Is Civil crashing 3-6 times a day normal?

[Yehoshua.Shore]

Hello all!

I have been working with Civil 3d for almost 6 months now. Im getting pretty good with it. But no mater what I do, civil seems to crash at least 3 times a day. Civil also often tells me that something went wrong and I need to recover the DWG file. This happens even in small and simple projects. For very large and complicated files it may even crash as much as once an hour. I have re-installed Civil, Windows and downgraded Civil Versions but nothing seems to help.  Does anyone else experince this? Or should I ask my work for a more powerful computer? 

Thanks for the help,

- Josh

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19041 Build 19041

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3192 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 730

Intel(R) PCI Express Root Port #21 - A2EB

[wfberry]

I certainly do not have a problem, but over the last several years I may be the only person that does an Audit before any and all saves.

Bill

[Yehoshua.Shore]

Thanks so much for the imput. I afraid that the problem persists for me, even after taking your sugjestion.  

Regards,

- Yehoshua

[jeff_rivers]

A couple things about your workstation's specs- 16gb Ram is low, consider bumping it higher if possible.  And I don't know if your video card is on the approved list, but video card selection can have a big impact on C3D. 

What other software do you have, especially processes running in the background?  Where I am IT strictly controls our builds, and forbids any software not on their approved list, all to keep usability and uptime as high as possible.  

Last, what kind of drawings are you working with?  How large or small are they, and how many C3D objects are in them? How many alignments, how long are they, what size are the surfaces, what size are the corridors, and do you have grading objects? If so, how many?  

[AllenJessup]

if this is happening in most or all of your drawing including simple projects. I'd suggest recovering or recreating your drawing template. Any errors in the template will be passed along to the drawings.

Also check to see if you have the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Updating RAM always is a good idea.

I don't know if you operate on a network. But network transfer speeds can cause problems as well.

I'd go with the latest version of Civil 3D, 2021.2. It's more likely that will fix issues than cause them.

[jmayo-EE · Accepted solution]

I have run C3D on $10k pc's (xeons, dual quadros, 64bg ram) and $800 laptops (dual core amd, geforce 16 mb ram) with very little difference or in performance. With the newer versions I think processor speed, memory and fast network connections (if you working on a network or with internet resources) are the biggest factors. I run C3D on high end quadro and low end geforce cards with similar results.

Data management is the best way to control performance. All machines I have used have locked up at times with very large datasets. Sometimes simply selecting a fline with thousands of vertices or a very large and dense surface can lock it up. Even a trim command on a dense fline can do this. 

Minimize data. Use dref and xref's. One task on file. Do not put everything in one file. Review the Civil 3D Best Practices Guide, Data Management section for detail on how to organize a C3D project.

[Anonymous]

As of 2021 Sept. It still crashes 3-6 times a day. 
Following the solution in this topic still causes it to crash. Its always random. 

Ill update as i find out anything more.

One thing to keep in mind that might mitigate crashes is the drivers for your video card. I think it was mentioned above but don't quote me. I found that Nvidia Cards and there software cause a lot of crashes for me on my work computer but my home computer which runs a Radeon Card I have never and I mean never had it crash there. 

Also to make sure your hardware acceleration is on. That helps.

With that o7

[ChrisRS]

Are you using grading objects?

If so, they are allways toxic often finicky. Save often, Purge, Audit -Purge R * N

Some days multiple crashes are the norm. Some days not.

[TerryDotson]

I've been working with Civil3D for about 4 years and find it quite stable on Points, Parcels, Surfaces, Alignments, Profiles and Sections.  Of course slow is not the same thing as stable.  I've always found it slow (even on a high end machine).  Adding physical RAM is the best recommendation (as someone else mentioned).  I noticed a slight improvement in large surfaces when I went from 32 to 96gb recently.

[Anonymous]

We use fresh files at my job. Im not doing anything special tbh. I design
from scratch the subdivision math files for all the depts. they use them to
create the rest of the stuff that goes into the sub d. So im not using
anything special just parcels. Lines arcs and annotation of dif sorts. No
xrefs or such so not sure why it crashes so often. I have a suspicion that
its the code in the software for nvidia cards that conflicts with cad. I
run cad at home and have a radeon and ive never ever had it crash even
once. Only thing i can think of

[jmayo-EE]

No xrefs? 

general rule one take one file. Xrefs and drefs are strongly encouraged to reduce the load on your pc.

If I did a subdivision in a file that gets xrefed into a new file for road design. A new file for lot grading xrefing in the subdivision and drefing the road grading. New file for sheets xrefing and drefing all this data. This is a general roadmap to keep your files performing best. If all of these C3D objects (parcels, road corridors, lot grading) it is way too much IME. 

[tcorey]

 @jmayo-EE , well said.

[jmayo-EE]

Thx but big typo

one task, one file

[jmayo-EE]

… if all of the objects are in one file…

[Pointdump]

John,
"one task, one file"
We knew what you meant.
Dave

[jmayo-EE]

Big fingers, little buttons, a not so smart spell checker and poor Q&A on that one. 🙂

[cwr-pae]

I thought "one take" was like a Hollywood reference for a single task/project system/component.

One slow down in all memory intensive programs/operations is the use of paged memory on disk (I forget what MS calls it), faster disk equals faster overall performance. A super fast solid state disk seems to improve everything even with less than maximum physical memory installed.

[AllenJessup]

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@cwr-pae wrote:

One slow down in all memory intensive programs/operations is the use of paged memory on disk (I forget what MS calls it), faster disk equals faster overall performance. A super fast solid state disk seems to improve everything even with less than maximum physical memory installed.

---

It's called paging or swapping. The Swap File is pagefile.sys. If you open the Windows Task Manager on the details tab. You can add Page Faults and PF Delta columns. I use those to keep track of what is really eating memory. If you sort by PF Delta. If doing anything in Civil 3D. acad.exe will almost always be on top.

If you can get everything; Program, Drawings and pagefile.sys on an NVMe cards. That will give the best performance.

[Anonymous]

We run true ssd for our computers and 32 gb of ram nvidia gtx 1650 cards.
So not sure about the memory problem you’re referring to. I’m going to ask
out cadd guru. My belief it’s a conflict somewhere between Windows nvidia
and cadd. I’ll figure it out eventually.

[cwr-pae]

Paged memory (what MicroSoft called 'virtual memory') is an operating system thing. The OS uses a part of your hard drive/storage device to 'simulate' memory for high memory usage scenarios by swapping pages (essential memory address blocks) from ram to the paged file on disk when the memory block is not currently active swapping it back when it becomes active again. The faster the combined drive/bus/device controller system the faster the memory 'swap' works. NVMe is the latest, fastest system for storage devices ("disks") and should improve performance considerably. I have to go by hearsay since I've yet to get a PC with NVMe spec hardware.