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Memory leakage, a definitive answer please


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VW crashed yet again, as has done regularly.

It is definately due to VW leaking memory.

I have the windows task bar open and I sit and watch the PF bar creep up and up and up. (no other application is running)

As it creeps up VW slows and begins to hang.

As it reaches 1.2, 1.4, 1.6 then around 1.7g = BANG !

I get an "OUT OF MEMORY" message and VW shuts down on its own accord.

This very problem has been asked on a regular basis on the forum for maybe 2 years.

Has a a definitive answer been given yet as to what the problem is ?

Also when other people are running VW what is the common PF reading in task bar.

Thanks Viper

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I would recommend two things that should help your situation.

First I would increase the amount of memory in your system. Realisticaly it's hard to run heavy graphics programs on less than 1 gig. We have two machines that run VW. They have 2 and 3 gigs respectively. Memory is pretty cheap these days from sites like crucial.com.

Secondly, I would check your virtual memory settings. They are probabely set too low. If you have two hard drives you may want to place the bulk of the virtual memory on the second drive. The optimal set up would be to create a second partition on the second drive, called the "service drive" then adjust the virtual memory so a small amount is on the C drive, for memory dump logs .5 gigs) and then 3-4 gigs (i.e. the maximum as recommended by windows for your system) on the new partition. This way windows and other applications are not compeating for the c drive. This new partiion would then have no other data, or very limited use (such as periodic backup). The microsoft knowledge base does a pretty descent job of describing how to adjust the virtual memory setting.

One other tip, get a good video card, it can help relieve some of the resource demands from the main system, (128 or 256mb)

[ 10-29-2005, 08:47 AM: Message edited by: johnharley ]

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Thanks for you response John.

Firstly I will look into your suggestions and I will definately increase my RAM.

But........

Doing the things you have suggested is like throwing water on a fire without shutting down the source, ie there is still clearly a basic problem with the program.

Why is it leaking such memory in the first place ?

Does other peoples system leak memory, over an hour or 2's work does your response rate slow down ?

[ 10-29-2005, 06:56 PM: Message edited by: Viper x ]

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Viper, We have only minor problems with VW and memory issues. We have had considerable problems with Paint Shop Pro and lack of memory. These issues completly disapeared with both programs when when the virtual memory settings were adjusted. Also, this may be a basic question but, it your hard drive (running VW) too full. When, you get to 20% free space things slow down. If you make it to 15% free space it slows and crashes quite a bit.

Finally, if you have added memory and you are only at 512 mb, I would add more. This not only adds RAM for instant access, It will increase the maximum allowed virtual memory.

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  • Administrator

quote:

Originally posted by Viper x:

Thanks for you response John.

Doing the things you have suggested is like throwing water on a fire without shutting down the source, ie there is still clearly a basic problem with the program.

Why is it leaking such memory in the first place ?


You are likely correct that the actions you are performing are causing VectorWorks to leak memory. We have been attacking various sources of memory leaks over the last few releases and we plan to continue, but we need to identify the actual operations causing the leaks. Here is what you can do to help.

Since it sounds like you are seeing a definite reproducible pattern of some operations causing a significant memory leak, you need to describe those operations to us. The best thing for you to do is to send us a file and a description of the types of editing you are doing during one of these two hour sessions where you notice many hundreds of megabytes being leaked. This should be easy for us to reproduce. If you are unsure of how to describe it, you may want to take a day or two and watch very closely what operations you are doing when memory usage seems to be increasing the most.

If we can reproduce the behavior, we can and will fix it.

Many other people are not seeing this because we are careful to watch for and fix patterns of memory leaks during development. The operations you are doing which trigger this leak are likely somewhat specialized and depend on some kind of relatively uncommon combination of objects in your drawing and operation patterns during your editing sessions.

Thanks,

We look forward to hearing from you.

You can mail me directly at pharr@nemetschek.net.

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Thanks Paul, great to read your post.

I will report back regularly with observations.

I hit a new record today when the PF reading soared to 1.8g the system locked then crashed in a smouldering heap !

I was trying to change the fill for some plants via the class setting.

I work a lot with the place plant tool and the problematic Plant Reference database and I think this is the root of my constant memory leaks and crashes.

Viper

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Viper X

I also use the plant tool alot in my practice. Just completed a large planting plan over the weekend for a hotel project. Total file size is 18.1 meg, over a 1000 plants. I watched my task bar to see if I could duplicate the issues you are having. I was unable to create your sceniro even after coloring, etc for presentation.

Do you do anything "special" when you setup your dwg?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I insalled and setup VW12 a couple of days ago on Windows XP,P4, 1 GB RAM, 40GB virtual memory available.The next day I imported a VW11.5 drawing and started working on it. Every thing was fine until after a couple of hours, certain operations, such as changing object attributes started taking an unacceptable long time to complete. Closed all down and started over. Worked fine after that. No error message, but it seems like a memory leak to me. Other than the import from VW11.5 to VW12, I am not aware of anything unusual that might cause a memory problem. I hope this will not be a recurring problem as in some MiniCAD versions.

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quote:

such as changing object attributes started taking an unacceptable long time to complete.

This is excactly what I experience, it has got to the point where I can sense the slow down so I close down VW and re boot each time to avoid it crashing on its own accord.

When it does start to slow down the pf bar is ALWAYS right up there.

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