Freezing/crashing

[Justin Rank]

What gives with this program...Crash, freeze, processing, crash, freeze......lost progress....lost time......ARRRRR! What kind of processing power do I need. I have lots of memory, and ram, and my graphics card isn't that bad. Just tired of this. I have been working on a small kitchen for 4 days now.

[Kerry Fullington]

Justin,

Post your computer specs
Processor
System Ram
Graphics card and amount of on-board ram
Operating system

Can't help you with the info you posted

Kerry

[Justin Rank]

XP media edition,

[Kerry Fullington]

Justin,

I would add more system ram. XP can eat up 1 gig and I think Dean told me eCabinets can use 2 gig,

Your graphics card I think is a weak point also. From what I read quickly the ATI cards with "Hyper Memory Use system Ram as well as the on-board ram. Your 128 MB Card will have only have 64mb on-board and "Steals 64mb from the system ram which also hurts your performance. You didn't list your processor but I would want at least 2.4 ghz.

Dan Epps also has some tips for tweaking your virtual memory to get better results.

Have you looked at the recommended system page on the ecabinets site? It will give you some idea of what you need.

eCabinets needs a lot of computer.

You can post your job also if you want. we can take a look at it and see if there is any reasion for it to slow your system down.

Kerry

[Justin Rank]

Going to do this asap. I also run ArtCAM pro, which could use a bit more oooomph to work correctly. I have enough software on this computer to melt most computers. Thanks for your help....Justin

[Kerry Fullington]

Justin,

Visit with Dan Epps on this board. He is really up on this stuff and probably would have some good recommendations.

Kerry

[Nick M Singer]

Sounds like eCabs working normally to me!!

[DanEpps]

Sounds like eCabs working normally to me!!

With the computer you have, Nick is right on track. You really need a workstation-class computer for eCabinets.

Kerry is right about more RAM--eCabinets needs a LOT. If your system will hold it, I would install 4GB. Kerry is close on the video card memory. ATI Hypermemory has the amount shown onboard but "steals" the same amount from the operating system, so your 1GB RAM is immediately reduced to 768MB.

In addition, Radeon cards with SE in the name use a 64bit memory interface instead of a 128bit interface. For example, the X300 has a 128bit interface and the X300SE has a 64bit interface. This means the card effectively halves the throughput as opposed to the nonSE model.

HyperMemory (“HM”) is a technology that simulates a 256 MB video card by using part of the system’s RAM memory as video memory: 256 MB HyperMemory video cards have 128 MB of video memory and “steal” 128 MB from the main system RAM. TurboCache technology from nVidia uses the same idea.

Another thing is that you say you have XP Media Edition. Do you mean XP Media Center? Make sure you are not running Media Center (its just a front end for XP) as it robs resources from the system.

Keep this in mind. By the time you replace the video card with one that is capable, add more memory, etc, you will have invested quite a bit in a system that still won't provide great performance with eCabinets. You would fare better is you invested in a true workstation-class computer. The Dell outlet has a number of Precision Workstation T3500 systems for between $700 and $999. Any of these would work great for eCabinets.

Dell Outlet

Select Precision Workstations in the "Stockrooms" dropdown.

Here is the link to the article that Kerry referenced about setting virtual memory for eCabinets performance: http://www.ecabworld.com/TrainingMain.aspx (the article, titled "Setting Virtual Memory", is on the second page of files.

[Rick Deskins]

First off, Have you updated the video card drivers to the lastest and greatest? Also, what is your grid settings for the room?

[Justin Rank]

First off, Have you updated the video card drivers to the lastest and greatest? Also, what is your grid settings for the room?

Not sure if I am updated, I just got the CD 2 weeks ago. Not sure about the grid settings also. By making them larger, will it help the processing?

[Rick Deskins]

By lastest video card drivers, I mean did you go to ati's website and download the lastest video card driver for your card.

statrt here -> http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

As far as grid settings in the room. I generally use a Grid of 10", Snap of 10", and Size of 100. The larger the size the more work it causes your video card to do.

[Peter Unger]

What gives with this program...Crash, freeze, processing, crash, freeze......lost progress....lost time......ARRRRR! What kind of processing power do I need. I have lots of memory, and ram, and my graphics card isn't that bad. Just tired of this. I have been working on a small kitchen for 4 days now.

I feel your pain Justin. I experience the same problems with freezing and crashing. Although, I can finish small jobs without incidence, I can only do large jobs if I split it into 2 job files. Irritating, but that's all I can do aside from buying a super computer.

I believe that the system that I am running meets or exceeds the recommended system on ecabs web site. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me why I have problems with crashing with the system that I am using.

Windows XP professional
Dell precision workstation 390, Pentium 4, 3GHz processor, 160GB hard drive (I've only used 33GB of hard drive space)
4GB RAM, DDR PC25300
virtual memory set at 3067-4092
video card- NVIDIA QuadroFX 3500 256MB (tried using a tweak posted on a different thread- made presentations go blank)
all drivers up to date

I'm not computer savvy, but the way I see it, this should be robust enough to handle ecabs. On occasion, after a crash, I will walk away from my computer to cool off and when I return I see a message something like this: Internal hoops error. Ran out of memory. Same message I was receiving when I was running 2GB of RAM.

I love the capabilities of the software but the problem with crashing has always been a major challenge.

Justin, would love to hear how you have made out since your last post.

[Kerry Fullington]

Peter,

Post one of your jobs that is giving the Out of Memory error.

Do you have a lot of line drawings saved on this job?

Are you working on this job for long periods of time without re starting Windows?

Kerry

[Leo Graywacz]

I would say the main problem is you only have 1GB pf physical memory installed in the system. By the time the computer is booted up and everything grabs its require pc of memory real estate there is nothing left over to run large programs. That means you are using the virtual memory and that is sooooooo sloooooow. The program might not be crashed, just chugging away within the VM. Put as much RAM as you can in the machine. It will make a huge difference. The video card will make a big difference when you are moving things around, but when it is rendering it is mostly the computer speed and memory allocated to it.

[Kerry Fullington]

Peter,

Did you check your Grid Settings as Rick suggested for Justin. That can make a big difference.

Kerry