Time to Complain

[Kerry Fullington]

What can be done about the Line Drawing Editor? I am not complaining about the way it functions but about the fact that it consistently locks eCabinets down. When using the LDE you must save pretty much after every action or the program locks up. By careful saving I can get one wall elevation done but then you must exit eCabinets, shut down windows and restart everything or you are asking for trouble.

I have been working for four hours to get two wall elevations done. Even being careful I have had to use the Task Manager at least five times to get out of eCabinets. It can take the task manager 10 minutes to shut it down.

I am running a Dell 380
3.6 GB Pentium 4 processor
Windows XP Pro (service pack 3)
Nvidia Qudro FX 4500 with 512 mb onboard
4 GB Ram

This is painful.

Kerry

[Kerry Fullington]

I got this error a couple of times also.

[Joe Dusel]

Can we also complain about how it works?

Personally I think it would be much better if the program saved the line drawing stuff in a file with a different extension. So, if you have a project file such as SmithKitchen.esj the LDE stuff would get saved as SmithKitchen.N.lde, where each page could be saved with a numbered extension (N= 1,2,3,etc). When SmithKitchen.esj is opened the program would automatically look for the SmithKitchen.N.lde file or files in the same directory only when the LDE is selected. When it is selected the file with the first number extension should be opened if there is one.

Ideally I would still prefer some sort of a view port arrangement where the LDE would only show a view of an object whether it's one cabinet or a room full of cabinets. Kind of like a pointer to an object instead of actually copying the object itself. This would allow the actual object to be changed and then the "view" of the object would show the changed image. The current arrangement seems to make copies of everything, which severely bulks up the amount of memory space that is chewed up. Thus the processor starts running at 100% and the memory usage goes way up about 1 Gig.

As an alternative it might be "okay" to unload the project stuff while the LDE is being used. This would be clunky, but much better than how it currently works.

Joe

[Rick Palechuk]

I agree Joe. If the file could be saved as a DXF or similar, then dimensions could be obtained by @utocad style dimensioning tools, that would make it faster and easier to use, and less resource hungry. Also the ability to pull a dimension from anywhere on any line instead of being restricted to the nodes. Now, I realize that machine code is written with everything you do, and maybe that part of it needs to be looked at as the ultimate culprit to the resource usage, but even so, the LDE shouldn't be a pain to use.

[Joe Dusel]

Kerry,

I think you might want to try opening the project file then creating just one elevation and saving it. Then do the same thing for each of the other elevations. Clunky, yes. But I think it might work a bit better for you if you are not stretching the resources by having multiple pages of line drawings in one big file.

Joe

[Damon Nabors]

Kerry,

I would be curious to see if others are having a similar problem. I have not yet experienced that problem and I thought I had seen everything at this point.

[Kerry Fullington]

Damon,

It has actually been better since I took all of the dovetails out of my drawers. (I use negative insets to get proper drawer box sizes but I don't show the dovetails.)

This job file was 33mb before the elevation drawings and is now 64 mb with the two elevations done. Just opening this job in eCabinets can take five minutes.

Joe,

In the past I have saved a job for each elevation. I have created a job with all display parts, appliances, counter-tops, etc. removed to make the job file smaller and used this job for drawings. I have printed each elevation drawing to pdf as I create it then delete it afterwards in the LDE so that I can do the next line drawing. All of this gets the job done but is still too time consuming.

There needs to be some improvement in the LDE. I like the versatility in the LDE but I hate it when it locks the software down. It can take over thirty minutes to get back to work when the software locks.(not to mention the time it takes to save every time you enter a few dimensions for fear of a lockup) This eats up a lot of time when you do all your bids nights and weekends.

In the past I didn't have much need for the LDE but lately everyone wants a full set of drawings for the plumber, the electrician, the countertop people and so on. Automatic dimensioning is looking better and better.

To be fair I know the eCabinets programmers know about all these issues and are working to make them better. I think their main focus now is streamlining eCabinets and making it run faster and jump higher. I just want to bring attention to the LDE problem again.

Kerry

[Rob Perry]

I do not seem to have this issue with the LDE.
I usually will save a seperate job file after deleting unnessasary display objects, lights etc to use for the LDE drawings.

My Comp specs are..

Pentium (R) D
CPU 2.66 ghz
1 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS OC 256 MB
XP Home Service pack 3

[Jon Dieterlen]

Hey Kerry,

I haven't had many problems, only it seems to take longer loading and saving when I have several pages of drawings in the LDE. I do not add any handles and only add a very limited amount of other vendor items such as turnings and corbels. The specialty mouldings,such as rope moulding, are memory hogs.

I draw plan and elevations as well as individual cabinet drawings for each cabinet. One of my most recent jobs had 35-40 cabinets and was 24,000 KB. I guess that would be 24MB??

Don't laugh, but I am running AMD Athlon 64 4000+ w/1GB Ram and ATI radeon x600. It really works pretty well. No real problems.

Maybe you should trying saving a version w/a limited amount of memory hogging items, and using that version for your shop drawings. I know I'm not telling you something you don't already know.

A couple of things I would like to see is in other areas are:

1) the ability to lock the position of permanent shelves and mid rails so the will remain a constant distance from either the top or bottom of the cabinet.
2) the ability to change board stock as well as sheet stock.


Jon

[Joe Dusel]

Well, if we are wishing for stuff, as for the changing of materials it would be nice to have both the board stock and the banding available to change.

Joe

[Kerry Fullington]

Jon,

In the past I have saved stripped down versions to get line drawings and to nest. The only problem with this is that the customer always changes things and then you have to make the same revision in two drawings. Creating and editing the stripped down drawing takes time and that is what my complaint is about "time". I think that the dimensioned line drawings should be a by-product of the main drawing, not an entitiy unto themselves.
Do you have a lot of Part Editor cuts? I am wondering if they are part of the problem.

Rob,

HERE is a link to the job I am working on. If you would, try loading it up and see if the line drawing editor gives you any problems.

[Damon Nabors]

Kerry,

That's a tuff one there. My machine took forever just to open the file and when I tried to rotate the room, it locked up.

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Kerry, you do great work. i was able to open your file and manipulate it in the LDE without any problems but Ichanged a setting on my computer before I did it. I want to see if it helps you out any. The first thing to do is open ecabinets but do not load any jobs. Now, start your task manager and go to applications. Right click on ecabinets and choose "go to process". This will take you directly to the ecabinets.exe in the processes list without having to search the list. Now, right click on the process and choose "set priority" and "realtime". This will force windows to give all the computers resources to ecabinets as it asks for them. Now you can go back in ecabinets, open the job, and see if you have any problems it the LDE. The down side to this trick is that the next time you start ecabinets it will have it's original priority again. Let me know if this helps you any.

[Rob Perry]

Hi Kerry
I opened the File ( Took about 5 minutes to open )
Once open It was a bit slow in Room layout but in LDE it seemed to work normal for me.
I seemed to be able to manupulate the drawings with no difficulty.

Rob

[Justin Melhiser]

Rob
What kind of operating system are you running? Did you follow the steps that Daniel posted or like any time before?

Kerry
I am looking in to your file as well. Daniel is running eCabinets on a Vista machine and I am running it on XP. Daniel has all 7 pages in the LDE as where I do not. We will keep you updated on what we find out. Please try the steps that Daniel posted.