Stop a process?

[Dendecko]

I have been working with vectorworks since 2011.  I feel like consistently for the last 6-7 years I run into several crashes a day.  Today I had one that lost me 15 minutes work under a time crunch. not the worst but also pretty frustrating.  Now I find that constantly saving seems to slow my processes down as well.  I have been as low as 3 minutes on backups or 50 actions, I've tried a lot of different things but the program still will crash forcing to redo those residual minutes of work.  This is not a specific type of work or a specific file or workspace.  It is the standard workspaces and includes 2d, 3d, connectcad, lighting, scenic, and many other kinds of drafting.  

 

Today I made a viewport and vectorworks froze with the pinwheel of doom.  I sat for the amount of time since my last autosave, which was 15 minutes prior, before I force quit and redid that work.  I was 30 minutes into my day when it crashed so you can bet I felt a little cheated of my time and sad that such a basic workflow element crashed the program.  

 

Maybe I missed it at some point but is there a way to stop processes in vectorworks so I can save and then restart my program?  I just find that it is such a burden to work with a program bringing out "new innovations" when the basics don't function smoothly.  

 

Side note, I am up to date with all service packs.

[zoomer]

I think VW is far more stable when you set Autobackup to a number of commands

(16 here), instead of a time interval.

This way VW starts saving immediately after n-times commands finished while

by time interval it seems to sometimes interfere with a command still running.

 

On the other hand it could also be that VW runs out of physical memory

(Like VW 2022 Viewport Rendering on Sheet Layers for me) and starts swapping,

that it gets so slow that we just think it is frozen, while it may just awake - after

some hours if not force quitted by the user before.

So it is worth to check Activity Monitor or Windows Task Manager in such situations

to check what RAM and CPU usage, if VW is still alive.

An "App ... not reacting" warning does not necessarily mean that an App lays in deep

coma, it just means that it is not answering questions from the operating systems ...

impolite, I know.

 

That shouldn't mean that VW could not simply really freeze, crash or have bugs.

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by zoomer

[Dendecko]

@zoomer I agree, I have tried a lot of different methods.  Sometimes when I need to maneuver around a shape a lot I find time sometimes functions better, since I'll be changing views a lot.
 

Unfortunately I don't have hours to spend waiting for it to react or unfreeze, since it is faster to redo the work of 15 minutes than wait an hour.  I just find it so frustrating sometimes how often it crashes for me.  In general when I talk to people it is rare they spend a full day without having to perform a force quit or it actively crashes.

[Jeremy Best]

Hi @Dendecko, while it's possible that the tools or workflow you use may just happen to incur legitimate bugs in Vectorworks, given the frequency of crashing you're experiencing and how many years you've been affected, it sounds more like you're affected by some other longstanding condition/s. Based on what you've described - and how much time it sucks - I think ruling out potential data corruption in all areas is worthwhile: Operating system, software installation and user data too.

 

If only to mitigate issues, many CAD managers in large firms install everything fresh, every year. The operating system and software are wiped and installed fresh, and all Vectorworks settings, templates and workspaces are all recreated yearly too. 

 

Keep in mind that (as you might expect) any files created while corrupt data was at play may continue to factor in performance and stability issues. And any files derived from them (as in the case of a template or a duplicated file) will carry any corruptions forward. 

[Art V]

Of it also happens on your windows machine (the Alienware 17") what you could try is to refresh Windows. I had a program that wouldn't even start up properly and another one crashing quite often. Because of a big crash causing Windows to become unstable I did a refresh and sudden that one program could be installed and run properly and the other one had far less crashes.

 

All those windows updates and semi-annual upgrades do create quite a bit of junk, include software updates etc. and there may be clashes in the background. Or it could be just one program that you use that just throws a wrench into the VW operations, that is also possible. The refresh basically creates a clean slate to start working from.

 

I assume it is possible to do something similar on your Mac as well.

You could try this if you don't find hardware defects, it might be just one driver causing issues but it can be hard to find out which one or it could be a combination as described above and a refresh might solve this.