Revit 2011 Status bar insanity

[Wes Macaulay]

Does anyone else have a problem in 2011 where the status bar looks like it's trying to refresh itself, but does so veeery sloowwly and does this bizarre little dance where the all the buttons on this bar dance all over the place?

Revit is rendered unusable for perhaps 15-30s while this is all going down. Then it's done and life carries on...

[patricks]

Does anyone else have a problem in 2011 where the status bar looks like it's trying to refresh itself, but does so veeery sloowwly and does this bizarre little dance where the all the buttons on this bar dance all over the place?

Revit is rendered unusable for perhaps 15-30s while this is all going down. Then it's done and life carries on...

Yep, happens to me most mornings when I first open the program. I just let do it's "thang" and move on. It's only a minor annoyance.

[TreyK]

Hi Wes and Patrick--

I haven't seen this behavior before. Are there any steps you can describe which will reliably make it happen? Would you both be so kind as to send me a small journal of a session in which it has happened?

Thanks very much,

Trey

Trey Klein
Revit Architecture QA
trey.klein@autodesk.com

[iru69]

I've seen this as well, but not recently... can't remember if it disappeared after getting a new computer, or changing display settings and/or video card driver... in any case, my guess is it's related to the video card.

[Wes Macaulay]

Hi Trey -- I did post an SPR during the beta for this problem, but my email reports back from the beta gave me a number (like SPR:0405), but not the associated problem description - but search for "status bar" and that should yield some results.

I'll get a journal to you next time I see it happening. Most of us using Revit 2011 are using Win7 x64 with ATI Radeon cards... I'll test using an XP box too.

Edit: so it turns out it's just two computers running Win7 x64 with ATI Mobility Radeon 4670's that are exhibiting the behaviour... we have a desktop with a Radeon card and it's fine. The XP boxes running Radeons are also fine.

[patricks]

Update on this issue

Had a SR open last week, and was able to capture a couple of short videos when the status bar "dance" happened. I uploaded both and also the journal file from that session to support last Thursday.

On Friday the guy handling my SR at ADSK actually called me at my office. He pretty much said the factory can't figure it out, and therefore they have no fix for it. They can't find any clues in the journal file as to why this issue may be happening. And yes I did include the specific time indexes in the journal file of when each item was selected that prompted the "dance" behavior.

And yes this is on R2011, WU1 installed.

Guess we're just stuck with this one. :(

[Wes Macaulay]

Same story here. WU1 helped a lot - it cut down the time we have to wait to start working again, but it's a minute a day we get to watch Revit have an epilepsy attack!

This is just two of our Win7 x64 computers - Dell XPS Studio 16's with Mobility Radeon 4670s. The desktop Win7 x64 box is running a Radeon 4670 as well with no issues.

[iru69]

Still seeing that here as well. Any ideas how widespread this issue is? I.e., is every computer affected by this or just certain video cards?

On the bright side, it doesn't seem to happen as often as it did, and the "dances" are shorter.

I have a nVidia Quadro FX580 video card. Have tried a bunch of different drivers. About to install 258.96.

[patricks]

dang, they release new driver versions so often it's difficult to keep up lol

Latest we have on our server is 258.49 which I thought I had installed on my system, but actually I have 197.03 installed for my FX580, which is the most recent driver recommended by Autodesk for Win7 x64 according to this link: http://www.autodesk.com/us/revit/revit_graphics_hardware_list_June02.html

Maybe I will try 258.96

[iru69]

KAHN!!! 258.96 has not been good to me... two crashes-where-I-lose-all-my-work just since install yesterday while not doing anything out of the ordinary.

Going back to 258.49.

About to install 258.96.

[barrie.sharp]

I had the same all the time but forgot about it when it stopped. I had updated the graphics driver since so that may play a part in it.

[sthedens]

KAHN!!!

Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in Space.

[patricks]

a ha, a few Trek fans in here I see. :mrgreen:

[Wes Macaulay]

a ha, a few Trek fans in here I see. :mrgreen:
Ya - I had a good LOL at that one too

[patricks]

Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon makes me LOL... he will always be Doc Brown to me :p

[barrie.sharp]

Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon makes me LOL... he will always be Doc Brown to me :p
Who's Doc Brown? ;)

[iru69]

Nvidia Quadro driver 259.12 was released yesterday. Let's see how that one goes.

All my Trekkie knowledge is based on Seinfeld and ESPN's Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy).

[iru69]

Back to the Future of course!

Who's Doc Brown? ;)

[barrie.sharp]

Back to the Future of course!
I hope you noticed the wink but..... Oh yeah, him!!! Did he have a skate board in Star Trek too? Isn't he too short to be a Klingon? They should of gotten the crazy guy with the hair to do it!

Still kidding BTW! Would like to know the statistic for Revit users that like Trek, start a poll.

So, Kirk or Picard [Light blue touch paper and stand back!]

[sbrown]

Nvidia Quadro driver 259.12 was released yesterday. Let's see how that one goes.

All my Trekkie knowledge is based on Seinfeld and ESPN's Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy).

How has this driver worked for you, I'm getting it now with the older(autodesk certified drivers)

[hypnox1]

I've noticed this on a few of our laptops in office as well. We have not done any extensive training in Revit 2011 platform yet to see if this is happening on the training machines as well. Thus far this has happened to the following laptops:

MBP w/ GeForce GT330m
Asus w/ GeForce 9600m
HP w/ ATI Mobility HD4800

All of these computers have SP1 for Revit on them as well. All 3 are running W7. Once we get to testing the training machines we will get a broader range of graphics solutions and OS's to see if the problem is persistent among Vista and XPx64 machines as well.

I have also contacted Autodesk about this one and they seem to be pretty confused as to what is causing the issue. I am hoping it is a minor nuisance that is resolved with a SP or next years release.

[patricks]

I've noticed this on a few of our laptops in office as well. We have not done any extensive training in Revit 2011 platform yet to see if this is happening on the training machines as well. Thus far this has happened to the following laptops:

MBP w/ GeForce GT330m
Asus w/ GeForce 9600m
HP w/ ATI Mobility HD4800

All of these computers have SP1 for Revit on them as well. All 3 are running W7. Once we get to testing the training machines we will get a broader range of graphics solutions and OS's to see if the problem is persistent among Vista and XPx64 machines as well.

I have also contacted Autodesk about this one and they seem to be pretty confused as to what is causing the issue. I am hoping it is a minor nuisance that is resolved with a SP or next years release.

What they told me is that they have no idea what's causing it, and therefore have nothing in the works for a fix.

[hypnox1]

What they told me is that they have no idea what's causing it, and therefore have nothing in the works for a fix.

This may even be true. If you recall from the 2010 release the lovely Error 17 licensing issue that was persistent until SP1 came out and caused numerous headaches. Initially Autodesk did not know what was causing this problem either. It ended up taking the MSCONFIG files from a large enough user pool to find a common denominator, in the OS configuration as it turned out, that was causing the conflict and the error to begin with. Prior to figuring it out the answer was "we don't know" and the solution was a multi-part deleting and editing of different files related to network licensing that ended with "if all else fails, format the computer". Sadly, the format option wasn't guaranteed to resolve the issue either.

[patricks]

Whoa nelly! Just had this happen on my machine when trying to zoom/pan and deactivate a view, and it must have sat there for at LEAST 30 seconds acting up. This is on SP1 too! But then again this is also the largest project file we've ever had, hovering between 55-80 MB.

[iru69]

Quadro 259.12 has worked very well so far in general (no crashes), though I've still seen a few short instances of "status bar insanity", but nothing regular.


How has this driver worked for you, I'm getting it now with the older(autodesk certified drivers)

[johnf.77896]

Hello, this is happening on 1 out of 3 laptops here. 2 that is doesnt happen to are vista 32 bit and the one that it is affecting is a win7 64 bit. It happens when you select something to copy and when you paste it, whamo it jumps around but only for a few seconds. I would guess it is a cross between 64 bit and grahpics cards. Any fixes yet?

Thanks
John Fleming
GMK Architecture, inc.

[Wes Macaulay]

No - it continues! And it's pretty stupid...

[kefix]

Hello all. New guy here.

I've messed with my own status bar problem and discovered a work-around I don't like, but it does work.

The status bar does not refresh for me in full-screen window mode. This effectively make the status bar unusable. I updated my video driver (NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 8.17.11.????) and software (update 1 for Revit Structure 2011). I noticed better performance when I windowed Revit below full screen and then went back to full screen.

After some experimenting, I discovered that the software works fine as long as I don't use it in the lower 1/4" of my 1920x1080 screen.

This may be useful information for others. I'll add it to my support request with Autodesk.

[kefix]

Update

It appears that if I set my screen resolution to 1600x1024 from within the nVidia Control Panel, this is sufficient to reset the Status Bar and restore the system performance.

Note: I didn't actually accept the screen setttings; I merely applied the settings and then let the settings acceptance timer run out.

This is not something I want to do every day, but it provided an interesting insight into the problem.

[barrie.sharp]

Update

It appears that if I set my screen resolution to 1600x1024 from within the nVidia Control Panel, this is sufficient to reset the Status Bar and restore the system performance.

Note: I didn't actually accept the screen setttings; I merely applied the settings and then let the settings acceptance timer run out.

This is not something I want to do every day, but it provided an interesting insight into the problem.
Good investigating! :beer:

[sfoulkes]

Has anyone had any further insight into this issue? My Revit status bar "dances" after every single command I perform, essentially freezing the program for up to five seconds each time. I am running Windows XP 32 with a nVidia Quadro FX 1700 video card updated to version 259.12. No other computer in my office is experiencing the same issue as I am.

[Wes Macaulay]

This still continues to be a problem with SP2. In fact, it seems like it's gotten worse! I revived my SR on the problem, and sent a journal in where Revit went black (!!) and it nearly brought down the system while it was having its epileptic seizure.

Autodesk suggested, upon seeing the journal, that the refresh problems with the status bar could be related to .NET. Because I'm on Windows 7 (which ships with .NET 3.5), there's not much you can do to refresh .NET without doing a repair of the OS as a whole. So I've downloaded and installed .NET 4 and I'll let y'all know if this helps :beer:

[ron.sanpedro]

This still continues to be a problem with SP2. In fact, it seems like it's gotten worse! I revived my SR on the problem, and sent a journal in where Revit went black (!!) and it nearly brought down the system while it was having its epileptic seizure.

Autodesk suggested, upon seeing the journal, that the refresh problems with the status bar could be related to .NET. Because I'm on Windows 7 (which ships with .NET 3.5), there's not much you can do to refresh .NET without doing a repair of the OS as a whole. So I've downloaded and installed .NET 4 and I'll let y'all know if this helps :beer:

Wes, if it does, can you also point us at the .NET 4.0 install as well. And I guess DLL hell has just changed it's name, the problem still exists. Gotta love Windows ;)

Gordon

[patricks]

Would like to know about this as well. I hate this dancing around ****. If .NET 4 is out, why hasn't it been rolled out for automatic update yet?

[jmc73]

If by "status bar" you're talking about the thing that, if you right click, you can dock at bottom (or top), then I had that issue in 2010 and the only solution I found that actually WORKS is to dock it at the bottom.

After I executed any command, it would duplicate several times and push the screen down until I docked it at the bottom. I have no idea how to fix it and I don't prefer the dock at bottom choice, but you get used to it.

If that's not what you're talking about then carry on .. nothing to see here :)

[eric.piotrowicz]

Thats one being discussed, however dock at bottom isn't always a final solution. If fact there are several little tricks that can resolve it but none seem to permanently eliminate the problem and none of them are anything more than workarounds at this point. It would be nice to see a real fix sometime soon.

[jmc73]

Thats one being discussed, however dock at bottom isn't always a final solution. If fact there are several little tricks that can resolve it but none seem to permanently eliminate the problem and none of them are anything more than workarounds at this point. It would be nice to see a real fix sometime soon.
Well, I used that workaround for an entire project and never saw that issue again.
Like I said, I don't like it ... but I like the flickering status bar less and would LOVE to see a permanent solution to this annoyance ;)

[Wes Macaulay]

Wes, if it does, can you also point us at the .NET 4.0 install as well. And I guess DLL hell has just changed it's name, the problem still exists. Gotta love Windows ;)

Gordon
Weeeeeelll the downloadable components of .NET 4 are easy enough to find and download -- but only on my machine has it seemed to help. We tried another machine in the office that was having serious grief with this problem (made MUCH worse by SP2! Grrrr!!) and installing .NET 4 caused Revit to error out on loading. So no solution here, in my opinion!

Anyhow, .NET 4 is working on my machine and I'll let people know if it's helped this problem out. I'm going back and forth with Adesk on this SR. Stay tuned.

[Wes Macaulay]

It appears that .NET 4 doesn't kill off this behaviour. It just happened again this morning :(

I should note that the problem seems to only afflict Win 7 machines. (Our XP machines have that wretched Options Bar jumpiness, which is worse)

[patricks]

It appears that .NET 4 doesn't kill off this behaviour. It just happened again this morning :(

I should note that the problem seems to only afflict Win 7 machines. (Our XP machines have that wretched Options Bar jumpiness, which is worse)

My Win7 box has dancing status bar AND jumping options bar! However the options bar only jumps in projects that have linked Revit files when the file is first opened and the first object is selected. After that it's fine.

I sat here banging my keyboard for what seemed like nearly a minute this morning as I was trying to dimension something, picked the wrong line, dancing status bar, tried to escape, more dancing, tried to pick again and again picked the wrong line, more dancing, yadda yadda yadda :banghead:

[Wes Macaulay]

I find that this happens more when I have a pile of views open. If just one or two, no problem... shouldn't be this way, though.

[dfriesen]

My Win7 box has dancing status bar AND jumping options bar! However the options bar only jumps in projects that have linked Revit files when the file is first opened and the first object is selected. After that it's fine.
Same here - I've tried docking the Option bar at the bottom, but that didn't help - I got something like 3 - 4 empty bars at the bottom, and 1 or 2 at the top. Since then, I leave the Options at the top, and when I first open a model, I select an object in the drawing window, then a view in the Project Browser, and that seems to settle things down. Hopefully they'll get that fixed next time around.