AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Seriously? 

"Fatal Error" -> lose work  -> restart Autocad

"Fatal Error" --> lose same work -->  Restart Autocad

"Fatal Error" -->  lose work --> Restart computer - restart autocad

"Fatal Error" -->  lose more work --> Restart computer - restart autocad -->  Autocad won't start...

Sorry Autodesk...  I've been a faithful follower for most of my career but the amount of profits lost and missed deadlines from your failed software is more than we take...  at this point it's more cost effective to produce drawings on paintbrush than to continue down this failed and misguided path...  This year, In lost production alone...  I'm not even gonna continue...  Would you be willing to cover any of these loses ?  I didn't think so...

[#2]

I can understand your frustration.  The software does take some time to establish a good workflow so don't give up just yet.

If you are truly looking for help, it would be beneficial to provide some more info:

Have you installed any of the SP's?

What is your OS and machine specs?

Have you tried a repair or reinstall of the software?

Is this happening with a specific drawing or all drawiings?

Hang in there.

[#3]

How do you know the guilty is Autocad, and not an hardware issue, a virus, an OS corruption, a DWG damaged..?

[#4]

Is there any common link to the crash?  Same command, certain object in drawing?

Run an audit and fix all errors.

If an autosave kicks in while you're in the middle of a heavy command it can cause problems.  We generally turn off autosaves and hit save manually every time you do something you don't want to repeat (i.e. every 5 minutes, or when you do a large or unstable command).

Please share more information: drawing size, what types of things you are doing when it crashes etc.

[#5]

Pardon my frustration and venting...

All other software and computer componets work fine.  problem is, in fact, with AutoCrap, after several attempts to start AutoCrap and the continued "Fatal Error" resulting eventually in cad not starting at all, we uninstalled and reinstalled the software, which by the way, accounts for yet another hour and a half of lost production.  Cad now it starts... back up and working...   for the price of the software, shouldn't have to worry about "smooth work flows", "software stability".

Someone suggested perhaps a virus...  sometimes autocad is worse than a virus.

Realizing that I'm not a programmer but may I suggest, perhaps...  testing the software before we charge several thousands of dollars.. and unleash this catastrophy on the WORKING public just trying to make a living?  

Our BandAid -> remove/reinstall software.

Our solution ->  call Bentley.

[#6]

So you probably will go out and buy a new Computer, new OS all new specs and install Microstation and come back and tell how great it is.

Go figure.

Bill

[#7]

Again, Pardon my frustration...

compared to the lost production, the scheduling problems passed onto the projects, the costs a computer and software and retraining are pennies....  

truth is, bottom line..   we'll just keep reinstalling it.... apparently that is the "smoothest work flow" they could come up with.

[#8]

I feel your frustration. I recently went through a period where nothing in Civil seemed to work. It was so slow it took 75 seconds to drag one cogo point. What finally seems to have solved the issues I've been having was to do 2 clean installs and add 8GB of RAM brining it to 12GB. I will admit that I cause the problems resulting in the 2nd need for a clean install by trying to use a profile from 2011 in 2012. I learned not to do that. Now the software runs fine.

I hadn't thought there was anything wrong with other programs. But now that I have the increased RAM I notice that they're running much better also. Problems I thought were just inherent in the programs have now disappeared or at least improved.

I know you don't want to here you might need to reinstall again. But if you have further trouble I would recommend a Clean Installation. Keeping video card drivers current can also help a lot.

My point is that I basically had the same opinion of Civil 3d you have until I solved the problems. Now I'm happy with the program again and can concentrate on other problems.

Best of luck.

Allen

[#9]

Reading through the steps in the original post I didn't see anything about clearing the TEMP folder.  Every time that ACad crashes it leaves behind a bunch of junk files there.  The next time that you start ACad those files can interfere with the software, often causing another crash and adding even more junk.  Eventually the trash builds up to the point where the program won't run at all.

Whenever a user complains to me about the software running poorly, or crashing frequently one of the first diagnostic steps I do is to check and empty the TEMP folder.  Perhaps Jeff did that, but I didn't see it mentioned.

[#10]

Nice comments...

I did not do that and didn't even occur to me that temp files may still remain.  I can see cad creating various "locking" files and such in the folder where the drawing resides.  Is there a path to the other temporary files?