FATAL ERROR while creating a network topology

[Ferocity]

Hello Autodesk and Autodesk discussion group members,

like the subject says I have a fatal error occurring while trying to create a network topology. I've already submited few error reports concerning this problem. I'm on a x64 Windows 7(x64) platform with Civil 3D 2011 (x64). I have the latest hotfixes and updates for Civil and Windows. Only my graphics driver isn't on the latest version (Catalyst 10.6, while the latest is 10.7). 

The error occurres when I try to finish off the network topology made of 3D polylines. The program returns a FATAL ERROR: Unhandled Access Violation Reading 0×84350ec8 Exception at e70b3523h like in the screenshot I attached.

I tried to repeat the same procedure on my desktop pc (Windows 7 x86) with Civil 3D 2010 Version 3 (Update 2) x86 ofc and there the error didn't occur, I installed the latest 3.1 update for the 2010 version and the topology creation still works flawless there.

My laptop is performance-wise more powerfull than my desktop pc, I still get the error while selecting a very little amount of polylines compared to the number I select while creating the topology on 2010.

I'll be regularly checking back here for possible solutions or if you need some additional information concerning the problem.

Regards

[Neilw_05]

Hi,

I don't have an answer for you but I'm curious, what is the network you are trying to analyze. It is very dense.

If you care to post your file I'd be willing to see if it works for me. Considering the density, it could be you are running out of memory. I'm running 2010 on XP with 2 gigs of RAM. If it works for me then you can probably rule out memory issues. Too, it may be a bad spot in your data. One technique I use to find problems is to select only a portion of the data when creating a topology and repeat until you find a portion that fails.

[Ferocity]

It's a a big file, about 50MB. It'a a area approximatly 5km*6km. I've already split the drawing to some smaller parts. But as I said the issue is that 2011 returns that fatal error. In 2010 that doesnt happen. I'm currently working on my laptop that has 4GB of RAM. The network topology has been done on my desktop pc (win7 x86 with civil x86 etc as I said in my previous post) and it has 3GB.

Theres definetly a problem with Civil 3D 2011 x64, I'm currently working on it because I solved my problem on 2010, on my "weaker" desktop pc. The 3D polylines that I was talking about are a kind of contours and the distance between them is 25m.

And there is a grid of points all around the drawing and the distance between them is 5m (it has been done by some sort of aerophotogrametrial interpolation). I know i flooded you with all sorts of useless info. But I just wanted to present to you what kind of drawing that is. I need to delete points that I don't need around those contours and some roads etc. by doing a buffer and later an overlay with which I erase the useless ones.

I tried to select a very little part of the drawing while on 2011 and it gives me the crash always. That doesnt happen on 2010 and I've done the network topology work I had too do.

But if I haven't had the 2010 thanks god on my desktop I would  been screwed because I need to get that done fast. It is very frustating to know that I couldn't have done it without turning to 2010. And after almost 1 whole day lost trying to figure out what the problem could be.

Sorry for the grammer and the repetetive info, haven't got much time need to work on this :D.

But anyway, Autodesk try to fix this! And of course if you got some suggestion keep it coming. But I already tried to split to to smaller parts etc

[Murph_Map]

I take it that on the desktop with 2010 it works ok, but on the laptop with 2011 it does not. I would look at the video drivers on the laptop and the 3dconfig settings. From the screen capture it looks like there may be a problem with those two horizontal lines on the screens.

[Ferocity]

Why are the two horizontal lines looking strange? The layer they are on is locked so the lines get those kinda grey color. And the jpeg isn't max quality. Everything else is fine on the laptop, no problems whatsoever.

I tried to put graphics driver settings to default and I turned off the Adaptive degradation feature and the hardware acceleration in Civil and it's still the same no matter how much 3d polylines I select.

I tried to take objects from only one layer( example. some roads) copy them with base point and pasting them to original coordinates in a new drawing and it still gives me the same error, but if i copy, paste, and then save them to some random file name, closing Civil, opening the drawing the error is gone.

I'f someone really wants to analyze the error here is the whole file. I have uploaded it on mediafire since I'm not sure what the upload speeds here are. Try to do a network topology on the layer "21", it's the only one visible at the moment.

P.S when I uploaded the file I was trying out if the link works Norton said that a attempt of an attack has been made from that link, obviously it's false alarm 😄

Here is the link http://www.mediafire.com/file/polaccavan2ll23/DMR-KLANA.dwg

Regards

[Neilw_05]

Hi,

I took a look at your file and here are what I suspect are causing problems.

The file is very bloated with over 1.7 million entities. When the file is loaded it is using almost 2 GB of virtual memory. I'm not sure of the ramification of this when running the 64 bit version, but I recall in a comment Richard Sincovec (A.K.A. sinc) that C3D tends to get unstable when approaching 2 GB of virtual memory even in a 64 bit environment. If I can find the post I'll pass that on to you. I ran out of virtual memory and crashed when attempting to create a topology from layer 21 in my 2010 on xp w/2 GB. However when I copied the layer 21 entities to a new file the topology completed successfully. My guess is it is due to a smaller memory footprint.

I suggest you seperate the data into several drawings, perhaps by layer, build the topologies in those dwgs and then attach them all to a master worksheet to run your analyses. My bet is you will be more sucessful in creating the topologies when working in smaller files.

[Sinc]

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@Neilw wrote:

When the file is loaded it is using almost 2 GB of virtual memory. I'm not sure of the ramification of this when running the 64 bit version, but I recall in a comment Richard Sincovec (A.K.A. sinc) that C3D tends to get unstable when approaching 2 GB of virtual memory even in a 64 bit environment.

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I don't think I ever said precisely that...

But if you're running C3D 2010 or eariler, you will probably run out of memory when C3D has used about 3GB, even though it technically can access up to 4GB of memory.  If you're running C3D 2011 x64, then you shouldn't have this problem.  However, I haven't really tried pushing the memory limits of C3D 2011 myself, and I'm not sure how it behaves in action.

[Jeff_M]

I had a look as well. As you say, it FE's in 2011 64bit. I was able to create the topology for the displayed objects in 2010, and it only took about 6 seconds.

This leads to me to believe that there is something not quite right in 2011. Watching the memory use, it hits 1.338gb to get the dwg loaded. I then immediately run the Create Topology command, where it climbs to 1.75gb to get the dialog. Using the defaults (except changing it to create a Network) it selects 253 objects, I say Finish, the memory climbs another .03gb, and FE's within about 3 seconds.

This is on a Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4ghz with 4gb RAM on Win7-64

[Murph_Map]

OK I see the lines I was referring to are xlines in the dwg, they looked like video issues in the image. What's are are the points in this dwg being used for? I load one of the existing node topologies and its nothing but points. Are you creating the points yourself or what? What are you wanting the topologies for? There may be a better way to get to where you need to.

I started with a blank dwg used the mapattach to attach your dwg, queried in the layer 21 and then built the topology OK.

[Neilw_05]

In my experience, C3D (2010 & 2011) will crash when virtual memory approaches 2GB, but that is on my XP system w/3GB enabled. I do recall a discussion where users reported C3D would bomb when it hits 2GB, even in a 64bit OS, but I can't recall the thread and I didn't find it after a bit of searching.

I won't discount thae possibility of a defect in 2011, but if the problem disappears when working in smaller files it would tend to confirm it is a memory issue. It also might make the data more manageable.

[Neilw_05]

As per Murph's questions, from what I gathered, the objective is to create a buffer analysis to find points that lie within a specified distance from the network topology and discard the rest. In effect we want to reduce the data while keeping the integrity where it is needed. I suspect the data is from LIDAR considering the number of points. If my understanding is correct I can't think of a better approach as most filtering tools would also remove data near the polylines.

[Sinc]

I typically seem to run out of memory at around 1.4GB on WinXP without the 3GB, and at about 2.1GB on WinXP with the 3GB switch set, and at about 2.9 GB with C3D 2010 on a 64-bit OS.

[Ferocity]

Thanks for the replies, choping the file to smaller pieces is generaly a good idea. But what the whole point of the problem is, and that is that the FATAL ERROR tends to appear in x64 Civil 3D 2011 and not in x86 Civil 3D 2010 is due to "probably" a memoy managment issue. I haven't got the x86 version of the newest Civil so I don't know if it's affected. I know the file is very bloated with as somebody already said over 1 milion entities. But I just wan't to point out that in the new version it simply doesnt work as it should do.

Btw I tried to buffer the network topology and then( within the example. 5 distance buffer) to erase points. So the points 5 meters near the roads, and other 3 polylines I don't need. What's your opinion of geting that done? Of course the easiest and most stable way.

But there surely is a flaw whoever tried it. The file is indeed huge in every way, but what I think whats the whole points of going to x64 when Civil 3D x64 can't use that memory right.

Regards

[Murph_Map]

I would mapattach, query, (road layer) export to SDF, then repaet for the points. Then use the FDO features and tools to create the buffer and erase the points.

My advance MAP3D class used to cover that.

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@Ferocity wrote:

Btw I tried to buffer the network topology and then( within the example. 5 distance buffer) to erase points. So the points 5 meters near the roads, and other 3 polylines I don't need. What's your opinion of geting that done? Of course the easiest and most stable way.

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[Ferocity]

I have managed to complete the task but on smaller set of data.

However, new problem occured as my points after the overlay lost its Z coordinate. It happened both after using standard topology overlay and after converting it to features in SDF.

Any ideas?

[Sinc]

I'm actually now trying to figure out why C3D 2010 is crashing when all I do is attach some drawings and try to query some plain old polylines into a new drawing...

This project used to be in C3D 2009, and it worked fine there.  Then we did some large additions to the project, upgrading it to 2010 in the process, and now C3D crashes on very simple Map queries.  Very strange.

I'm not sure how much time I lose trying to track down problems like with in the software, but it's a lot...

[Neilw_05]

As for losing the Z coordinates, I'm not positive about this but I don't think Topologies or SDF files display their entitiies in 3D by default. You will probably have define a query or display style to display them as 3D graphics using the Elevation field in the object data properties.

Perhaps Murph can help out here.