleep, but the HD keeps spinning, even after being left for over 3 hours undisturbed;
8. I know it's not sleeping because the power LED ('Sleep Indicator Light') is steady, not pulsing slowly as described in this Apple Support article on Sleep Indicator Light Behavior;
9. I wake the display by jiggling my mouse, start up 'Activity Monitor', and under the Energy tab it says that CineRender is 'Preventing Sleep'. (see this post above for screen cap);
10. As I have no VWX files open and I have not started any background renderings in Vw or even running OpenGL, there is no reason why CineRender should be preventing sleep;
11. I quit Activity Monitor and then I quit Vw 2016 or 2017, and within the specified time (15 minutes) it will be asleep as indicated by the pulsing Sleep Indicator Light.

So thats a long-winded reply to say that - yes - as soon as I quit Vw 2016 or 2017 it will go to sleep per the Energy Saver settings.

On July 28, 2016 JimW posted that this was a known issue and would be fixed in a service pack. This was after 2016 SP4 and there haven't been any further SP for 2016, so I'm not surprised it still happens in 2016.

But it continues to happen for me (and Bruce) in 2017.

Edited September 26, 2016 by rDesign

[Bruce Kieffer]

10 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

Are you sure that the machine goes to sleep when VW is not running? Could you have something else that is causing the problem and just thinking it is VW? Have you tried quitting everything else except VW and seeing if it sleeps then?

If this has all been discussed earlier in the thread I apologize.

 

 

Absolutely goes to sleep always when Vectorworks is not running. Vectorworks is the problem.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Bruce Kieffer

[Bruce Kieffer]

9 hours ago, rDesign said:

@Pat Stanford- No worries - it is curious that only @Bruce Kieffer and I seem to be the only ones with this problem.

But I am 99.9% certain that it is Vw2016 and 2017 which are preventing my Mac from sleeping.

It happens on both of my computers. I have to think either most people don't use auto sleep, or they don't actually know their computer is not sleeping when the screen is black.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Bruce Kieffer

[PVA - Admin]

if you disable "Sleep Hard Disks" and retry the sleep test with Vectorworks running, does it still ignore machine sleep and only trigger display sleep?

[Bruce Kieffer]

I disabled "Sleep Hard Disks" and it still won't auto sleep when Vectorworks is running, but does auto sleep when Vectorworks is not running.

[rDesign]

@JimW- I also disabled 'put HD to sleep' and Vw still would only put the display to sleep, not the computer (this time I tried this with 2016).

[rDesign]

2017-04-22 :: Update on Vw2016 & 2017 power usage and how it affects background sleep behavior as described in another thread: