X7 Performance-Crashes?


MarkMc
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I had started a plan in x6, opened in x7, crashing all over the place, Hope this bug isn't a cockroach that will outlive us all. Got about 100 hours invested and plan is screwed. Locks up and have to get out, can't save, can't place objects, can't view in 3d. Oh my. Been with Chief for over ten years. This is just awfull. Hope it can be fixed quickly.

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If you have a plan that crashes reproducibly, or even randomly but frequently, it is very useful for us to have. If we can get it to crash in house we can more than likely fix the problem. If you have something like that getting it to our support team is the shortest road to a fix. Don't assume that your crash has been reported. Often crashes are very specific to how you work or the design you have.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

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Just upgraded to x6 and had a few problems, however, thought I would download x7. My plotter will not work. They are saying I need new drivers for the plotter.. However, it was working with 6. Got to get this plan out. I have a Hp design jet 500. Older but was working good. Has anyone got answers. Bought upgraded computer and now it is slower and draggy with X7.

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X7 is out of beta, and still crashing!  It seems to happen the most on dialog box in elevation views.  My Dell XPS laptop running Windows 7 has the crashing problem, but my desktop running Windows 8 runs Chief like a charm.  Makes me think its hardware related.  I merrily upgraded to X7 on my laptop an hour before meeting a customer this morning on a Saturday!  Not a good plan!  Better luck next time.....

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Looks like upgrading big mistake. Bummer, been trying to get my designjet 500 24 to work with the new.update

Have you tried to call HP support on the designjet problem?

 

I Have a 10 year old designjet 110 and I called HP support because I was having some problems with it and they were very helpful. If it is something fairly simple they don't charge you otherwise its a small fee of $35.00. Even on a 10 year old printer it works great with X7. 

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The reply I received from tech support about the crash I was experiencing was coming from video drivers on a few older cards.  They plan to have a fix out this week to solve that issue.  Meanwhile, for this and a multitude of other reasons, I upgraded my portable computer to a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.  Problem solved!  Naturally, the screen is smaller, and you don't get as much to view at one time, but it's perfect for a visit to a client.  I had a wireless display adapter that didn't work on my old laptop, but the Surface connects virtually automatically!  Now I can plug into the clients 72" TV and build there house right in their living room!

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  • 1 month later...

I don't think it is the system, at least nothing else is behaving badly including X6, 2020 (at least no worse than normal) Turbocad, Envisioneer but what do I know.

I'll try a plan in X7 from scratch and see what happens.

I'm wondering if it is some conflict- will pay attention to what else is running to see if I can isolate something.

 

2020 has a utility to delete "temporary files" that is pretty essential when playing with that. I've been using it to try to stay ahead of problems. It's not as through as CCcleaner but has always helped and it's one click.

 

I recall the undo was an issue when X6 first hit the public, this is about the same. The crashes are what spook me. Only one yesterday- same plan- was open for maybe 1/2 hour. Perspective, switch to vector, change layer set, detail from view-poof. Opened and repeat- no problem.

Noticed a few other quirks I'll post separately.

I have been having the same issue for some time now.  I have noticed that when I zoom in and out with my mouse wheel it seems to happen more than not.

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No crashes, but the "slowness" issues continue, especially when zooming in elevation views, using undo-redos, accessing the library, or just switching tabs! It is very unstable/unpredictable at this point and when these things occur, X7 is something to be avoided (if you want to keep your blood pressure in check!).

 

All you can do at this point is contact the folks at Chief and keep complaining.

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I use Windows 8.1 and can't reproduce the slowness issues.

 

We have found that there are an increasing number of side effect crashes associated with software that hooks the OS as a low level. For example Dell has a backup and recovery software that seems to cause the file dialog to crash under certain circumstances. We also saw a crash with some video drivers for some older Intel cards that didn't crash in older versions of Chief. The latest Microsoft compiler that we are using appears to inject more safety checks into the code it generates which may be resulting in some poorly written low level software causing conflicts that didn't occur in the past.

 

This is just a theory, but there seems to be some growing evidence that some add on software such as malware scanners and other things that hook the system at a low level are precipitating some of these problems. The trick is to figure out what the culprit is. There are so many things added on to typical operating systems these days that it is really hard to track things down. I generally run with a very clean OS with minimal extra drivers added on, which may be why I don't see the problems.

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I'm on win 8 not 8.1- crashes have gone but lag persists.

Emptied the undo folders and that helps. I'd cleaned as Perry suggested back a ways- made no difference. Crashes stopped after one of the updates (but I haven't been in those files or used those symbols since).

Background- Logitich mouseware, Ultramon, Stickies (it ain't that), Windows Defender, DisplayLink. 

Chief with a plan and a layout plus 5-6 tabs- occasionally second plan file.

Other progs-Bluebeam, Intellect, Directory Opus, occasionally firefox, open office.

All the same as always. Only thing different is 7

If it's a conflict  mouseware would be my hunch?? May try to disable it if I get free...hahah.

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Perry, I am running with Windows 7. Like yourself probably (and others, too, I suspect), nothing has changed in my work environment to account for the terrible lag I am seeing in X7 except the software itself, which did change significantly (much of the code being rewritten for X7).

 

Dan, when running X6, I have none (NONE!) of these issues (I go back every now and then just to see how good things are with that version). So unless there is "add on software" that knows specifically to "hook onto the system" in a way that ONLY affects X7, well...the problem is much more likely with something in X7.

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Perry,

 

I have an Alienware Area-51 computer running windows 8.1 that started to cause CA to crash a couple of weeks ago. This happened when I was doing a "Save-As".

 

Tech Support traced the problem to Dells Backup and Recovery software " Alien Respawn. I deleted this software and things have been fine ever since.

 

Depending on the Dell model computer you are using the name may be different for the same program.

 

If your not using Dells Backup and Recovery, try deleting the program. What do you have to loose.

 

Jon

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Yes, there is definitely something different about X7. I suspect that one possible difference is that the MS compiler is less tolerant of faulty external code. Which may explain the reason the Dell backup and recovery problem exists. While this seems bad on the surface, if that is truly the case then the fact that older versions of Chief worked better may only be accidental.

 

If the issues are caused by other software in combination with changes to Chief then we can look into how to fix things. The Dell backup and recovery case is interesting because it is an interaction between the dell software and our user interface toolkit library. We are pursuing fixes on two fronts here, but I suspect that the Dell utility is doing something that it shouldn't. It may have worked by accident in X6 or it is possible a change in the toolkit we use caused the problem.

 

For those that are experiencing slowness, especially in saving files, it seems fairly logical that an external program to Chief that is not normally installed by Windows, is the trigger. The actual reason for the slowness may actually be our bug, but without tracking down the cause it is impossible to speculate on how to fix it.

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I'm on win 8 not 8.1- crashes have gone but lag persists.

Emptied the undo folders and that helps. I'd cleaned as Perry suggested back a ways- made no difference. Crashes stopped after one of the updates (but I haven't been in those files or used those symbols since).

Background- Logitich mouseware, Ultramon, Stickies (it ain't that), Windows Defender, DisplayLink. 

Chief with a plan and a layout plus 5-6 tabs- occasionally second plan file.

Other progs-Bluebeam, Intellect, Directory Opus, occasionally firefox, open office.

All the same as always. Only thing different is 7

If it's a conflict  mouseware would be my hunch?? May try to disable it if I get free...hahah.

I also use the Logitech MX mouse control center driver 6.65 driver 5.80.4 it says all updated

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I have stayed with X6 longer than I normally would to keep working existing projects, and have been jumping back and forth between X6 & X7.  I really like X7 and have started new work in it but wow does it move more slowly on just about every aspect of what I do. 

 

My machine is as new as can be, 8.1 windows with maybe a dozen apps added since I have started using it.  I revised a plan drawn in X5 saved it as an X6 and X7  file (I would assume that there should be some difference albeit negligible between the different formats) generated undo’s, redo’s, ortho views, perspective views, moved between tabs, copy, paste, so on.  Everything takes a half second to 2 seconds longer in X7 compared to X6.  Crashes haven't been a problem, maybe a little less with X7.

 

I sure like to see an answer, or better yet a solution.

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The last few upgrades have been so seamless, I just figured X7 would be the same.  

 

I was wrong.  Maybe there's a feature to like, but all I see is slow, slow, slow.  

 

I'm supposing that Chief's code heads are hard at work on this, but I'll probably go back to X6 for a while.  

 

Love the software and willing to put up with an occasional glitch, but I'm sincerely hoping for a solid cure here.

 

For the record, I'm on a Windows 7 machine.  

 

Ernie

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Any kind of slowness that you can find for us is important. Currently, while we are aware of a couple of cases of slowness. However, we are not able to reproduce some of the issues that are being reported. Please work directly with our support team to track down what you are seeing. If we can get to the point of reproducing the problems you are seeing we should be able to do something to correct them.

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Any kind of slowness that you can find for us is important. Currently, while we are aware of a couple of cases of slowness. However, we are not able to reproduce some of the issues that are being reported. Please work directly with our support team to track down what you are seeing. If we can get to the point of reproducing the problems you are seeing we should be able to do something to correct them.

As I said above, it is every aspect, but if you want a specific example lets start with switching between tabs.  Open up 2 identical files in X6 and the same ones in X7 and switch back and forth by clicking the tabs.  On my machine the switch of X6 files is almost instantaneous.  In X7 it takes a second and a half to 2.  Now add a layout file - X6 no discernible difference, X7 2 to 3 seconds.

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Doug,

 

These are not necessarily reproducible events (in the sense that you and others at Chief are demanding), like a reflex in a medical setting. It is (as you and others must surely know by now) more like an infection that is producing a program-wide slowdown. How do you reproduce the kinds of lags being experienced, such a when opening an object, moving between taps, opening a dbx, accessing the library, or zooming even!

 

At this juncture, enough long-term users have reported the exact same symptoms after upgrading to X7 to conclude that the problem is with X7 and the substantial changes that were made to the program by Chief engineers. Chief needs take ownership of this problem and get to work figuring out what they did to unsettle things for so many of its loyal customers.  We have and will continue to cooperate in any way the we can (I have sent in plans, made videos etc.), but at the end of the day the responsibility lies with Chief to figure this one out and arrive at a solution - with or without reproducible events supplied by the users.

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Just a thought, would it not be possible for tech to design some type of standard test model that we could use to help in determining whether the problem is within Chief or not. I know this would not be 100% but may accelerate the identification or at least help as to where to start looking. They could even just add the ability to save/ store your current settings so a quick reset could be done, if nothing changes then you could restore your last settings set. A bit like windows safe mode.

 

Although a bit off subject I'd even like the do/undo to have a visible stored list so I would be able to confirm these actions other than watching for some visual clues in my plan. Photoshop has this feature and it is very useful, you can even select a specific undo from the list. It's not just move back one step at a time.

 

Graham

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Just a thought, would it not be possible for tech to design some type of standard test model that we could use to help in determining whether the problem is within Chief or not. I know this would not be 100% but may accelerate the identification or at least help as to where to start looking. They could even just add the ability to save/ store your current settings so a quick reset could be done, if nothing changes then you could restore your last settings set. A bit like windows safe mode.

 

Although a bit off subject I'd even like the do/undo to have a visible stored list so I would be able to confirm these actions other than watching for some visual clues in my plan. Photoshop has this feature and it is very useful, you can even select a specific undo from the list. It's not just move back one step at a time.

 

Graham

It is within X7 for sure b/c when I put up X6 and X7 on the same computer at the same time, you can see the slowness difference.

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