map 2006 hangs up--CRASHES

[msprouffske]

A project has a tiff (aerial photo) attached or an attempt is made to attach an image. When the drawing tries to read the image, a fatal exception is noted and Autodesk closes.

There is a possibility that ESRI'S Arcview is the culprit since that application creates a .rrd file in the folder where the photos reside.

Anyone have a similar experience or is there an Autodesk employee watching who can address this issue?

The photos are in a network folder accessed by both Autodesk and ESRI applications.

Tuesday, 15 Nov.: Thanks to those who responded. I think this is probably an issue for Autodesk since I have plenty of memory and a reasonably hot machine. One would hope someone at Autodesk is monitoring this board.

[Wanderer]

A project has a tiff (aerial photo) attached or an attempt is made to attach an image. When the drawing tries to read the image, a fatal exception is noted and Autodesk closes.

There is a possibility that ESRI'S Arcview is the culprit since that application creates a .rrd file in the folder where the photos reside.

Anyone have a similar experience or is there an Autodesk employee watching who can address this issue?can you give us a screenshot of the error or the error number?

I typically don't attach tiff files very often, hopefully someone who does on a regular basis can chime in.

[Jmurphy]

A "fatal exception" error or crash is most likely caused by the operating system and not the application. Things to look at are RAM first unless you have plenty don't even think about attaching tif files in MAP. Second check for all SP both in MAP and the OS. Third check the drivers for the display/video card. Last check the network connections, it may be dropping out of the network while trying to load the image.

[jappell]

I have had the problem with map 2006 crashing when loading a aerial tif file. After reading your post I went and tried to load one of my aerial tif and sure enough AutoCAD Map 2006 crashed. After playing around by trying to load it different ways with it crashing 3 more times, I tried loading one of my Mr. SID's and it loaded right a way. Then I went back and loaded one of the tifs again and it loaded in AutoCAD as well. I also use ArcGIS. I wish that map 2006 was as stable in loading large aerials as ArcGIS is. I have 1GB of RAM in a pretty nice workstation and AutoCAD crashes all the time on me. I have to make sure that I don't have any other program running when I'm in map or my chances of crashing increase tremendously. I have no idea what makes the difference between loading or crashing when trying to load the aerial tifs. Within in the last 5 min it did both. I would contact AutoCAD as you are not alone in this matter.

Sorry,
Joan

[djahnke]

Can't say that I have solution for you, but we use tiff files on a daily bases with Map 3D 2006 and never have an issue. Our tiffs can be over 250MEG. I would say make sure you have all your services packs and OS updates as stated in another post. I work for a survey company in Northern BC Canada and our systems are Dell Precision 470's and they handle the files quite nicely.

[rayh]

General Image Performance



1. When working with images on screen, set image quality to draft:



i. From the Map menu, select Image>Options (or type MAPIOPTIONS at the commandline)

ii. On the General tab, change Display Quality to Draft. You’ll probably want to change it back to High when plotting.



2. Adjust Memory Options



i. From the Map menu, select Image>Options (or type MAPIOPTIONS at the commandline)

ii. On the Memory tab, ensure a temporary file location is specified and the temp file exists. This is the location to use for your temporary swap file. Autodesk Map 3D uses this temporary swap file when the memory limit has been exceeded. Be sure the specified drive has enough free space to store these large files

iii. Adjust the Memory Limit to the default setting. This should be about 25% of the total physical memory to a maximum of 10 MB. The memory limit is the amount of RAM that Autodesk Map 3D will use before creating a swap file.

Note: Do not set this value any higher then 25% of the total RAM. Increasing the memory limits too much may degrade your system’s performance. Be sure to leave enough RAM for your operating system and other applications.

Below is some additional information on memory limits (note Autodesk Raster Design is mentioned as the product. Autodesk Map 3D uses the Raster Design image engine so all information below also applies to Autodesk Map 3D 2006.)



The Memory Limit setting (located on the Memory tab of Raster Design Options) reserves a specific amount of memory for when Image data is being processed or rendered on the screen. The Memory Limit is NOT the amount of memory reserved to load the entire image. This value is the amount of memory required to load a band or stripe of the image for processing. The Memory Limit setting is proportional to the image size; however, this factor is not a 1:1 ratio. The memory limit should be set to a small fraction of the image size. In general, image file size is not a good measure of how much memory is required to load an image due to the great variation in compression schemes and other information (non-pixel data) stored in the file on disk. It is important to set the Raster Design Memory Limit value to an appropriate setting. Setting this value too low or too high will degrade performance.

There are several ways to determine which value to use:

Option 1: Choose the “Default” button. Simply choose the “Default” button on the Memory tab of the Raster Design Options. The system typically sets a value equal to 25% of the available physical RAM, up to a maximum of 10 megabytes (MB), but other factors apply in some conditions.

Option 2: Manually choose a default value. Typical usage will not require more than 20 MB.

Option 3: Manually calculate the required value. First, choose the widest dimension of the largest image you would typically be using. Then, use the formula appropriate for your image type below. The result of the equation is the memory required in bytes.

- Bitonal: (Widest Dimension + 512) / 8) * 1024

- Grayscale and Paletted images: (Widest Dimension + 256) * 512

- RGBA and DEM: (Widest Dimension + 128) * 1024

Other things to consider:

* The Memory Limit is reserved memory for Raster Design to process a portion of the image. The Memory Limit is NOT memory reserved to load the entire image.

* Increasing the Memory Limit value above what is necessary will not increase the performance of Raster Design.

* Setting the limit of memory above the necessary amount may decrease the performance of AutoCAD.



* Setting the limit of memory below the necessary amount will degrade the performance or Raster Design.



* If there are multiple images loaded in the drawing, the setting should be set for the largest image. Each image is processed individually. As long as there is sufficient memory for the largest image, all smaller images will have enough memory to be processed as well.



3. Verify Windows paging file is sufficient.

i. From the Windows Control Panel, select System.

ii. Select the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under Performance.

iii. Select the Advanced tab and under Virtual Memory, click Change. Make any adjusts required.



4. Enable hardware acceleration for graphics. See the following article for details: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?id=2894563&linkID=2786831&siteID=123112



Plotting



Configure the plotter driver to process print documents in the plotter or in computer. Typically you would want the plotter to perform the processing. However, depending on the computer and plotter resources; it may be beneficial to have the processing done by the computer. If after making the above suggestions, you still notice an excessive plotting time, change the processing to computer if it’s currently in plotter or change it plotter if currently in computer.

This functionality is part of the Windows system driver for the printer and may be in a different location depending on manufacturer and driver or plotter version. For more information about this feature, refer to the documentation for your plotter, or contact the manufacturer for support.

For Hewlett Packard optimized drivers that support this feature (for example, 1055CM), follow these steps:

i. On the Start menu (Windows), click Start > Settings > Printers.

ii. Select the printer, right-click, and click Printing Preferences on the shortcut menu.

iii. On the Advanced tab, change the setting for Process Document to In Computer/In plotter.

Note: You must close and restart Autodesk Map 3D for these settings to take effect.



I am working with .5-4.6GB Mr. SID files in both 3D Map 2006 and ArcMap 9.1 and found the same problems before yesterday when I reset the virtual RAM to a much lower setting than I had been running prior to yesterday. I went from having my machine lock up for ten to thirty minutes to breezing through zooms and pans with only a short (ten to twenty seconds) delay. I will be replacing this computer after the first and I hope to improve on this after I do.

Ray....