Hdp 7.0

[coogan]

I have been using HDP 6.0 for 2 years, and feel I am somewhat proficient with the tool. I just upgraded to HDP 7.0, and have been experiencing the following problems:

* When I am in a render view, if I hover over any toolbar button, the tool tip that tries to display throws the program into an extended, lengthy re-rendering phase. It eventually comes out of its "coma", but this is aggravating and *slow*. I've tried changing some of the rendering settings, but so far have not stumbled onto the one(s) that fix it. This re-rendering problem is especially prevalent if I use the mouse move tool to rotate the view, then want to click on a toolbar button.

* Render views seem to regenerate much more often than they did in HDP 6.0. I have a decent graphics adapter (ATI FireGL V3100), so I wouldn't expect rendering problems. Yes, I have plenty of memory and the latest video drivers (updated/released within the past few days). Suffice it to say, HDP Pro 6.0 works much better.

* I am working with a plan that I ported from the older version. Seems to have ported reasonably well, except that there is a room that keeps "losing" its name. The master bath in the plan won't keep the name (or the default materials, either) if I press F12, to rebuild floors/walls/ceilings. There is a box window in the room, but otherwise I can't see anything unusual about it.

The re-rendering problem is the most troublesome. Is there a way to make it keep from redrawing the view over and over and over ... ? I can't believe others are having this problem, because if they were, no one would want to use the program.

Thanks for the help.

[Kilgore Trout]

For your rendering problems, one setting that you might try playing with is the "H/W Backdrop". I have heard that this will cause problems for some video cards and I believe it was added in HD Pro 7.

For your room problem, have you downloaded and installed the latest update? I'm not actually sure if a newer one is available yet because I could not find one on the web site. Try using the download program updates from the Help menu of the program to see if their is a newer version available.

If this does'nt help, I would recommend calling Tech Support.

[coogan]

Here is a followup to my post:

* Turning off H/W Backdrop seems to improve operation. I have noticed that it re-renders if I hover over a toolbar button, but it doesn't go into that long "coma" I observed yesterday. However, I have worked on designs (with HDP 6.0) that take more than 30 seconds to render, so ... I am not sure this is a complete solution.

* I was curious when the HDP 7.0 installation installed ATI Catalyst when I first inserted the CD. Subsequently, I went to the ATI site and installed upgraded video drivers, and in the process of installing new FireGL drivers, the Catalyst application was removed. I wonder if it left behind artifacts that are affecting my performance? Apparently the FireGL video boards don't use Catalyst. (Make a note of this for the future.)

* I removed the box window, and the master bath seemed to behave. I reinserted the box window, and everything still looked good. When I positioned the box window where it needed to be, one side wall happened to coincide with an attic wall (because there's a roof at the base of the box window), and voila! the room name disappeared. I turned off "No Room Def" for the attic wall, and now the room name behaves normally again.

[dgsowers]

I just installed HDP 7.0 on my new ThinkPad T60P which is the workstation model with the ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 video card. I believe this is optimized for CAD applications. I am having the exact symptoms that the OP, coogan described. Everything operated fine on my 3 year old Fujitsu laptop on HDP 6.0 and 7.0. Now with the new ThinkPad, the software is unusable for Render. After the first render which takes an appropriate amount of time, you can rotate around just fine and it's fast. If you mouse over another icon to select a different render move function, it stalls for maybe 30 seconds, then starts slowly regenerating the surfaces and finally comes back just as described above. I haven't even selected the new tool, just the mouse over that would normally display the name of the icon in a flyout box. What is going on?

[RootFarm]

Sounds like it could also be the mouse driver. Try a generic Microsoft driver, if you are running someone else's driver.

[dgsowers]

The following was posted over on the Chief Talk Forum and I thought I would paste it below as the software I'm running is HDP 7.0 not Chief.


There are known issues of tooltips and rendering on a FireGL. Currently, our best advice is to turn off tooltips, which can be done in the preferences. As far as we know, it's only an issue on those cards.
__________________
Keith Jeffery
Software Engineer
--
Chief Architect, Inc.

Reply posted by dgsowers:
Thanks Keith, you got me back working again. Have some interesting things to report on this:

Turning Display Tool Tips off in the Toolbar Customization does allow the program to Render as it should. I am still learning this software, so Tool Tips is a necessity for me. I have to turn these off prior to any Renders.

It will not Render on battery power...I must be plugged in. With Tool Tips on or off this makes no difference, it is a separate issue. It will stall on regenerating surfaces and task manager shows Program Not Responding with 99% system idle. I suppose its in the video card? You can plug the laptop back in and the Render completes immediately... Very Weird!!!

Please tell me there is a fix for this. I just spent $2400 on a top-of-the-line T60P IBM workstation laptop that is optimized and guaranteed to run most of the professional CAD packages. I can't believe this can't run your software and my 3 year old Fujitsu laptop does a better job. Please Help.