Hello all,

 we are fighting some "strange" disease of CATIA.

Straight to facts:

machines are running:

Win XP Pro sp2 - 64bits
Win XP Pro sp3 - 32bits

CATIA R18 SP6 - on all machines.

Relatively machines are:
Dell T5400 - 64bits
Dell Precision 490 - 32 bits

Video adapter: NVidia quadro FX4600
========================================
Symptoms:

 People are working with big assemblies (cnext.exe uses upt ot 2gb of memory) and almost randomly CATIA closes without any notification. No "click ok to terminate"...nothing. Just "bang" and it's gone

 We were looking into this issue for a few days. analyzing logs.. googleing and so on and so forth. And noticed a bit of logic in those crashes. Mostly they occur when Catia has something to do with it's window. Resize...refresh...

 I asked some of my friends at Dassault for an advice. They pointed to me that we should look into possible memory conflicts with GDI objects.

We tried to apply appropriate fixes from Microsoft:

 for 32 bits:
 KB 926255
 (MS06-075)
 KB 893803
 KB 319740

 for 64 bits:
 KB903648
 KB911021

 But it's not really helping. since for 32 bits the suggested fixes from Microsoft are included into SP3 which is installed on those machines and they are still crashing.

 Yesterday we also updated the Nvidia drivers to the latest Performance drivers form Nvidia site. Still crashing.

 Can anyone suggest how to get to the root of the problem?) may be someone already experienced something like this? Any advice how to reproduce a crash following certain steps?

  Any input is appreciated!!
Thank you!

1. check on options/General/"Trigger Memory Warning at 90%" to monitor memory; And if possible, use "perfmon.msc" monitor page file.

2. set options/General/Display/Performance/3D Accuracy to 0.5 or higher before open large assembly

3. Open sub-assembly of a large assembly one by one.

4. Use another CATIA version, such as R19SP3, R18 looks ...

We experienced some problems similar to that in R17 when opening drawings and it was directly related to the video driver.

Look to see what the latest Dassault approved driver is for that card.

We experienced some problems similar to that in R17 when opening drawings and it was directly related to the video driver.

Look to see what the latest Dassault approved driver is for that card.

In my past experience with many CAD & CAM systems, it has been mostly the video drivers.

A certified Video card and certified Driver for that card is always the best course.

 

www.nvidia.com/object/dassault_certified_drivers.html

 

www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

I've been seeing the same problem. I have V5R18SP8 on a new machine - Dell T7400 and Nvidia FX3700 card and XP Pro 64.

I get crashes of Catia and sometimes a complete black window with large red triangles moving across it (this is the model display window of catia and not the icons around the side). I upgraded to the latest graphics drivers and I certainly get less crashes than before but the problem isn't fixed.

With the old driver it would crash when opening a drawing if you already had a 3d part open. I was wondering if it was to do with openGL. For me it always comes when switching between 2d and 3d. I also get a lot of flashing of the Catia window just after closing models like a screen refresh. There is another identical machine in my office and that behaves exactly the same.

It could also be a memory leak as you suggest - I wasn't able to open 20 drawings at once without it crashing (I don't seem to be able to get much above 10) - this is something my old 32bit machine could do with ease.

My old machine had an older Nvidia card on XP32 with the same level of catia and I had no problems with that. I've just been waiting for newer graphics drivers to come out hoping that will cure the problem.

Pete

I have resolved similar problems for several customers by following these steps:

1. Refer to the Dassault-certified Windows workstation table, found at URL http://www.3ds.com/support/hardware-certification/windows-certified-workstations/

2. The *latest* graphics device driver level may not be the best option. Instead, use the *certified* graphics device driver level shown in the table, or use the *recommended* driver level that sometimes appears in the "Notes" column of the table for your specific workstation. If the name of your workstation appears in the table as a hyperlink, click that link to find additional information about the machine configuration, including graphics device driver details, such as screen resolution.

3. (IMPORTANT!) Be sure to specify the CATIA or Dassault Systemes graphics application profile within that graphics device driver code level. The list of graphics applications is usually found under the graphics-card-vendor-specific "OpenGL"or "Manage 3D" display properties menu selections, and varies by graphics device and manufacturer. Do *not* use the "default" 3D application profile, as it has not been optimized for CATIA. The CATIA / Dassault Systemes graphics application profile has been around for quite some time within most ATI and NVIDIA graphics device drivers, but its use seems to have become increasingly more important, beginning with CATIA V5R18.

4. If you change the graphics device driver level, you may need to reselect the CATIA or Dassault Systemes application profile in the new graphics device driver code level.

5. There can be a relationship between the BIOS of the workstation, and the graphics adapter. This is particularly true for laptops. Be sure that the BIOS level of your workstation is at the latest level, as recommended by the workstation manufacturer.


About 2 years ago, we updated the BIOS levels, and installed the certified graphics driver levels (including specification of the CATIA application profile), on the 75+ workstations that we supply for use at "COE University" training sessions. We have experienced very few graphics-related CATIA V5 problems on these IBM IntelliStations with NVIDIA graphics cards since we did this. V5R18 SP6 and V6R2009 were used on these workstations at the Fall 2008 COE conferences; V5R19 SP3 and V6R2009x were used at the Spring 2009 COE conference. The effort that we put in to this BIOS and graphics driver upgrade process has really paid off for us.

"Your mileage may vary....."

Nancy Rothwell
IBM PLM Technical Support, Americas
COE University Technical Support Team member

Thank you all for your answers and advices!

It's hard now to say which solution works, since still things are a little bit unpredictable and absolutely without any logic.

Somehow the number of crashes is recduced but they do happen sometimes.

So we are still working on this issue.

As far as i we were able to see this problem, the important things to look at and update\change\check are:

- windows updates
- nvidia drivers (well..certified by dassault is a good thing, but still it is worth trying to get just the latest ones also..this is some unpredictable stuff)
- catsettings - clean them fully and totaly with the admin settings also! (may be not so many logic - but it has some influence)
- to trace the problem better - try logging info about GDI and video memory during working and see what is happening when catia crashes. we where able to detect that gdi and video memory is emptied right before the crash - but still we are not sure that this is a reason...may be it does this "after" some internal conflict and it is not a reason but the result...

So as for an exact cure - i can't say anything for now it's just a constant struggle...shooting on the dark

But still after all those steps, crashes reduced...a lot... no it's almsot ok! except it happens...sometimes...but not so often as before.