Viewports not rendering correctly.

[Monkeypuzzle]

Hi all

 

I'm starting to make renders of lighting stage set ups I'm quoting on and I'm having a few issues, well, one really. On quite a regular basis, my renders don't turn out as they should, items are missing, often whole classes and layers, sometimes all layers. They are there as when I move the mouse over them I can see the outline of them is highlighted but sometimes its only the lit fog that renders or a completely white )or black) image. In order to solve this, I have to save the file, shut it down and re open it. After doing this it will usually render fine but this is time consuming. Note, I am not changing any of the visibilities at any point....

 

Does this sound like theres something wrong with my system? I have only one machine so have other programs (chrome, mac pages/numbers open at the same time) so could this be affecting it?

[scottmoore]

I hate to say this, but these kinds of issues are quite common with recent iterations of VectorWorks. I find these sort of things quite often. It is extraordinarily  frustrating and time consuming. This never used to be the case with VW or MiniCad but is now very common.

 

Are you running on a Mac or PC?  My colleagues and I are all Mac based and have the same issues. I would be interested to know if VW is more "buggy" on Macs or if it is equally frustrating on a PC. 

 

There re is another recent thread recommending some specific preference settings that may mitigate some of these issues. I have changed my setting to see the results but have not started any new projects with those settings yet. 

[scottmoore]

Here are suggestions from Jim W

 

Nothing jumps out specifically at me, and if we send the files to support we might not hear back in time.

For the moment I suggest the following, these changes should just make Vectorworks as stable as possible and take as much work as we can off the GPU (which is what is implicated in the crash log) in the short term:

Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences > 3D > 3D Conversion Resolution - Medium

Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences > 3D > 3D Rotation - Slide all the way to Responsive

Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences > 3D > Retain Rendering Model - Slide all the way to Never

Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences > Display > Navigation Graphics - Best Compatibility

Tools > Options > Vectorworks Preferences > Session > Error Reporting - Send crash details and verbose usage patterns (To give us the most info possible when you get these crashes in the future)

 

Under Apple > System Preferences > Power Saver - Uncheck Automatic Graphics Switching to make sure Vectorworks is always using your dedicated GPU. This shouldn't be needed but I've had to manually change this on occasion.

If any of the above are already set to what I suggested, that's fine, leave them there. After setting these options open and then close Vectorworks normally to lock in the changes. Launch Vectorworks again and work with it for awhile and see if stability improves or not. If not, we may try a new user account on your machine since wiping preferences (and having to reset everything) when on a deadline can be annoying.

[PVA - Admin]

On 4/14/2017 at 10:15 AM, Monkeypuzzle said:

Hi all

 

I'm starting to make renders of lighting stage set ups I'm quoting on and I'm having a few issues, well, one really. On quite a regular basis, my renders don't turn out as they should, items are missing, often whole classes and layers, sometimes all layers. They are there as when I move the mouse over them I can see the outline of them is highlighted but sometimes its only the lit fog that renders or a completely white )or black) image. In order to solve this, I have to save the file, shut it down and re open it. After doing this it will usually render fine but this is time consuming. Note, I am not changing any of the visibilities at any point....

 

Does this sound like theres something wrong with my system? I have only one machine so have other programs (chrome, mac pages/numbers open at the same time) so could this be affecting it?

There is definitely something widespread related to this happening at the moment. I do not know if the viewports rendering black (untill restart) are related to the geometry disappearing (again, until restart) but its affecting a large number of users. If anyone is able to force this issue to appear on command, please let me know. The sooner this can be reliably replicated the sooner it can be fixed.

[rDesign]

1 hour ago, JimW said:

The sooner this can be reliably replicated the sooner it can be fixed.

 

Perhaps an Emergency ASAP Service Pack would be warranted?

[PVA - Admin]

If we could find the exact cause that would be a consideration, so far I have not.