Memory Low (App Paused) for Renderings / Solar Animation

[Sky]

I was doing a bunch of renderings overnight of a restaurant, and in the morning I found that VW2017 was paused by Mac OS Sierra because of low memory. Looking at the Activity monitor, I saw that it had used up most of the 16GB on my Mac Pro (Late 2013). I upgraded the computer to 64GB so I wouldn't have that problem again. 

 

Last night I was doing a solar animation of a community center and again it paused because of low memory. How could Vectorworks possibly use up 64GB of memory?

 

I tried doing a smaller animation on my MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2012) with 8GB RAM and the Memory Used topped out around 6 GB without any swapping and stayed that way until it finished. I tried a similar rendering on my Mac Pro and the Activity Monitor Memory Used slowly crept up from 14GB to over 22.3 GB by the end. Even after the animation was finished, the Memory Used didn't go down. 

 

Is this a memory leak? Why would it affect my Mac Pro and not my MacBook Pro? Has anyone else seen this problem?

[Sky]

Is no one else having this problem? I find that Vectorworks is not releasing RAM after a rendering is done. So when I render multiple view ports, the amount of RAM consumed by Vectorworks just keeps growing. I have to render a few then quit the program to get it to release the RAM, then restart it again and do more renderings. I've had times where it pauses overnight when it runs out of RAM. 

[PVA - Admin]

If it was a genuine memory leak, I would expect it to happen on both machines, this trouble only occurs on your Mac Pro? Which service pack of Vectorworks 2017 are both these machines on?

[Sky]

Vectorworks on my Mac Pro is not releasing the RAM after it finishes a rendering. So if I do multiple renderings (or an animation), it keeps taking more and more until it runs out and pauses all the apps. Right now, I render a few and then quit the app to free the RAM up before doing more. This does not happen when rendering with the same file running on my MacBook Pro. 

 

I'm running 2017 SP4 on both machines, but this was occurring before SP4 was released. Both machines are running MacOS Sierra 10.12.6, although at the time it was running an earlier version of Sierra. Still has the same issues now as it did back in late May.

[Jeremy Best]

@Sky  Did you get to the bottom of this? My suspicion is that either you needed to perform the 'Resetting Vectorworks Preferences' process or that there's something wrong with your Mac or the operating system might need reinstalling. 

[Sky]

@Jeremy Best I didn't not see your reply until now, but I will give it a try. I'm finding that my MacBook Pro is also not releasing RAM after a rendering either. Maybe this might solve my other problem as well - renderings will completely go white when it finishes - but only on my Mac Pro. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks.

[Jeremy Best]

On 1/3/2019 at 10:04 AM, Sky said:

renderings will completely go white when it finishes

 

Hi @Sky, this symptom is related to setting the Vectorworks Preference 'Default Compression' to JPEG. Change it to PNG and they will no longer finish up all-white. 

 

Seeing as the 'memory leak' is happening on both your computers it might be file-related or particular to one or more resources/objects present in those files. So, if you haven't already tried Resetting Vectorworks Preferences or a clean installation of Vectorworks or macOS, first pass your file on to Tech Support with steps to reproduce what you encounter.