Crashing and slow export to PDF

[ryan]

I had posted this in another thread about instability and crashing but was asked to move to a separate thread.

So this will also be a cross post as we are having similar issues in ACAD 2018. We upgraded our Suite to 2018 and are seeing sporadic and random crashing issues in both ACAD and Inventor. During crashes checking hardware usage shows that nothing is close to capacity (RAM, CPU, and GPU are barely being touched.) Inventor does seem to be trying to hit a single CPU core pretty hard which is weird since the other 11 are at less than 5% usage.

Specific to Inventor. We are seeing extremely long exports to PDF and ACAD. Typically our exports were 30 seconds to a min in 2017. Now we are seeing the same exports (the same file, unchanged) take over 10 mins in 2018.

We have done multiple clean installs but are still having the same issues.

Hardware is intel i7-7800K, 32GB ram, single 1080ti, 960 evo 1TB

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! The behavior does not sound right to me. Have you applied all 2018 updates (2018.2 update and 2018.2.3 update)? If not, please go to the following page to download the updates.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/downloads/caas/downloads/content/inventor-2...

When it crashes, did you submit crash reports? If yes, please send me an email (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com). I would like to understand the crash better.

Many thanks!

[ryan]

We are already on 2018.2.3 Build 227

GFX driver and Windows are up to date

[ryan]

Also the exports do not crash they just take a ridiculously long time.

If we do get an error report we will send.

Any follow up troubleshooting steps we can take?

[ryan]

Any ideas? Anyone? The response to this is the ACAD forums was Bricscad. Seriously? I appreciate the recommendation but I would prefer a solution that did not involve changing software suites. But since we are on the topic anyone have any recos for an inventor equivalent?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ryan,

So far I do not get much detail except the title. Is this about Inventor or AutoCAD? Is it exporting drawing as PDF or exporting assembly/part to 3D PDF? Did you send in any crash report? If yes, please send an email to me (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com). I would like to understand the behavior better.

Many thanks

[ryan]

So there are 2 forms of crashing and 1 workflow issue.

1) Random Crashing - just completely random both in Inventor and ACAD (freeze or crash - only crash generates error report)

2) Crashing during save to Vault - (Freeze no error report)

3) Exports from IDW to Adobe PDF take 10+ mins vs 30 seconds in 2016

We use Design Suite 2018 so ACAD and Inventor and Vault (basic) 2018

Windows 10 pro (up to date)

Nvidia GTX 1080ti (latest drivers)

i7-7800k on AsRock X99 TaiChi (bios on latest know stable)

Corsair Dominator 32GB 2666mhz (quad channel)

960 evo 1 TB nvme

We connect to Server over Cat6A through gigabit Cisco switch. Server is HP Proliant Gen 10

This is happening on 2 machines which are identical except one has a single 1080ti and the other has dual 1080s

When Inventor freezes and we pull up in MSI afterburner there will be almost no activity other than ram usage BUT... sometimes there is a CPU usage spike right around the time of the crash. We have been dealing with this issue since we deployed 2018 from 2016 aprox. 3 months ago. We had our Autodesk reseller look at it but they just recommended we clean install (so we did twice) And I mean full clean from windows on up. Still having Issues.

We just updated all drivers and both Inventor and ACAD yesterday and still today we are having crashes. I am hoping that one of them will not be the freezy kind and will generate an error report so we can submit it.

I apologize for the rambling posts but I am just a bit frustrated.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ryan,

None of these behaviors sound normal to me. Something is wrong but I am not aware of any systematic issues causing Inventor to behave like this. I just want to double-check and see if you have applied 2018.2 update and 2018.2.3 update. Regarding the PDF export issue, please share a 2016 example so I can do some comparison. Regarding the random crash, it sounds related to license server. Please you checked Autodesk Desktop App and make sure all updates have been installed. In the meantime, please send me an email (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com) so I can look up your crash reports. Vault saving crash could be related to the random crash but I am not sure.

Many thanks!

[ryan]

You are potentially correct about the random crashes and vault crashes being separate.

For Vault crashes we may have found the issue. Our anti virus and firewall did not have full exceptions for Autodesk traffic. We have since updated and not had crashes while saving to vault.

We are still seeing random crashes and our team has been directed to save all crash reports. Once we have a few we will send them off.

Regarding Updates. Yes have have been updating as they are available (for Autodesk along with gfx and OS)

[mslosar]

We recently ran into this problem here - export to PDF being extremely slow on a couple machines. 

There were two problem machines out of 20ish that i'm aware of. Everything was fine, but saving to PDF. What should be relatively quick took 5 minutes, sometimes longer.

Things we looked at:

-Open the files on another machine. PDF was fine, 5ish seconds

-Tried printing to PDF on the problem machines using CutePDF and Acrobat. Was fine.

-cleared temp files in the user profile - still slow

-Updated inventor to 2017.4.4. Still slow

-Updated video drivers to current - slow

-Ran the Inventor Reset utility - slow

-Gave the user admin rights - slow

-Logged off machine and had another normal user login who hadn't ever logged in to that machine before: 5 seconds!

Solution was to delete the profile and let windows build another one. Problem solved on both machines. Not sure what a problem in the profile would be that'd only affect the internal export to PDF functionality. You would think using the inventor reset utility would have cleared it, but no.

[ryan]

Good looks! The advice is much appreciated. What do you mean by a new profile? Do you mean remove them as a user on the machine and the. Re add them? I am down to try that any tips or guides on doing it is I don’t accidentally leave the thing that is causing the issues.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! It is true that Inventor 3D PDF export is not the fastest operation. There is room for improvement. In terms of 3D PDF performance, Inventor 2018 should be better than 2017. 2019 should be better than 2018.

One tip though, when exporting an assembly, you may want to limit the number of Design View Reps selected to export. Each selected Design View Rep can add more time spent on export.

Many thanks!

[mslosar]

Yes, i mean remove them as a user on the computer.

In our case, it was on windows 10 and we logged in as an admin on the machine. We rename the existing profile of the user. For example, if his login was jsmith, i rename the folder in users jsmith.old.  (you rename the folder so you don't lose any files) You then have to go into the registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\ (i think that's the path, not at work now)...etc and find the key pointing to the user profile and delete it.

Then the user can log back into the computer. Windows will create a brand new profile and it works from there.

Also, this was the 2D PDF's, not 3D.

[ryan]

Awesome will try on Monday. I will keep you posted