Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Anyone ever seen anything like this?  I've got an IDW drawing that I'm working on and this seems to be happening more and more often.

I can fix this issue by either dragging/moving the viewports or double clicking, making a change and clicking OK on *each* viewport.

What's going on?

[#2]

I'd suspect a graphics issue with this one,

are your graphics drivers up to date and what are the specs of your pc?

[#3]

I wondered about those types of things, but nothing has *changed* recently with the configuration.  I made the conversion to IV2013 about a month ago and didn't have any issues.  I don't believe that there have been any driver updates that have come down through Windows Update, but I could be wrong.

Here are the results of the Diagnostics button accessed through Tools>Application Options>Hardware Tab>Diagnostics Button.

Tips?

This Direct3D graphics driver is Microsoft WHQL certified
Graphics Hardware Description:
ATI Technologies Inc. Intel(R) HD Graphics (Core i5)

AIRViz Device Manager \ VirtualDeviceDx11
Feature Level 4_0
Performance Mode
Hardware Renderer

Graphics driver file igdumd64.dll,igd10umd64.dll,igdumdx32,igd10umd32 is version 8.771.1.0
Current optimization settings are not known
The display is using 32-bit color


Inventor Version:

Build: 176, Release: 2013 SP1.1 - Date: Tue 10/03/2012       
64-Bit Edition - 8192.00 GB


System Information:

Operating System:         64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 Professional  (Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Language:             English
System Manufacturer:         Hewlett-Packard
System Model:             HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC
BIOS:                 Default System BIOS
Processor:             Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU       M 460  @ 2.53GHz (1 processor, 2 cores, Hyperthreading enabled)
System Memory:             5.803 GB RAM


Graphics Device Information:

Renderer:             HAL
Manufacturer:             ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip Type:             Intel(R) HD Graphics (Core i5)
DAC Type:             Internal
Graphics HW Memory:         64 MB
Display Mode:             1600 x 900 (32 bit) (60 Hz)

Graphics driver file:         igdumd64.dll,igd10umd64.dll,igdumdx32,igd10umd32
Driver file version:         8.771.1.0
Driver Date:             9 September 2010 0:00:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)


Direct3D Graphics Device Information:

Adapter Description:         Intel(R) HD Graphics
Vendor ID string:         0x00008086
Device ID string:         0x00000046
VendorID:             8086
DeviceID:             46
SubSystemID:             144b103c
Revision:             2


Direct3D 10 / DXGI System Information:

Dedicated Video Memory:     64 MB
Dedicated System Memory:     0 MB
Shared System Memory:         1.594 GB


DxDiag System Information:

Operating System:         Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333)
Language:             English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer:         Hewlett-Packard
System Model:             HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC
BIOS:                 Default System BIOS
Processor:             Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU       M 460  @ 2.53GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz
System Memory:             6144MB RAM
Page File:             3310MB used, 8570MB available
DirectX Version:         DirectX 11
DxDiag Version:         6.01.7601.17514


DxDiag Graphics Device Information:

DirectX Version:         10.0
DDI Version:             10
DDI Version Number:         a
DxDiag WHQL Level:         0
Driver Signed Valid:         True
Driver Signed:             True
Manufacturer:             ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip Type:             Intel(R) HD Graphics (Core i5)
DAC Type:             Internal
Revision:             
Graphics HW Memory:         1696 MB
Display Mode:             1600 x 900 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Graphics driver file:         igdumd64.dll,igd10umd64.dll,igdumdx32,igd10umd32
Driver file version:         8.15.0010.2189
Driver Date:             7/28/2010 17:10:34
WHQL Level:             1


Inventor Options Information:

Options = 0x00000000
Warning Options = 0x00000000


Graphics driver log information:

[#4]

looks like you have a 64 bit system with approx 5 to 6GB system ram, I'd up that some if you can.

Also hard to tell from that output, but is your graphics on the motherboard or is it a separate card?  If it's on the motherboard, I'd get a dedicated graphics card installed with 1 to 2GB or more video RAM.

[#5]

Thanks for your suggestions.  However, at this point, I'm most interested in what has happened to cause this problem.

I can open older drawings, created a few weeks ago, and not have this issue.  Some sort of corruption within the file possibly?  Other issues?

[#6]

Hi,

We had something similar in the past. Changing the video card to a new one solved the issue. 

Anyway you have an Intel card built in and drivers from 2010. You should upgrade the driver first thing. 

This built in cards are not good enough for Invetor. Try to upgrade.

Dan

[#7]

Definately graphics.

Try set to compability mode.

The card info lists 64M RAM allocated to the card. I assume this is the dedicated memory from the BIOS, and then additional memory is shared by the OS? (difficult to read.) If I have read it correctly, try and allocate additional RAM via the BIOS.

Check the drivers, if an update came via windows update, perhaps something went wrong, try and re-install them, or roll back.

Being a notebook, a dedicated card I guess is out of the question?

[#8]

Hey everyone:

Thanks so much for looking into my issue.  When I go into the Device Manager to look at the drivers, I'm looking for the ones under "Display Adapters", correct?  Assuming that this is correct, there are two display adapters listed because it has a "switchable" graphics configuration for battery consumption. 

Anyway, drivers for both are dated 9/9/10 and are up-to-date.  So I doesn't appear that Windows pushed a driver update on me.  I installed IV2012 in late 2011 with no problems, and updated to IV2013 about 3 months ago.  No problems until a week or so ago, and there haven't been any system changes in that window that I know of.

Also worth noting, I *can* open some older drawings that are setup pretty much the same way (2 or 3 standard ortho views and an Isometric) and have no issues.  I can view them, edit them, save them, no problem.

However, some of the more recent ones that I've created (the past week or so) seem to have this issue.  The views are black.  If I grab them and drag them slightly, they'll go back to normal and probably be fine until the next time I open the drawing. 

Is it possible that there's some type of corruption in my template file?  This morning, I'm going to recreate one of the problem drawings from scratch and see what happens.  If the problem presents itself again, then I may try to recreate my template from an older drawing, the start a new drawing from scratch and see what happens.

Thanks again for your help!

[#9]

So here's an updated with where I am now......

I took a drawing that's a few weeks old and does *not* have the black viewport issue.  I deleted all the model references and saved it as a template.  Then I switched projects to my current working project and recreated the problem drawing from scratch using the newly made template.  The issue *DID* reproduce.

Then I took one of the "as supplied" drawing templates from AutoDesk and recreated the problem drawing with that template.  The problem *DID NOT* reproduce.

So now I'm starting to wonder if there's a issue with the IDW template file that I'm using.  Come to think of it, I re-created that template from scratch week or so ago.  I had noticed that most of my drawings (even the simple ones) were like 7MB minimum.  So I started a TOTALLY BLANK drawing file, then imported my data (Standard, Border, Titleblock, User Symbols, etc).  This reduced the typical file size to about 2MB per drawing depending on what all is in it. 

Logically, it would seem that the issues are related.  How to proceed?  Suggestions?

[#10]

I believe that I've at least got the root cause narrowed down.

By creating a totally empty IDW file and importing my custom stuff into it, this problem *IS* reproducable.

However, I took one of the supplied IDW's from AutoDesk and imported all my stuff into it.  Then I deleted all of the default stuff (borders, blocks, etc.) that I didn't need.  Then I re-created the problem drawing without issue.

So it would seem that the problem is somehow related to using a "scratch" empty drawing as a seed for a template.

Thanks for everyone's help!