AutoCAD crashing

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I was just assigned a new computer on which they loaded AutoCAD Mechanical 2010.  It is a new Dell Precision T1700 with an i7-4770 CPU, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD local disk and an Nvidia Quadro K600 video card running on Windows 7, 64 bit.

My previous computer was a 5 year old Dell Precision T5400 running on two Xeon processors, 4GB RAM, 320GB HD, and an Nvidia Quadro 4600 video card running on Windows XP 32 bit.

AutoCAD-wise most things worked find on the old machine; not so on the new one.

One of the problems I have is AutoCAD crashes when I am zoomed in too close when I try to copy, move or scale our company title block.  When I say zoomed in too close I mean I have to be zoomed out so maybe 20 to 30 borders would fit on my monitor and the title block takes up less than 5% of the space the border does.  It is zoomed out so far I cannot get the snap to corners of either.

The first maching they bought had an AMD video card and it was doing the same thing so they (management, Dell, AMD, AutoDesk) came to the conclusion it was an unapproved video card and driver causing the crashes.

This card is supposed to be approved and I am using an approved driver (9.18.13.3182) plus Nvidia Performance Driver for Autodesk AutoCad Mechanical 2010.

The constant crashes are costing valuable time and I need to find a way to solve this problem.  I don't know if this is actually a video card/driver problem or not, but I need to solve the problem as the crashes are killing me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

looking to the system requirements for Mechanical 2010 (>>>here<<<) it looks like it's not supported on Win7.

I also would have thought first it's depending on the video card or driver as you describe that most depends on zooming.

You can change within the command _3DCONFIG ==> manual tune the driver that AutoCAD uses + if hardware acceleration should be used or not. I would start to disable the hardware acceleration completely and see, if there is anything better.

Just to make sure: You have verified that the drawings are clean, so command _AUDIT does not report any erros? And at least it does not depend on specific drawings?

- alfred -

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I didn't know about and will report a possible software incompatibility (Win7/AutoCAD2010 to my manager).

We use a lisp program that audits and purges twice and using it has no impact on the problem.

I looked at the 3D Hardware acceleration and the only ones that were on were Enhanced 3d Performance and Gooch shader.  When I turned off Enhanced 3d Performance I still got a crash and turning off the Gooch Shader only let me see maybe 10% of the title block.

I get crashes on nearly every drawing I work on, some of them I've escaped any crashes during the drawing process but during subsequent use they crash then.  We've encountered the same problem on some Boxx machines we bought a year or so back and they were similarly equipped as our new Dell's.  By simply reverting back to my old machine I can stop the crashes on these same drawings but it is a leased machine and is going back and we've purchased these new Dell's.

Scott

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

as you are running Mechanical you might get better answers in the Mechanical forum >>>here<<<.

I'm not familiar with that and have no experience of how stable the 2010 release works with 64bit compared to 32bit (you had before) and on Win7 compared to XP. The guys there will have more knowledge about that.

Some basic questions:

• you have installed the latest servicepack? (the latest I can find is update 2 >>>click<<<)
• you have tried to reset the profile?
• you have tried to run with admin-permissions (right-click the desktop icon of Mechanical and use option "start as administrator"?

>> We use a lisp program that audits and purges twice

You have tried to use a profile without any customizations? Not every tool working under 32bit does also work on 64bit!

HTH, - alfred -

[sprstock]

Hi-

All of the updates/service packs are up to date.

I'm also having a profile problem covered in a different thread, it reverts to the default at every new opening of AutoCAD.  I've now tried to run with admin-permissions to no avail.

I'm trying something else right now and it seems to be working.  I right clicked on the icon, picked Properties and chose the Compatibility tab and chose to run the program in compatibility mode for Windows Vista since 2010 is compatible with it.  Since then I've not crashed it.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

[sprstock]

Hi-

It looks as if changing the compatibility in the Properties of AutoCAD Mechanical from Windows 7 to Windows Vista did the trick for the most part.  AutoCAD Mechanical has not crashed since changing that setting.

I would suggest others who have a problem of any sort with AutoCAD or Mechanical 2010 who are running it on Windows 7 or 8.x try changing the compatibility first.  It is a fast and easy change that certainly can do no harm and it cleared up a problem that was costing me hours of time.

That being said, it did not clear up everything, I still have to manually change to my Profile at every start of every instance of AutoCAD, but I can live with that now that the crashing has ceased.

Thanks for all the help.

Scott