Navis 2014 - Memory Issue

[tfischer]

I have been having MAJOR issues with navis 2014... part of design suite ultimate package...

Turned to google for some help and I have come across some things...

I already have Service Pack 1 installed and seemed like that was almost causing MORE issues... when loading NWF files that program seems to freeze halfway through the process... at first I thought, let it think and it will open... to no luck.

I saw there was a common issue with "running out of memory" which is what I am experiencing...

I saw the "hot fix" regarding this issue... But it was for "factory" not design...

I never had so many issues with Navis until 2014... not sure what is going on but I need to get this corrected ASAP!

The largest NWF file i have is 100 MB and I NEVER ran into issues with 2012 or 2013 opening files of this size or larger...

Sometimes the file will open right up (30 seconds) and I save and close... try to open the file right back up and it hands, and I have to hard shut-off my computer!

[mpriestman]

Some more questions about the problem.

Can you reliably reproduce the problem?

Does it always hang when loading a specific file?

When loading an NWF that takes a long time, do you have lots of missing references?

What sort of files is your NWF referencing?

When Navisworks hangs, is it using 100% of a processor?

Have you submitted any CERs from crashes?

[tfischer]

I was sent a PM asking to provide as much info as possible - Autodesk has recieved complaints of this, but have trouble re-craeting the problem.

Before I switched to my 2014 products, my navisworks program/license was seperate from ym design suite license. I never expeirenced these problems when using 2013, or 2012, etc...

When I swtiched to 2014, we swtiched to the design suite ultimate.

At first, all files were working OK. After installed the service pack 1, because others were having issues - not me, I started to have issues.

I would open a file, work in it, save and close. Go to reopen the exact same file, and it would get about halfway and hang, and I would then have to hard-shutoff my computer.

I actually re-built a bunch of my Navis NWF files... imported sets/viewpoints, and re-appended the same files. Everyone was running smooth, and then I close and go to re-open, and it hang's again about 1/2 way through the loading process.

I have DWGs, NWCs, and Revit files all loaded in the NWF. The NWCs were mostly created from Revit files and DWG files. Most of the files are from other 2014 products, but a few of them are 2013 files.

What other info is of help?

[tfischer]

Can you reliably reproduce the problem? It hapens randomly - One time the file will open, and the next time it hangs

Does it always hang when loading a specific file? it hangs around 46% and it is loading the NWF file itself

When loading an NWF that takes a long time, do you have lots of missing references? No. have had "new versions" of the same file, but this is not always the case either, as a few times there have been ZERO changes to any files.

What sort of files is your NWF referencing? DWGs and NWCs mostly.

When Navisworks hangs, is it using 100% of a processor? Yes, it asks me to change windows apperance for better preformance and makes the rest of the CPU non-functional

Have you submitted any CERs from crashes? CERs? Not sure what that is, but I have no submiited crash logs - I do not get the chance as I do not receive those messages.

[Lance.Coffey]

The SP1 download includes the following important note:

After installing Autodesk Navisworks 2014 Service Pack 1, you must ensure that other users who share your Navisworks 2014 NWF files also install the same Service Pack. Failure to do so may mean that your Selection Set data becomes corrupted. This applies to Navisworks 2014 only. Navisworks 2014 NWF files shared with Navisworks 2013 and Navisworks 2012 users are not affected

After the other users installed Service Pack 1, did you interact with the same NWF files that they were working with (possibly corrupting the Selection Set data)?

Alternatively, if you are not interacting with or using the same NWF files as the other users that installed Service Pack 1, have you tested reinstalling Navisworks (to remove SP1) and verify if the issue is cleared?

[jbartolo77]

Oddly enough I just posted a comment on another page about the exact same issue.  We really need to get this fixed at our end as well since it s affecting numerous projects across the board.   I have requested that everyone working on the same projects install service pack 1.  We setup all projects and then hand them over to others to work on and at times do open the files from our end for review, meetings and so forth.  From what I understand, it appears someone along the way corrupts someone else's file  by corrupting the clash sets if th efile is handled from numerous machines?  I will try and request that only the end users open their files as a test.  Couple of questions:

1 - Must Navis be un-installed and reinstalled in order to confirm proper installation of service pack 1?

2 - Can't service pack 1 simply be un-installed and reinstalled?

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.  We are running the 2014 suite products as well, 64 bit machines with lots of memory.  Crash upon upload around 45.2%, 46%, have used autodesk chronicle to start a file from scratch, run the update and watch it take an hour to update all clash sets, crashing upon opening, have tried separating files into levels to alleviate the issue, at ties opens in a heartbeat only to crash again upon reopening, out of memory messages (running 32 GB) and so forth.  Running out of options here and I do not think I can revert all files back to 2013 since many revit files used are in 2014 and we cannot backsave or export 2014 revit files as 2013 nwc's - or can we?  Wish we could backsave in revit just as we can in any other program - hopefully one of the features being worked on now.

Not sure if this link helps but it shows part of our issue - we append files all day long, nwc's, dwg's and so forth but yet note how long it takes to run the update all clash sets - this task on large projects in 2013 Manage takes about 2 minutes tops for ALL SYSTEMS, ALL LEVELS - the particular file this video represents does not include any systems at this time, just blank place holder files... 

https://chronicle.autodesk.com/MyChronicles?&thanks&token=0e3ccf96e77ca14b6412099fcb77291aa0f08b5e

Thank you

Julien Bartolo

[Lance.Coffey]

1. You should be able to tell if SP1 is installed from the About window in Navisworks. (SP1 was released on 7/22/2013, and the "Built:" date should show Jul 12 2013 if SP1 is loaded).
2. The installation readme specifies: "Once installed, Autodesk Navisworks 2014 Service Pack 1 cannot be uninstalled on its own. You must uninstall the complete product and then reinstall the original release of Autodesk Navisworks 2014 in order to revert to a non-Service Pack state."

[richardparker]

Hi Julien and tfischer,

We recently release a hotfix that should address the issues that you are experiencing. You can find the hotfix here..

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=22506086&linkID=10382102 

Best regards,

Richard

[jbartolo77]

Thank you so much for the update.  We have since our initial posting proceeded with removal of Navisworks and Service Pack 1.  Software was re-installed to its default state and we have already encountered numerous crashing issues as a result of this need.  However, files do open much faster and updating all clash sets now takes less than a minute in most cases which was our real issue (was taking longer than an hour on some projects).  Based on your latest update, we will do a trial run on one machine only, reinstall service pack 1 as well as the hotfix you mention above - we will see how that goes and advise of our findings.

Thank you for the help.

Julien Bartolo

[jbartolo77]

Update pertaining to our own issues with Navisworks Manage 2014:

- Uninstalled the Navisworks Manage 2014 software from the machine in order to remove serice pack 1

- Re-installed the Navisworks Manage 2014 software to its virgin state

- Files opened fine however, software crashed numerous times within minutes (could not group large quantities of clashes, crash during status change from new to approved and so forth)

- Reinstalled Service pack 1 on my machine along with the hotfix on two machines sharing the same project

NEW ISSUE

- Now, every single time we open a project file using Navisworks 2014, regardless of the project or machine we use, Navisworks Manage 2014 appears to be deleting all .nwc files associated with that project only to immediately recreate a fresh set of .nwc's.  For those who do not know what the .nwc cache files are, this basically means that we lose all relationships when opening and closing project files now - in other words, if we group certain issues as "Acceptabe / Approved" today in a specific project, that "folder" is gone the next time we open the file (since the nwc files appear to be automatically deleted and then recreated).  Navis thinks it is a brand new file every single time we open the project .nwf file.

Has anyone else ever seen or come across this scenario?  This is becoming a serious issue as it is affecting all computers running Navisworks Manage 2014 - including the ones which have not as of yet re-installed service pack 1 and the hotfix. 

Someone please help.

Julien Bartolo 

[dgorsman]

I suspect you changed some of the Options settings from the default OOTB values, and haven't made similar changes after the fresh installs.

[jbartolo77]

Thank you for replying.  Forgive my ignorance bu ti am not familiar with "Default OOTB values" you mention below.  Could you please elaborate?   If you mean with regards to "Out of The Box" then you are correct.  We simply re-installed Manage 2014 and made no additional changes to any of the settings other than the obvious such as units and so forth. 

Thank you.

Julien Bartolo

[tfischer]

I also have noticed Navis with refresh all of my NWC files when only one of them was updated.

I have not installed the Hotfix due to concerns with it causing further issues, I am hesitant to install.

[tfischer]

Few other things...

I have not changed settings previously, nor have I messed with them now.

I have CONFIRMED that when using a machine with Navis 2014 WITHOUT service pack 1 - the file takes long to open, but it DOES OPEN.

I then installed SP1 on the same machine and HAVE NOT been able to open the file since - it keeps haning at 46.1%

[jbartolo77]

TFischer,

you might want to go ahead and upload the Navisworks Manage 2014 Service Pack 1 refresher Hotfix especially since you installed service pack 1.  We have machines with both Navisworks Manage 2014 virgin software which are experiencing issues the service pack addressed (lots of crashing when grouping or changing statuses and so forth) and then we have two machines we have been testing where we re-installed Navis, Service pack 1 and the refresher hotfix.  Most of our issues lately appear to be getting better, the files open quickly, updating all is relatively fast regardless if there are 100's or even thousands of issues (when I say relatively fast I mean within a minute or two tops) and we are able to navigate around at a decent speed.  So in my opinion, I would suggest you do install the refresher hotfix on top of the service pack 1 - you are supposed to anyway according to Autodesk.   One more word of advice, the issue you described above occurred to us during testing but ONLY when one file was created with service pack 1 and opened in a computer that did not have it or vise versa... This is where opening our performance task manager clearly indicated a jump in memory surge therefore crashing the file and system as a whole.  Once we did manage to re-open those files, majority of the clash sets were corrupted.

On another note, we still seem to be experiencing the deletion of nwc files but the issue appears to be getting better.  I will know more in a few days.  For now, we are using an automated sync feature to pull the files from the internet automatically but as a test, we are also pulling the same files locally.  We will advise of our findings when we know more.

Thank you.

[tfischer]

Actually, right after my last post, I got fed up with it and decided to try the "Hotfix" that was posted earlier in this thread...

And... No luck.

I still get memory issues and it asks me to "reduce the size of memory used" or something to that effect...

my NWF still hangs at 46.1%

[jbartolo77]

Trust me I can relate to your frustration - this literally drove me insane on three large size on-going projects which were literally on hold for a week until I figured something out - they are still somewhat on hold until I know for certain what is causing the issue but in the meantime, in order to alleviate some issues, I have split the files into levels rather than 1 master file (idea being if you lose one to corruption, you don't lose them all).  This also speeds up the clash detection however, it still is an inconvenience.

A couple of other things I would do:

1 - Restart your machine after install

2 - test the file

3 - if it is still corrupted, can you try and restore it to an earlier state when it was working?  We have that option. 

4 - If that doesn't work, you will need to do what we did which was using the one good machine with all service packs installed, re-create that file(s) from scratch.  I did this which meant losing days even weeks of groupings as all relationships were gone however, I must say that the files have always opened since.   It will be slow the first pass as it creates all the nwc's again from scratch but then the files open in seconds (at least in our case), AND as updated dug reposts come thru now,  the NFW appears to be holding relationships for most groupings with the exception of a couple of trades.  

Try this, see if it works for you.  Just glad I am not the only one experiencing this at my end.  Now if only I could figure out this issue with the nwc's and why they are being automatically deleted...

[Anonymous]

Same issue. File(.nwf) that is about 9000KB opens fine but when refreshed it freezes. Tried opening a file(also .nwf) about 11000KB won't even open. Checked RAM usage 14GIGS, Navis is using most of it - 13.98 to be exact. Upgraded to 24GIGS same thing, Navis uses up all the RAM available. Upgraded video card, it refreshes faster but we think video card upgrade didn't make much difference so no luck there. Memory limit Auto box is checked, convert xrefs unchecked. Re-created and appended files, seemed OK. saved it and tried to open it again - no go. DWG files were created with AutoCAD 2012 / CadWorx 2012. Object enabler is installed, hotfix installed, service pack installed.

[Anonymous]

Came up with a simple solution. We customize our settings in the options editor by turning off insignificant information and minimized what needs to be read and calculated by Navisworks. e.g. unchecked Convert views, points, lines, Snap points, etc.  Probably not the best solution but it worked.

[tfischer]

Does anyone have any real solutions to this? ...

And when I say "anyone", I really mean Autodesk.

I am still seeing issues with this and it happened again yesterday on a file that was not that large.

Workflow was... I opened up my NWF file, everything was good. I had just recieved a new electrical NWC file-type (created from a revit export). I wanted to reload the NWF with the latest NWC.

I closed the NWF, so I could "edit" the linked in files - it wouldnt let me overwrite the file with the NWF open. So I saved and closed. "Copy/replaced" my NWC file, which is not a large file. I then went to re-open my NWF and it does NOT open. It continues to hang at 46%, and gives me the error message of "not having enough memory"

Are there any actual fixes out there? Or is Autodesk just saying that I am screwed and I have to rebuild my NWF file everytime?!?