Let me start by saying that having everyday crashes are nothing new for me. In fact it has been happening for years but without ever really getting any real solutions from Autodesk in spite of hundreds of those error reports submitted when AutoCAD crashes. Although I do my best to manage and reduce the number of daily crashes, it still happens 2 to 8 times daily...mostly when doing 3D work.
To this point I've followed numerous suggestions such as "turn off your tool tips" or "adjust your memory" etc...none of which have solved the problem. I am starting to wonder if my graphics card is not well suited for doing larger & more complex 3D models. Here is all the info on what I am running now:
AutoCAD Plant 3D 2014
Dell Precision T3500 Desktop w/Intel Xeon CPU W3550 @ 3.07GHz
12.0GB Installed RAM
64 Bit Operating System / Windows 7 Professional (SP1)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro 2000
What I do not want is more throwing darts in the dark at the problem. These crashes are an incredible waste of time costing our small firm a lot of money and loss of productivity. Considering how much the software costs this should not be the continuous problem that it is.
Please, finally provide some real solutions!!!
ALSO: If any others are experiencing regular crashes PLEASE CHIME IN! Has anyone else found a way to help fix the problem???
Most likely there is something wrong with a component or shape if it is happening that freqently. Have you been able to get it to crash following any specific steps?
Are you able to send the model? I can pm a dropbox folder if you wish.
Dave:
These crashes happen in all kinds of drawings with all kinds of shapes. Our 3D components are quite simple for the most part. We only need the outer shell of equipment with no inner workings which I develop myself. I am not allowed to send my model drawings for reasons of confidentiality.
The thing is Dave that this has been going on for 5 years since I started using 3D. All those submitted crash reports seem like a waste of time when you never get any solutions!
NOTE: I just installed the latest graphics drivers directly from NVIDIA. I have done this before but it did not help.
Have you tried setting up any exclusions for your Antivirus software? Active AV scans are often the cause of AutoCAD crashing:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/CAD-Managers/Antivirus-file-exclusions/td-p/2536496
Jabo:
I have turned off my antivirus for the remainder of the day today. I will let you know when this doesn't work. I say this because if your read my note to Dave above it stated:
"Note: Often before it crashes AutoCAD gets quirky. Strange lines appear and often I lose my navigation pallet. This is when I usually save and quit to avoid a crash. However, sometimes the crashes happen without warning. Upon returning, I always run recover/audit and purge my drawings often. "
So Jabo...how would antivirus cause AutoCAD to start acting goofy, make my navigation pallet disappear, cause funny lines to appear on screen, etc.? These crashes happen throughout the day when my AV isn't scanning for viruses.
Dave: Since installing the latest graphics driver directly from NVIDIA I have crashed 5 times today. As usual
Jabo: Since turning off my antivirus (which is Norton by the way) I have crashed 3 times.
Still no solutions to these endless crashes...
C'mon Autodesk? Anything? Got to admit that this is making Solidworks look better all the time.
Hi,
The product team has been away for the holidays for the last week or so. I'll have one of the guys look up your crashes in the database and see if there is any advice we can offer.
Did you put in an email address? - can we just search for upperconsulting.com in the database, or are you using another email address?
Short of sitting down at your actual computer, working on your actual models, using the same work processes, its very difficult to track down the cause of such problems. Not much help that others are unable to replicate the problem either. The only thing that is left is, as you say, throwing darts at board. Now, stupid question time: what visual style are you using?
Edit: as well, are you using SQL Server as your backing database?
Hi dgorsman and thank you for your input.
I often use realistic visual style but also use 2D wireframe quite a bit as well. I know it sounds funny but I sometimes think that I must be working too fast for AutoCAD to keep up. I do tend work quite fast. I also use a fair amount of copy/paste to insert 3D components into my overall model. I would say that 20% of my crashes occur when I paste a 3D object into another drawing. I have theorized that possibly AutoCAD is not managing it's cache data as good as it could.
In addition, some of our full models can get up to 20 Mb or more in size. Which brings me to my next theory that my NVIDIA Quadro 2000 Graphics Card is not able to keep up. (just a theory).
AutoCAD has always been a bit dodgy with the enhanced visual styles for navigation. I see them more as a static, rendered viewport use. The Quadro 2000 is really an entry-level pro card, a pricier high-end version (theres a few $10K models out there, believe it or not) is needed for navigating around with those settings. 3D realistic is *very* taxing, and when you have those 20 MB models on top of that you will defiintely be crashing left, right, and center. As a rule of thumb, I keep AutoCAD DWG files at around 5 - 7 MB for best performance, using a combination of blocks, XREFs, and level-of-detail controls. I *strongly* suggest you use Navisworks for real-time visualization and use wireframe for design work.
If you are grabbing those 3D objects from a set of source files, its a good idea to do a blanket AUDIT on all of them, plus do a COPY operation inside the source file. I've had a few 3D solids created by users which looked and AUDIT'd OK but when moved or copied, threw a command line error. A little slice-n-dice identified the problem bits which were then reconstructed into clean, non-crashing solids.
Do you use Orbit (especially transparently) a lot?
Peter:
Yes, but only because it is the fastest and most efficient way to navigate. And again, I work pretty fast doing 3D modeling. I have, however turned off the "enable orbit auto target" but that has not really had any impact either way. When in a larger model I often go to wireframe before using orbit along with turning off layers not needed at that time.
GOT ANOTHER QUICK QUESTION WHILE YOU ARE HERE...
I do a lot of screen shots of our models for the client and for contractors. To make them more printer friendly I usually change my background from black (my preferred bg) to white. After finishing the screen shots I always switch back to a black bg. Is there a variable or quick toggle for this without having to go to tools>options etc.? I have searched more than once but cannot find anything.
There is bug having to do with "enable orbit auto target" but it's apparently not the same thing you're running into. I'll have someone look at the crash logs next week and see if there are any clues.
I don't know of a shortcut way to switch back and forth between white and black background. Perhaps someone has written some lisp to do this, but I don't know of it.
C. Altmix,
Ok, one of our developers looked at the crash logs. A number of these were fixed in 2014 SP1. You might try applying the Service Pack and seeing if that helps.
Also, if you could get access to the Beta and see if we have resolved any issues. It will also help us set the priority to fix if it's still in this year's beta. The link to sign up for the beta is here:
https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=45D89BC8F9E04D5E98B558303A72ABAC