Beware: ACA2014, 15 corrupt aecMaterials for rendering.

[ntellery]

I will post a full report to Adesk but I post here in case it happens to you.

I've attached a drawing that if you open and render, you will note the columns do not appear.

The columns surround the carport on the left and hold up the verandah/balconies on the main building.

You will get maps missing for materials but that is irrelevant.  It should still render an object albeit with the object colour rather than any material mapped.

So if you are rendering in 14 & 15, note that to correct you will have to swap the aecMaterial assigned for that/those objects that are missing once rendered.

This happens to me quite often (in about 3 of 4 or 5 projects so far using ACA2015 and it was so bad in 14 it scared me off using it).  I don't know why it happens.  Once corrupted the file will still exhibit the corruption when opened in 13, even if it was fine in 13 before.

At this point it seems random which aecmaterials it affects and it only seems to be the render map attachment and rendering that is affected.  The aecMaterial seems to work fine for drawing work in general.

I will try to attach other examples of the corruption as sometimes it is a number of aecMaterials affected.

cheers

[dbroad]

It's difficult to verify your claim.  When I try to render, it presents me with a missing assets dialog (missing jpg files related to the materials).

[ntellery]

As I said in the notes Doug, the missing jpgs should not prevent the columns from showing up at all (as there are no maps applied to the columns anyway, just paint).  The maps are used elsewhere and are not important for the exercise.

Do the columns show up for you when you render?  Just dismiss the warning with the continue.

Thanks for having a look.

I had another job have the same failure with possibly the exact same material with the same result.  Missing entities in the render.  I have had other jobs have multiple materials fail in render.

[dbroad]

They render fine here as far as I can tell, other than the fact that the maps are missing so there are no textures.  Perhaps you can identify the problem in this picture.

[ntellery]

Thanks Doug for looking at it for me.  That's interesting that they render fine for you.  Here's how they render for me.  If the aecMaterial was corrupted, I can't see how it would render correctly for you so it would appear machine specific but I know it has only started occuring since ACA2014.  Never happened with13 and is common with 14 (for the short time I used it) and 15. 

I am now using an earlier copy of the same file and it's also rendering fine.

If I replace the aecMaterial being used they will render fine.  I thought that confirmed the problem.

Sorry which version are you using?

I have had on 1 (or 2) occasions aecMaterials get corrupted but not the render portion.

[dbroad]

Interesting.  Can't reproduce it though.  Perhaps someone else can.

[Laks-Autodesk]

I was able to reproduce this issue on a machine with ACA 2014 when rendering with wireframe visual style. Rendering showed the column after changing the visual style to realistic. After applying SP1, I'm no longer able to reproduce this issue even in wireframe visual style. Could you try to install ACA 2014 SP1 and see if it makes a difference?

[ntellery]

Thanks, I am using 15.  I tried to use 14 but this occured with most objects and it was unusable so I uninstalled and kept using 13.  I assume that 15 should have whatever fix was applied in 14.SP1 but it is still occuring (has occured several times in 15).

I render often so I will try to grab the file in the worst condition and post it as soon as it occurs.

Yes I do render from wireframe as it's the quickest to manipulate (regen etc).  Waiting for the file to display in Realistic style slows up process too much but it's interesting that you have found that out.  

I have another file that was a mess and will try to find it, try a render and if it's faulty, post it here.

[Laks-Autodesk]

On the same machine, I installed ACA 2015 and can repro when visual style is wireframe though not on ACA 2014 with SP1.

If you've any steps to replicate this issue, it'd be really helpful.

[ntellery]

I've attached a drawing created from my own template.  Simple 4 walls and a roof.  ACA can't even see anything let alone render it!

My template, I believe was taken from prob about v2009 using something like Aec Model (metric -Global Stb.dwt and I have done some minor changes and probably some work in render materials and aecMaterials.

Open the attached drawing. 

RPREF - I am using Medium and a cropped view but 'view' is the same result.

The only aecMat attached is Standard.

type RENDER and I get the message "scene cannot be rendered. The scene must contain at least one 3D wireframe or solid model object to render"   

Note: I have received this message on the odd occasion over the years and assumed it was something to do with the camera zoom  BUT if you switch to an iso view and try to render you get the same result.

Yes you are correct - switching from wireframe to realistic and the item will render.

I've tried this is a few templates and it does seem to be template particular, like it's bringing forward a corruption somewhere, I suspect in the conversion of materials both render and AecMat as the render engine has been updated from 2006 to the new engine with subsequent adjustments.  This does make it difficult to work with older files and projects.  I do know that others are having the same problem.

BTW in the View dialogue box, selecting the new 'Camera1' and right click Set Current or clicking the Set Current button don't work anymore. Even clicking on the camera itself and right clicking for Set Current seems random as to whether it will work or not.

[David_W_Koch]

I am no expert on rendering, so take the following with that in mind.  I downloaded your RenderFail.dwg file and had the same Render - No Faces to Render dialog as you did:

This scene cannot be rendered.
The scene must contain at least one 3D wireframe or solid model object to render.

I then set the UCS to World and copied your six walls, roof and camera to the clipboard.  I pasted to the original coordinates into a drawing started with the out-of-the-box Aec Model (Metric Stb).dwt template file, set the visual style to 3dWireframe and set the camera view active.  Selecting the Render tool on the Render ribbon tab, on the Render panel, resulted in the Render window opening immediately and a render generating (see attached PNG file).  (Note:  in the original file, I was first prompted to select a boundary area for the rendering, even though a camera view was active, before getting the "I can't" message.)

My guess would be that somewhere along the line, rendering materials have changed and the ones you have in your template file are out-of-date.  (I assume that when I pasted your objects into the new drawing, that drawing's Standard Material Definition was used, since it already existed in the drawing.)  I suppose that would be all well and fine if you only used out-of-the-box Material Definitions (assuming that all of the old ones have new equivalents), but I imagine that you have created many custom Material Definitions that must now be brought up to the current "format" to work.  I cannot tell you what has changed, and what you need to tweak to get your materials to work in 2015, but perhaps others do and someone can provide that information.

At least you know it is not just you and/or your computer.

[ntellery]

Thanks David, for looking at it and confirming what I think about the render materials being changed over time and the conversion process causing corruption.  I did try other fresh templates and got the same result as you.  Interesting that only some materials become corrupt while others are fine.  

It's not much fun having to post everything into a new file and copy all your page layouts across each time you need to use a prototype file for a new project.

[dbroad]

The drawing renderfailure.dwg rendered fine for me but looking at rmat, the drawing had only one render material (global).  The material define command showed two AEC materials (Doors - Windows.Glazing.Glass.Clear and Standard).  Both of those materials had "NONE" set for the render material in the current display represention.

The only reason I can think of for getting an error message would be opening the drawing with a base version of the ACA vertical  (wrong profile), where the modules that do not recognize AEC objects would trigger it.

[ntellery]

Thanks for checking it Doug.  Did you do anything else after opening the file and before executing the render command?  You should have been prompted to window an area to render (I think that's a drawing setting).  

I didn't want to complicate things by adding a render mat as the file evidenced the error. At least the basic item should have rendered even without a render mat assigned but it's interesting that it does render for you.  As you can see David & Laks got the same error but the fact that you don't is weird.  I can't see it to be anything about aecModules because as you can see by my example jpg, most everything else is rendering.  I think a corrupt translation of an aecMaterial is the best explanation.

Prior to 14, I did have an earlier (or 2) example of aecMaterial becoming corrupted and not displaying properly.  I think this was for an aecElevation.

Thanks for checking it out.

[dbroad]

No.  First time I rendered, I chose a smaller crop window.  Next, I changed the rpref to view and re-rendered.  Next, I checked rmat and noticed only one render material.  Next, I used material define and looked at the two AEC materials.  I used 2014 ACA.  Just checked it on another machine with no problem.

[ntellery]

Do you have the service pack installed? 14.1

[dbroad]

Yes.

[ntellery]

This is a very significant issue as it occurs all the time (I render often) and often with the same aecMaterials.  

PRIORITY:  Autocad rendering MUST respond to the escape key command and stop rendering. With random errors like these I waste lots of time when I see an error but can't stop the rendering and have to wait for it to finish.

The attached drawing again illustrates the issues.  Several aecMaterials are corrupted and have been attached to the blocks in the foreground apon opening.  

Type RENDER and draw a selection box along the bottom to select the boxes and none of the will render.  The aecMaterials have been attached per object overrides.  There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the way they have been set up.

As I note above, some of these same aecMats are corrupt in other drawings but not all. 

PaintWeathStone is one that seems corrupt in all my drawings.

This is really not acceptable performance for such expensive software. Autodesk knows how difficult it is to change software and it cares more about shareholders that customers (repeat, not new). Every upgrade I spend hours, days weeks, trying to learn workarounds for the new bugs and the old ones still seem to be there. Very unacceptable for this level of SW.  Very dissappointing. Very frustrating.

[BillGlennie]

This is a defect, fixed in 2014 SP1 but regressed in 2015. We are investigating. There is no corruption of the materials. As a workaround, set the Render Material to "Global" for example. Thanks, Bill

[ntellery]

Thanks for the reply Bill.  I am glad this one is being worked on.  I dropped 14 because of this. Perhaps I should install 14 and Sp1 and use it instead until it's fixed again.  

Not sure what you mean by "There is no corruption of the materials" because it is definitely occuring with certain ones. The one I noted "PaintWeathStone" has been corrupt in every drawing but others are random.

Also please consider - there needs to be a way of deleting an aecMaterial assignment even if it's attached. There is no economical way of finding where it is attached as it could be anywhere in the drawing.

ie. like you can with Render Materials. It gives you a warning and you accept and delete. This gives you a way of updating a material where there is no way at the moment with aecMats (although deleting it will strip it from any object it is assigned to).