I can't get any more straight forward than that without being vulgar. But I really can't stand how the job processor works. And now it's NOT working. It won't update my vault revision tables anymore and we are getting errors like "A visualization file cannot be generated for a non CAD file" when it's a bleeping .ipt! And this all happened during a very important demonstration.
Vault Professional is a JOKE.
Sorry to hear that you are having dificulties.
A couple things could be causing this particular message.
The most common is that the file was added to the Vault through some means other than checking in through the CAD application.
We have always disabled check in of design files. This is not the reason.
It appears as if the cause was from the workstation running the job processor. We are still in the process of troubleshooting.
My email was a direct complaint to Autodesk. We are forced to use the job processor to automatically update the vault revision table on our drawings and to update properties when a file is released.
This is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that Vault was NOT designed to automatically update the properties and revision table without the job processor!
The concept of being able to postpone or remote visualization production is good, however the implementation is terrible and should not interfere with file lifecycles.
Also, when we release a file, we don't want to wait hours for the visualization files to be created, we want to send out the drawings right away...but we can't because they are stuck in a queue. After hours processing is not an option.
The reason that a client side tool (like the job processor) is needed is that there are many tasks from many CAD applications that can not be completed in a server environment. There is a technical limitation with many CAD systems that makes it not possible to do this in-line on the server.
That leaves two possible choices; Make commands like Change State stop and wait for each file to be updated, or allow this work to be off-loaded to different tools such as a job processor.
We would like the solution to be more like what you describe as well. However, the current technical constraints do not allow for it.
Hi,
Autodesk Support is working with the customer directly. We will update once the issue is resolved.
We have been really struggling with the performance of the Job Processor. In the beginning (during implementation), a single job server seemed to do a great job. But as time went on, the job processor began to slow down because more jobs were being fed to it. The job server would take 10-20 minutes to create a single visualization file and hours to process a batch of drawings. For us, this was unacceptable since we release drawings right before we send them out for fabrication. If the processor synced all of the properties and updated the drawing views (revision tables) first, then we wouldn’t have to wait for the visualization files to be created before we could send out the design. But there is no way to separate the tasks.
I was suspicious of the job processor computer itself. From day one, I had been monitoring the resources on the job processor machine and watching how they are utilized when the job processor processes a job. It appears as if the processor is barely using any resources when the job processor is processing a job. I looked into speeding it up by increasing the priority of the job server process and Inventor processes. This didn’t help. The jobs were still taking longer than expected to process. Users began to complain about waiting for their files to finish processing before they could send out their jobs.
There was nothing I could do to reduce their frustrations. During our Vault implementation I considered putting the job server on the users’ machines and having a distributed processing approach. However, after combing the forums, it seemed like this was too risky. Many people reported errors and problems with running the job processor on the same machine that was also being used for design work. The only option for me was to increase the processing power of the job processor or to distribute the load. I was at a difficult crossroads…especially since we would have to wait 6 months for a new job processor machine to be in our budget.
Shortly after, the job processor began throwing random errors while processing jobs that previous it had no issue with. Errors like, “Sync properties not allowed on non-tip versions “, “A visualization file cannot be generated for a non CAD file”, and “Unknown error during publish”.
We now know that the non-tip version error was due to the file changing between the time the job was submitted to the processor and when the processor actually started the job. The more the processor got backed up, the more errors like this, which is understandable because the users weren’t waiting for their processes to complete before they continued to work. But if the processor wasn’t so slow, this would be less of an issue.
The “A visualization file cannot be generated for a non CAD file” error was extremely frustrating considering these were in fact CAD files. The “Unknown error during publish” left us with no hint as to what was causing the error. To make matters worse, for some reason when a job fails on a drawing, there is no way to re-submit the jobs in a way so that revision table is updated. The process must be redone manually for drawings. Very inconvenient for users.
I ran a quick test and resubmitted the jobs using my personal workstation. All jobs processed correctly. This pointed to an issue with the job processor machine. So, I took the next step of bringing the job processor back to its initial configuration (fresh OS install) and reinstalling Inventor Pro 2012 and Vault Pro 2012 (No 2010 products). I figured the performance issues may be due to a bad install. This didn’t help. We were still getting slow performance and errors.
So, I took the plunge. I shut down our job processing machine and initiated the job server on 8 of our users’ machines. There were other users on the forums that took the distributed approach with problems early on, but things seemed to get better. They encouraged me that things should be fine. At first, everything went well. And then the errors resurfaced. Out of absolute frustration, I posted in the discussion groups a post titled, “I HATE THE JOB PROCESSOR!” complaining about the job processor not working. This was after other posts and troubleshooting with the job processor (we have a long list of deficiencies with the job processor - see the below). Some of which, I’ve posted on your product feedback page as suggested by your support team. Apparently this is the only way to request that it be considered for future versions and it’s highly unlikely to get these capabilities in the current version. The job processor is turning out to be a major letdown.
Autodesk support responded to this post and suggested that the “A visualization file cannot be generated for a non CAD file” error might be caused by a user opening a file on their computer with an older version of Inventor Viewer. Support asked that we ensure that the latest launched application is the latest version of Inventor. So I went around to everyone’s computer and made sure they had no other Autodesk installations other than 2012 products.
As a side note, not that it matters because we’ve moved everyone to 2012 (from 2010), but Vault was supposed to support up to two versions back of Inventor (that’s how it was pitched to us). This doesn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps Vault can support older versions of Inventor if all versions of all files are that version. This needs to be more transparent.
Back to the distributed processing approach. Making sure everyone’s machines only had 2012 installs didn’t help the problem. I even made sure that everyone opened the 2012 applications as the last version of the application to run (just in case something needed to re-register).
So, I called Autodesk support. They offered a reason for the “Unknown error during publish” error saying it may be due to running out of available licenses. They asked me to send our .lic file so another can be resent with more licenses (temporarily activated) for troubleshooting. As of this summary, I have not received an updated .lic file. This reasoning makes sense to me, considering that each time a job processor connects to the server to reserve a job, a vault server license is consumed and everytime Inventor is required to process the job, an Inventor license is consumed.
First, to require another license to process a job is ridiculous. To use a license each time a job processor connects to the server, is even more ridiculous. To use yet another Inventor license to process an Inventor file, is asinine. I can see that this would be an issue with many companies that only buy the number of seats as those using the software. Now they are required to buy another seat and potentially a separate computer just to update their revision tables?! And if they don’t want to wait forever for this to be done, how would they increase job server performance without sacrificing licenses?
You’ve put your customers in a bind. To process jobs quickly, you need multiple job processors. To run multiple job processors, you need available licenses. This makes the benefits of Vault Pro completely mute. For the time it takes to wait for the job processor queue to clear, the revision table could have been updated manually. In fact, revision control could have all been handled manually. Vault Workgroup and up offers little in the way of revision management. Autodesk touts “intuitive revision management”, however is this true?
In order to release an Inventor drawing, the following steps must be performed, either manually or using the job processor:
IF the job processor works correctly, this can be done automatically for you. However, the version history becomes populated with job server signatures rather than who released the file and why it was released. For folks search released files, this can be extremely confusing.
The operation of the job server is inefficient and completely defeats its own purpose (to offload processing). Currently, it takes more time and troubleshooting released files than if we were to just manually manage revisions. It’s hard to see the benefit of anything past Vault Basic because of this.
In the spirit of not presenting problems without solutions, here are the much needed augmentations to the job processor:
I’ve submitted some of these suggestions through the customer feedback page however, it’s impossible to know which ones because this list constantly grows. Also, submitting each suggestion is quite the painful process and when you submit, there is no follow up as to whether Autodesk will even consider your changes. A user vote once a year on which augmentations to make, doesn’t make sense because a majority of the users aren’t even on the implementation side of things and have no idea the struggle you make CAD administrators go through. Therefore, there are a greater number of users voting for more mundane things. You’re missing it.
Now, I may have all of this wrong. I’m sure I could have organized my thoughts more, but because of these issues, I have no time! I’m supposed to be a full time engineer, not a full time troubleshooter. Why is it that I feel like I’m working for Autodesk as a beta tester? You should have these issues flushed out before you release a product. As certain as I am that Autodesk has royally screwed up an otherwise straight forward process, I’m willing to listen. Please consider these issues with great attention.
We still have a non-functioning (unstable) job server/Vault Professional.
Hi Jeff
I have experienced exactly the same issues/errors you listed in your post with an additional error "Object reference not set to an instance of an Object" error that I still have no solution for.
Autodesk, please consider the suggestionsin this post as very valid and important for Job Processor to perform it's inteeded function.
Regards
Max B
Hi Autodesk
Please take these advises from "jeff_jordan"seriously. The Job server is not as god as it could have been, and every time there are a new release I get disappointed because it is not getting better..
I would also like to tell the jobserver which job type it should priority at what time on the day. During the day it should make dwf of idw and dwg, and during the night it should make dwf of iam and ipt.. It should also be able to prosess several jobs at the same time like making dwf of idw (inventor) and dwg (autocad)
I understand that Autodesk want to sell as many licenses as possible, but the license that the jobserver is using is not easy to explain to my bosses. It should not be necessary to by a full inventor version when all it is doing is update properties and create a dwf file. It is NOT creating a drawing... Please listen to your customers..
See the attached image. New issue today. A job has hanged in process. Job was started at 10:37am and at 12:40pm it's still processing. Not sure what to do here and wondering if there is a risk of data loss.
Also notice the other typical errors. This is frustrating!
I went to the user's computer where the job processor was hanging. Here is what was displayed:
The full details are (you can't expand the window to take a screenshot):
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BEX
Application Name: JobProcessor.exe
Application Version: 16.1.58.0
Application Timestamp: 4e8f1047
Fault Module Name: rse.dll
Fault Module Version: 16.0.12900.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4d152638
Exception Offset: 00152c80
Exception Code: c0000409
Exception Data: 00000000
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 55ce
Additional Information 2: 55ce80beb2f379bb27571fbcb47d95a3
Additional Information 3: 90d3
Additional Information 4: 90d38b48fa0b2a509a36663d0518c0ab
Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409
If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
------------------------end of details-----------------------------------
Noteworthy, this user had Vault and Inventor running on his machine, but was not using his machine at the time of the error. There were no files loaded into Inventor either.
We then closed the program as well as Inventor and Vault and restarted the Job Processor. The stalled job showed up in the processor window and completed the process.
Jeff,
I noticed here, that the JP will hang up on any job whenever the processor pegs out at full cap. We have quad core machines, but like most AutoDesk products, JP only uses one. And when that one reaches max capacity, it just hangs or craps out and I get an error message. I've sent several of these crash notices on to AD. I'm hoping they actually can tell them something.
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
Cad Tips Tricks & Workarounds | Twitter | LinkedIn
Autodesk University Classes:
Going With The Flow with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Increasing The Volume with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Power of the Autodesk Community | Getting to Know You | Inventor Styles & Standards |Managing Properties with Vault Professional | Vault Configuration | Vault - What is it & Why Do I Need It? | A Little Less Talk - Tube & Pipe Demo | Change Orders & Revisions - Vault, Inventor & AutoCAD | Authoring & Publishing Custom Content
Thank you cbenner. I've never run into maxing out a JPs processor...at least not yet. I can't even get there. This would require the processor to be processing multiple jobs wouldn't it? I've watched the system resources carefully and the JP is hardly utilizing them.
My experience so far with JP, Vault Collab. 2012, Inventor 2011 on XP64, is that some machines come up with the crash window and some dont. It also appears that on machine handling the JP is OK, but when you introduce other clients as JP, the original machine and the others dont work anymore, with the error "Object refrence not set to an instance of an object
Can I ask, what permissions does the windows username logging into each machine have?
MaxB
Just to add, when crashing on the system I am currently working on, it doesnt appear to affect the end result, it still updates properties and creates DWF file. It only stops working when trying to introduce more than one JP
Max B
mbodnar,
Thank you for your response. We had a single JP, but this was too slow and started generating some of the same errors. So we went to a multi JP setup. We still have these errors although the files that don't error seem to be processed faster when using multi JP. I personally went to each machine and setup the JP to run under the "Job Server" username and password. The Job Server user is an administrator as required. The JP was setup to start automatically on windows login. It continually logs in as an administrator.
I think this is what you were asking, although I may have misunderstood you.
Jeff
I was actually referring to the windows username logged onto the machine used as JP
I noticed on some machines the error "Object reference not set to an instance ..." comes up when JP is trying to start up a session of Inventor but cannot. I have no problem starting Inventor manually and it registers with the system OK, but JP cannot start it up by itself. I wondered if it was windows user permission related.
This happens when multiple JP's are enabled, but when all are turned off except one, that one single one works.
The JP is always logged in as Vault Administrator as this is the only user with modify permissions at released states
Max B
Just did a test on single JP, on Windows 7, 64bit, 8GB RAM, SSD, processing 84 objects took 20 minutes
Terrible performance and I would like to use multiple workstations to share the load if only I could get it to work.
MaxB
Mbodnar, I haven't run into this problem yet. All of our users (the individuals logged in and running the JP) are local admins to their own computers. These users are not administrators in Vault. Only the Administrator and Job Server accounts have administrative priveleges. We are also using windows authentication to access Vault. The Job Server acct is not on the domain. Not sure how much of this is applicable to your situation. What version of Inventor are you using?
Autodesk, where are you?
The documentation for proper job server setup is non-existent. I'm not sure how you expect your customers to use your product properly. We've got the wiki and a whitepaper...neither of which discuss optimization of the job server. Nor do they even hint to solutions to overcome any of these problems. The troubleshooting section in the wiki is worthless as it asks a bunch of questions followed by yes/no with no direction from there. What if the answer is yes, what does this mean? What if the answer is no, what does that mean? People have asked questions in the wiki, and you point us to these forums. You want us to discuss it amongst ourselves and figure it out? Then write the manual for you? What kind of customer service is this? There is no guidance.
Your lack of response on this issue is telling.
I've got to be missing SOMETHING. What is it? Tell me? I'm all ears. I just want the job processor to do as you've promised!
Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.