Auto CAD Problems and Concerns

[peter57733]

Hi Everyone,

Pete Here! Well I am very concerned with AutoCAD and it future, this is because I have seen a lot of issues being posted starting with the first implementation of building systems working it's way to AutoCAD 2010 (2011 Has not been out long enough) and 2010 being the absolute worst We are currently running  2009 and it works well we are using a 32 bit OS and are in the process (more than 75%) of a large project, my coworker Dave has been up against the wall so to speak with his project, we have both been trying to take advantage of the wonderful tools that MEP has to offer (for the Electrical side) and have had nothing but one setback after another and are finding out that we should have done this project the old fashioned way and would actually be further along!! Go figure, But anyway the point being is Dave's project is degrading as he is working on it, He has been working with the circuit Manager and while not in it it randomly looses the links to all the electrical panels and the software is acting rather strangely objects that were already in the project somehow grow gigantic and sometimes the cursor sticks and then starts making ghost cursors and then at that point you can not save or invoke any commands you're just plain stuck. Now you are thinking not enough ram to small a processor wrong video card ect well just to recap our systems we have all New Dell TS3400 with quadro 1700 video cards Intel core duo processors and 4 gigs of ram and a 250 gig hard drive (do not get the AutoCAD driver for this video card or you will experience Hell on earth with your computer) Now all that being said

I am assuming that we are at the limits of our 32 bit OS We are looking into a 64 Bit OS and really need to know if this will relieve the problem, we have lost several man hours of work trying to solve this , We want to know is Autodesk going to keep it's AutoCAD line or just finally abandon it for Revit? I rather like AutoCAD and just wish that it was much more stable like in the old days of 2002 it just worked, and I know the goals to have a more powerful software are in theory great and we love the automated features of fixture schedules, Panel schedules, the updating across the board, but if we are in fact at our max limits of the 32 bit OS and AutoCAD please tell Us we need to know ASAP we are looking to upgrade NOW and if it is what we need to solve the crashing and information loss please someone tell Me Right away NOW,

Are we all going to have to bite the bullet and learn Revit? What is going on here? The learning curve for Revit is difficult and would cost our Company lots of $$$$$$ after spending $$$$ just for us to learn MEP and all of it's features we do not want to waste this expense we are in need of a major return on investment, We just can't keep taking three steps forward and four steps back that is just counter productive, HELP HELP HELP please!!

Sorry for Ranting,

Peter Eells

Unity Electric

[Jeffrey_H]

I pushed for 64bit but they worried all the software they use would not be 64bit enabled. I have the same graphics card and 4 gigs of ram. Mine will freeze up sometimes if I have a couple of large files 8 to 10 mb and visual studio open and internet. But it handles it fine. Also there are settings that make a big difference. The objects growing large are they custom objects you built?

make sure your annotation scale is the same in model space and as your viewport. Sometimes you have to select the viewport and go to the properties palette for it to work. Type UN then hit enter and go to the scale tab and set check your value when you create devices and other mep styles it multiplies it by that value. So it will sometimes look fine in the drawing you created it in but once you insert it in another drawing it will way to big.

As far as Revit we have the suite and it really is going to depend on the architects. We do government work all over the world and they said along time ago that the will be requiring Revit but have never implemented it. Your not going to use Revit if all your floor and site plans are dwgs.

The idea of having smart drawings is great but the last 20 projects we have done if we did them in Revit it would be a nightmare. The electrical still has a way to go but it has come pretty far only in its 3 to 5 or 6 relase.

[peter57733]

MY DEVICES ARE SCALED SO THAT THE VIEWPORT NO MATER WHAT THE SCALE THE DEVICE WILL BE CORRECT, i ALREADY FOUND OUT ABOUT THE TOO LARGE THING, WHAT WE HAVE FOUND WAS THAT WITH THE FIXTURE SCHEDULE'S PROPERTIES SET TO AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE AND ADD NEW OBJECTS AFTER 6 COPIES IT WULD CRASH AUTOCAD AND THERE WOULD NOT BE ANY WARNING AND NO AUTODESK CRASH REPORT, JUST WHAM BACK TO THE DESK TOP AT LIGHT SPEED. RATHER SHOCKING, OUR IT FIRM SAID THAT ALL THE PROGRAMS WE RUN WOULD BE RUNNING IN 32 BIT EXCEPT FOR AUTO CAD IF WE WENT TO 64 BIT THEY WERE ALL ABLE TO BE RAN SO THEY SAID BUT I WAS WONDERING ABOUT THE VIDEO CARD IF WE HAD TO UP GRADE THE DRIVER (I THINK WE DO), WHILE THE IT GUY WAS HERE HE LOADED ACAD 2009 64 BIT ON HIS LAPTOP WHICH HAS A CORE DUO PROCESSOR AND 4 GB RAM AND WEAK GRAPHICS CARD WITH THE DRAWING SET THE EXACT SAME WAY OUR 32 BIT SYSTEM WAS SET TO HE COULD COPY ABOUT 100 OBJECTS AND THEN HE GOT A LOW MEMORY WARNING WE GET NOTHING JUST A CRASH AND AUTO CAD SEEMS TO STORE THE MEMORY UNTIL IT USES ALL OF IT UP AND CRASHES (2.54 GB) THEN IT RELEASES IT AND WE START ALL OVER AGAIN. WHAT FUN. TRY GENERATING A FIXTURE SCHEDULE AND HAVING IT ON ADD NEW DEVICES AND AUTO UPDATE IN THE PROPERTIES MENU.

THANKS,

PETE

[Dakota_Cad]

Peter-

When I first started using MEP 2009 it was on a 32 bit machine.

Strange things not unlike those you talk about would happen.

I even worked on a file saving as I went to find out nothing

had been saved. 32 bit BAD!

Anyway they finally gave me a 64 bit machine. Its hard to remember

the last time I crashed. But I have a regimen that I follow and repeat

several times a day.

Before I save, I run BLDSYSPURGE, PURGEALL and then save TWICE.

Sometimes things still act a little weird at times.

Just to be safe I'll do my save regimen at least every hour. Sometimes

its necessary to close and reopen. And if its still weird restart MEP.

The BLDSYSPURGE command is what usually straightens out the problem.

HTH

[Thucker]

MEP 2010 is a big piece of GARBAGE. I get fatal errors and crashes easily 30 times a day. I send countless numbers of error reports in. I highly doubt anybody at Autodesk even looks at them. I have an error log that's probably 25-30 pages long. I feel your pain.

My company is suppose to be getting me a 64bit computer anytime now. So hopefully that helps.

[peter57733]

WE ARE PUSHING TO GET THE 64 BIT ADDITION TO OUR COMPUTERS AND HAVE PROVEN THAT IT ACTUALLY HELPS A LOT AND WE DID THIS USING OUR I.T. PROVIDERS LAPTOP RUNNING WINDOWS 7 WITH ONLY 4 GIGS OF RAM (AUTODESK TOLD US 2009 MEP 64 BIT WASN'T CERTIFIED TO RUN ON WINDOWS 7 64BIT, BUT IT SEEMED TO WORK FINE) WE TESTED IT FOR AN HOUR OR SO DOING THE EXACT SAME THING WHICH WOULD CAUSE A CRASH IN 6 COPIES OF A LIGHTING OBJECT THAT HAD ALL SORTS OF MFG INFO LAMPING WATTS ECT. I.T. IS THE FIXTURE SCHEDULE, AND IT IS SET ON AUTO UPDATE AND ADD NEW OBJECTS IN THE PROPERTIES MENU, AND IF YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH CREATING A LIGHTING FIXTURE SCHEDULE FROM THE TOOL PALETTE YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. BEAR IN MIND THAT THIS IS JUST THE FASTEST WAY TO PROVOKE A CRASH, OTHER THINGS WILL DO IT AS WELL LIKE JUST WORKING ALONG CIRCUITING AND JUST GENERALLY MESSING WITH MEP BASED OBJECTS, THE SYSTEM JUST HANGS ON TO THE PAGE FILE MEMORY UNTIL IT REACHES ABOUT 2.52 GB AND POOF AUTO CAD CRASHES BUT IF YOU ARE WATCHING YOUR TASK MANAGER UNDER THE PERFORMANCE TAB YOU CAN CATCH IT AND IN ORDER TO NOT LOOSE INFORMATION YOU HAVE TO SAVE AND SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN COMPLETELY (WHAT A PAIN)

KEEP ADDING TO THIS POST I AM MOST INTERESTED IN WHAT OTHERS HAVE TO SAY.

[andrewjy]

We are using windows XP with MEP 2011, and are finding problems with circuits missing after coming back into the drawings.  This is occuring in both lighting and power plans, light fixtures connected to a circuit now are not connected.  I cannot tell if this is occuring after a cras or not.  the program has crashed do random commands.  Has this happened to anybody else?

[peter57733]

Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit operating system? (with the corrisponding software MEP 64 bit or 32 bit) as we are looking into going to the 64 bit system. We are curently using the MEP 2009 as we have heard nothing good about 2010 and were hoping to hear favorable reviews about 2011 but we need to know your O.S. to make an informed desision we are getting windows 7 64 bit for one work station and going to load mep 2009 64 bit on it and give it a try with 8gb of ram. Don't try this with windows 32 bit as you will just be wasting your money on the other 4 gb of ram as it can only use four max.

try opening your task manager and watching the performance tab and keep an eye on the pf usage when it reaches about 2.30-2.40 gb you will need to save and close the drawing and re boot Autocad (it has been holding on to the used memory and the only way we have found is to reboot Auto cad.)

[andrewjy]

We have 32 bit operating systems mep2001, 32 bit, we have one machine with mep 201164 bit on a windows 7 64 bit operationing system.  the 64 bit machine has given us little problems, the 32 bit with 4g ram has given us problems with larger files, crashes and slow performance.

I agree that 2010 is worse the 2011, I dont want to go backwards though to 2009., this last crash wiped out a completed 2-story office building with all the lighting circuits on crash where were making a small revision to the documents. I am still trying to figure out how the information was lost in the lighting drawings.

[peter57733]

Andrew,

I was not suggesting you go backwards at all just trying to figure out what we should be using it sounds like the 64 bit system has our vote because we have been having nothing but trouble with the circuit thing and linking and auto unlinking of panels on a 5 level assisted living project and numorious crashes, so if you change your work station to the 64 bit system please post + or - effects for all to see.

Thanks,

Pete

[jcarr]

We have just built a Win7 x64 workstation. i7, 8gb RAM, 500gb HD, I do not remember the video card since it was last weeek when I deployed. But we are using AutoCAD MEP 2010 with SP2. We have problems such as not being able to adjust elevations, select pipe styles and such that are not a problem in 32-bit version. ANd it will not let us start with a specific style to start piping. I am not at all happy with it so far. It runs lightning fast but if it won't do what you need it can be slower than molasses . Either way it is useless to use. More data as I run into it.

[peter57733]

THANK YOU FOR YOUR REPLY,

We have heard way too much bad about MEP 2010 and are completely skipping that version, we need the lightening fast but we do need the software to do what we need it to do, check your video card and see what driver you are using we had recently downloaded an approved AutoCAD driver from the NVIDIA site and it started degrading our computers almost instantly I caught it the first day as a result of my co worker stating he had done it 2 weeks previously and had been experiencing severe problems so I promptly re set the driver back after doing a system restore and all is well with that part so watch what driver you install, but post as you find problems. We spoke at length with AutoCAD for some of our issues and the gist of the conversation was we corrected that in the 2010 version (but it has numerous problems as well after doing a bit of research) so I just hope by having this Message out here that someone will touch on a solution allowing us to take full advantage of the software and have it work with minimal problems, we like all the advantages it has but when we constantly have to re set links and circuit info just vanishes our old way is much faster (and it was slow) but going back and re-doing the work you have just finished is even slower!!!

Pete

[jcarr]

This is our first foray into the x64 world. We are also running C3D but it is a 32-bit software running in a 64-bit environment. Here is the info on what machine we are using for the x64 MEP. We are not using the AUtodesk approved drivers and form what I have read so far and really, really glad.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (2793 MHz)
Operating system: Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
DirectX version: 11.0
Graphics card information
GeForce GT 220
Driver version: 186.34
Stream processors: 48
Graphics clock: 615 MHz
Processor clock: 1335 MHz
Memory clock: 790 MHz (1580 MHz data rate)
Memory interface: 128-bit
Total available graphics memory: 4606 MB
Dedicated video memory: 1024 MB
Shared system memory: 3582 MB
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen2

[drummer54]

I have Auto Cad 2012 Mep. I have lost my home tool bars. Can anyone help me recover them?