Custom Layout Issue

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Gary Campbell
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Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Campbell »

Gentlemen...
Very new eCabs user here.

When placing cabinets in custom layout mode, I have noticed what seems to be a black cloud of "mouse trails" as I move the cabinet to its planned location. Screenshot attached, any ideas what I have missed?
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Cab Place.png
Cab Place.png (8.01 KiB) Viewed 7308 times
Gary Campbell
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DanEpps
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by DanEpps »

What are your computer specs? That looks like your computer or video card just doesn't have the "oomph" for eCabinets.
Gary Campbell
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Campbell »

Dan...
Thanks for the reply.

Intel Quad Core (Q6600) @2.4Ghtz
4 Gigs RAM
ATI DUAL X1950 (256meg ddr2 ram each) in Crossfire mode

I would be remiss if I didnt mention OS = Vista, but I do have a version of XPPro sitting here ready to go.
This is a very graphics oriented machine, I was thinking maybe a vieo setting or something like that.
Thanks again
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Gary Puckett
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Puckett »

Pretty sure it's the graphic card. My old system did the same thing. You can still place cabinets in the room just right click then high lite the cabinet and move it with your arrow keys.

Gary
HP Pavilion
Vista home Premium 64bit S. pack 2
AMD Phenom-X4
9850 Quad-Core Processor
6.0GB/Go Memory
1 TB/To Hard Drive
Nividia GeForce 9800 GT
Kenneth Rychlik
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Kenneth Rychlik »

Gary, Somewhere on the ecabinet site there is a link on there with computer spec needs for the program. Dan is pretty quick with the links. HELP DAN!! I had an old slow pc that did the same thing before I upgraded. I went with a refurbished dell from the dell outlet store. I wanted to stay with XP also and that was the easiest way to get it.

I ran turbo cad before and picked up the vectric programs without even trying, but you would be well served doing the training on this program. The time saved on the learning curve would be well worth it.

If you are ever in the houson area I would be happy to help you out with it.

Considering you are a bot guru, maybe we could swap help. lol

I'm not reallly a guru on ecabs, but get around pretty good. Kerry is the guru.

I would lke to see Brady from the bot site and Kerry from the ecab site get together. That would be an amazing team to make this thing fly.

Kenneth
Kenneth Rychlik
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Kenneth Rychlik »

I just remembered Gary, When I had the old pc, I would put the box in the room and place it anywhere. Then highlight it and holding the shift key and both mouse buttons move it around. It make the slow graphics on that pc a little more tolerable.
Kenneth
Gary Campbell
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Campbell »

Thanks for the replies Guys..

Your posts made me remember. It was the video cards.. well actually the settings, not the cards. I had tried out another App last week and had to turn most of the setting back to the Windows basic to allow it to run. All is well now. Thanks for the prompt replies and Have a great Easter.
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DanEpps
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by DanEpps »

One thing to check is hardware acceleration...some cards don't work well with eCabinets if hardware acceleration is turned on for the video card.

The ATI video cards may be good for gaming but not so much for eCabinets or other technical software. Gaming cards rely on DirectX shaders for 3D graphics while technical software uses OpenGL. Most of these cards, yours included, have secondary support for OpenGL (note the specs say "also supports OpenGL").

This is not to say they won't work, just that your results will not be as good as with a workstation-class video card with primary support for OpenGL.
Kenneth Rychlik wrote:Gary, Somewhere on the ecabinet site there is a link on there with computer spec needs for the program. Dan is pretty quick with the links. HELP DAN!! ...
It is right on the home page of the eCabinet Systems site--third from top under Member Services (http://www.ecabinetsystems.com/ecabinet ... system.htm).
Gary Campbell
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Campbell »

Dan...
One of the reasons that I chose these cards was the large number of openGL extensions that are supported. (http://ati.amd.com/developer/sdk/radeon ... rog3D.html )

I am aware of the no vista support and will change this machine back to XPPro in a heartbeat, and change out the video cards also if that is an issue, but as it stands, my system specs are much greater than what is required. Since this is a "homebuilt" machine, there is no problem making it into what I require. Other than my problem above, which was user created, I have seen no issues using eCabs on this machine.

I do anticipate much use of eCabs in the future as we take most of our existing cabinet and furniture files and convert them over to eCabs, so I would appreciate your looking over the link above and steering me in the right direction. Or, if you could steer me to a link that has the listings of the extensions that are required, I would appeciate it.
Gary Campbell
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DanEpps
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by DanEpps »

I wouldn't install XP or change the video card at this point...just keep using it as long as it works for you.

What I referred to is PRIMARY suport for OpenGL, not SECONDARY support. Gaming cards have PRIMARY support for DirectX and SECONDARY support for OpenGL. Workstation-class video cards are the exact opposite--PRIMARY support for OpenGL and SECONDARY support for DirectX.

As I said before, these cards will work but you may see some odd issues pop up at times. Turning hardware acceleration off usually helps. Some users never see any issues with eCabinets and gaming type video cards. Where you will really run into problems is with integrated graphics that use system RAM. You don't have this problem though.

You might play around with the OpenGL settings for your card if the ATI Control Center (Catalyst ?) gives access to those settings. Take a look at the info in this forum for the nVidia Quadro tweak and it should give some insight for the settings to change.
Kerry Fullington
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Kerry Fullington »

Gary,

I would try the Hardware Acceleration as Dan suggested first. Turn it off and see if that corrects the problem then you can bring it back up one notch at a time until the problem occurs. I have two ATI cards and I set the Open GL to run for performance instead of quality.

Kerry
Gary Campbell
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Re: Custom Layout Issue

Post by Gary Campbell »

Dan & Kerry..

Thanks very much for the info. I did a little research on Dans point about the openGl support, primary vs. secondary. Changed my settings to reflect that and was working well.

Then after Kerry's post, I shaded the settings towards performance, with no noticeable difference. Then tried going in the quality direction, which brought back the "ghost trails". The canned "perfomance" settings group works very well. Thanks to you both for steering me in the proper direction, with accurate info all the way.
Gary Campbell
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