pdomenicali Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 On one of our machines (FireGL 2 graphics card, 1 GB of RAM, Win2K) we are getting frequent messages popping up in IC5.2 stating the machine is running low on memory, we should check the virtual memory settings or close some open apps. Well, a check of the Task Manager shows only about half of the physical memory is in use, and none of the virtual memory of 2 GB (page file size) is even being touched. Both Ironcad and the OS have been stopped and restarted several time, to no avail. The rendering setting in Options is Software. We've also tried OpenGL only for camera moves, but that setting didn't help either. This machine is also displaying frequent crashes of IC, especially at the moment of saving a drawing (didn't seem to happen as frequently when only working on scene files). The user is getting extremely frustrated and wants permission to go back to SolidWorks (almost never crashed on the same machine, same memory, same graphics, same processor, same OS, essentially the same model). The total size of the model (main scene file plus sum of all linked files below) is about 30 MB. I need help on this problem fast or will have to jettison IC in favor of SW (which I personally hate to do, but I can't afford the rate at which I'm bleeding money through lost productivity). Regards, Peter Domenicali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 Hello. I'm forwarding your email to the higher ups here and will let you know their response. It's "after hours" here so they may not have something until tomorrow morning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdomenicali Posted July 9, 2002 Author Share Posted July 9, 2002 Thanks, Chris. I "forced" my employee to switch to IC on this job because for the first time we are collaborating on one set of fixtures (joint project). Previously his work and mine (at least in terms of design) really did not overlap. When I hired him I bought him a seat of SW as that was his choice and he had a lot of experience with it, and it was hard for me to force IC on him, as it was about 18 months ago and as you know IC was going through a rough transition period. I had just upgraded to 4.2 at that time, but had experienced data corruption and file saving issues with 3.0 and 3.2 and 4.0 that made me less than confident about getting another seat of IC at the time. A few weeks ago I decided to migrate him and his work to IC 5.2, as I had been fairly satisfied with 4.2, and was told that 5.2 was very good and even more stable than 4.2. Plus IC had the special pricing offer for a limited time to get additional seats. So nearly simultaneously I bought a second seat for him and installed the 5.2 upgrade for myself. In parallel with my employee discovering crashing and other odd bugs, I've been finding odd bugs and strange behavior with 5.2 on my machine, too, which I'm sure is more frequent than what I found with 4.2. So I'm tempted to conclude 5.2 has some fundamental flakiness problem, maybe which wasn't there in 5.0, though I never tried 5.0. Just now I was trying to reproduce a chain of commands that caused a corrupt part and a failed save, and in the middle of trying to reproduce it, instead the machine froze (even the cursor froze, Ctrl-Alt-Del unresponsive, required hard reset). With IC 4.2 this happened only perhaps 3 times in a year on the same exact hardware and OS (this machine is WinNT 4.0 SP6). I don't know what to tell you. I'm facing a major investment of time to start reproducing each "bug" and document what causes it, when it's faster to just re-do the part with perhaps a slightly different sequence. Most of the time, after a strange occurence, I can just restart IC and open the file as of the last save and continue where I left off, basically repeating what I did, though probably in a different way, and then there is no problem. So IOW, most of the time the glitches don't seem very repeatable. It's as if IC just gets tired of being a "good boy" after an hour or three and says, OK, enough of this being on my best behavior, now what can I do to be a "bad boy"? And sure enough, it finds a way to misbehave for me! Sorry for the long post, and I do realize most of what I'm writing is not at all helpful to you. I'll try to generate some clearly repeatable "misbehavior" examples and send them in. Regards, Peter Domenicali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdomenicali Posted July 9, 2002 Author Share Posted July 9, 2002 Chris, Your point about the new PDF data block in another topic on this forum started me thinking about my crashing situation in my message above. Since we have Acrobat 4.0 installed (including Distiller) on the subject machine, I wonder if it's possible that's at the root of our problem? Coincidentally, Acrobat 4.0 stopped working on MY machine about the same time that I upgraded to IC5.2 (don't remember exactly when). I'm thinking maybe there is a DLL conflict between IC5.2's newer version of its PDF writer and whatever is used by Acrobat 4.0/Distiller for the same purpose. We'll try UNINSTALLING Acrobat 4.0, then REINSTALLING Ironcad 5.2 on the problem machine and see if that solves the problem of crashing when saving drawings. Do you think this might work? Regards, Peter Domenicali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 Hmm, I have never heard of any potential for there to be a conflict with PDF at the level you are experiencing. It *shouldn't* hurt to try Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdomenicali Posted July 9, 2002 Author Share Posted July 9, 2002 OK, I uninstalled both Acrobat 4.0 and Ironcad. Then I reinstalled Ironcad 5.2. First thing I tried was File Export to PDF on a large drawing, using true representation for curves (don't want that tesselated look). It crunched away for a few minutes and then IC crashed with a message to check the log file. Here is the contents of the log file it generated: *** ***Exception Report Number 1 *** Unhandled exception. No other information available Not too helpful. I tried the same thing on my other seat of IC 5.2 and got the same exception notice. Here is a screen shot of the dialog that generated the above exception report (see attached file). I can send in the model and drawing data used for this, but unfortunately it is about 30 MB of files (maybe less when zipped?). Regards, Peter Domenicali IC exception 7-9-2002.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 Ok, The crashing when exporting a PDF is different than your initial post. Zipping the files won't compress them much, if at all, but it will put them in an easy to transfer archive. One thing to insure is that you have saved your drawings and scenes at least once in 5.2 before attempting to export them. If you load and old drawing into 5.2 and never save it, then there's no PDF data in it to export and that could in theory cause a crash. We can work out a way to transfer those files through FTP if you would like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 Peter the developers just came by and told me that they have some DLL's containing fixes that might do one of to things for you. 1) It could fix your crashes or 2) It -should- at least cause IronCAD to write valuable information to the exception log. So the plan is I am going to QA these unofficial fixes for a few hours just to insure nothing major happens. The developers have been working on these for weeks and QA'ing them as they go so I'm just a sort of 3rd tier of comfort before giving them to you. Once I bang on them I'll email them to you with instructions on how to install them. In general I just want to let you know that the developers are aware of your issues and are working to resolve them a.s.a.p. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdomenicali Posted July 9, 2002 Author Share Posted July 9, 2002 Chris, Yes the files have definitely been saved under 5.2 first, and in fact were created under 5.2 in the first place. Thanks in advance for sending the DLL's to me to try. I have meanwhile found that 5.2 will export to PDF a much smaller drawing that I tried, so it seems to be tied to the drawing or scene file itself (i.e., the particular geometry or the quantity thereof). I can FTP the zipped file to you once you tell me where to send it. Regards, Peter Domenicali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 9, 2002 Share Posted July 9, 2002 Oh Peter another thing you could try is this. 1) Close IronCAD 2) Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the location that your drawing file is in. 3) Right click on the file and choose Export to pdf... If this doesn't work, try "View PDF...." and then try to save it from within the viewer. I'll send you an email with the ftp info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted July 11, 2002 Share Posted July 11, 2002 Well Peter I am unable to reproduce your PDF export problems here. I tried on two different machines both running 5.2, one on XP with a FireGL2 and the other Win2K with a generic low end card. I tried both true rep and fast and I just can't make the pdf export fail. I simply load the drawing file, then immediately goto file/export/.pdf So do you have any other systems there that you could try it on? You could also try installing the ironcad shell extensions for viewing an ironcad drawing without ironcad installed. That has the export pdf options in it. So you could try installing the shell extensions on some other computer and see if it will export. As far as why it's failing on your system, I don't know. I've been running with these patched dll's that might cause your system to throw more useful information in the exception log and am working on sending those to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdomenicali Posted August 9, 2002 Author Share Posted August 9, 2002 Sorry so much time has passed since I opened this thread. We ended up installing pdf995 for exporting PDF's on our 2 ironcad machines, and it works fine with no hiccups. We still use Acrobat for viewing and marking up PDF's, but no longer use Distiller. Also, Chris, I think you did send me the DLL's, and I believe I did try exporting the big drawing in question and it works now. I'm posting a new topic to discuss my results with the SP1 beta. Regards, Peter Domenicali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Khenkin Posted August 9, 2002 Share Posted August 9, 2002 I don't know if this is 100% relevant, but anyway: I run IC2.5 SP1 (although the same behavior was occurring before) on Win2000 SP3 750Meg RAM 2-processor machine. The following sequence is very repeatable: Start the machine fresh. Open Task Manager. Memory usage 85Meg. Start IC blank, no scene - Mem Usage goes up to 170Meg. Close IC. Memory Usage goes down to 120Meg. Now, what happened with those "extra" 45 Meg? Alex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted August 13, 2002 Share Posted August 13, 2002 Hmm. I don't see that if I just open and close IronCAD. I DO see it however if I launch IronCAD, create a scene, then close ironcad. I'm working on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mhan Posted August 22, 2002 Share Posted August 22, 2002 I still get the "Insufficient memory problem" even with IC 5.2 SP1. When try to save scene, I fail with the message of insufficient memory. So I checked the system resources with Task Manager, and found that IronCAD uses 300MB with only 10MB scene file. So the system become slow and could not do anything at all especially with IronCAD. And system re-boot cure this, but I'm afraid when it happen again. JH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
don_temple Posted October 10, 2003 Share Posted October 10, 2003 I'm running v6.2 on a p4 with 1gig ram and occasionally getting the "your computer is running low on memory" notice. Task manager reports memory usage at less than 300mb. What do you think is going wrong? Injection mold, jig and fixture design. www.QuickCAD.biz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cary OConnor Posted October 10, 2003 Share Posted October 10, 2003 Hi, For IronCAD 6 and higher, you can try changing the memory configuration on your system. =========================================================== 3Gig Memory configuration * For users with large models that are experiencing "out of memory" or "low on memory" messages from within IronCAD: IronCAD has been configured to run in "Large Address aware" mode. In this mode, the application is able to take advantage of 3GB of memory instead of the default 2GB allowed by the operating system. To effectively use this Large Address capability the boot.ini file must be modified on your system to include the flag "/3GB". Following is an example of how your boot.ini should appear after the /3GB switch has been added. This example was copied from, and further information regarding this switch may be found at the following web address: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.asp. Warning: Incorrect edits to your boot.ini file may prevent your system from booting entirely. Insure that you have a backup copy of the boot.ini file before editing it. IronCAD LLC claims no responsibility for any damages caused to your system by editing this file. Proceed at your own risk. ====example DEFAULT boot.ini===== [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="????" ====example EDITED boot.ini===== [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="????" /3GB As you can see in the "EDITED" boot.ini section above, the only change made was adding the "/3GB" flag to the bottom line. This is all that is required to make use of that additional gig of memory. Notes: - The boot.ini file is a hidden/system file. To see it you will need to enable the showing of hidden/system files through Tools/Folder Options in Windows Explorer (My Computer). - The boot.ini file is typically a read-only file. You may need to edit its properties and uncheck the "read-only attribute" before you are able to save it. - The boot.ini file may be edited with Notepad found in Start/Programs/Accessories. - Insure that you add the /3GB flag to the [operating systems] entry in the boot.ini, not the [boot loader] entry. - The 3gig limit is a total limit of RAM and Virtual Memory combined. - In addition to a ram limitation, you may also receive "out of memory" errors due to a lack of available space on your "C" drive. IronCAD relies on building temporary files during its normal operation so if it is unable to create those files, it will then tell you that it's out of memory. When encountering an out of memory error, always first insure that you have more than 1 gig of currently available space on your "C" drive, or wherever your %temp% environment variable points to. - The 3gig limit is the total "allocated" memory. When using the windows Task Manager you are viewing the "used" memory. The task manager does not accurately display the information that pertains to this limit. Due to this limitation of the task manager, you may be hitting the 2 or 3 gig limit from within IronCAD, but the task manager may only show that you are using 1.4 gigs of memory. If IronCAD tells you that you are running low on memory, AND you have more than a gig of currently available space on your "C" drive (or wherever your %temp% environment variable points to), then it is safe to assume that you are hitting the memory limit (even if the task manager doesn't reflect this assumption). ============================================================================ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.