ACAD 2009 crashing on xref reload

[NetDef]

Seeing a consistent issue on a fresh install of AutoCad Architecture 2009 Update 2 (part of the Revit 2009 suite).


System details:

Newly built machine using the X38 Chipset, Quattro 1700 GPU, Intel E8600 CPU, 4GB DDR2 800 RAM (showing 3.25GB in OS).

OS is Windows XP Professional SP3, all current critical patches. dotNet 2.0 and 3.0 fully updated.

Most recent drivers for both chipset and GPU from NVidia as of October 31.

LAN is running on 1Gb speeds and traffic is very low during the process.

Using AutoCad Arch 2009 Update 2.

Office is a mixed environment, Xref and main drawing files are in 2D, shared across the network. Everything and everyone is using AC 2007 formats.


The Problem:

On the ACA 2009 system, everytime a project Xref is updated, on reloading into the main drawing ACA freezes, CPU usage goes to 100% on both cores, GUI is unresponsive, and memory use slowly increases. It will stay in this
state until the system hard crashes (out of memory) which can take 30 minutes, or until the acad process is killed in Task Manager. Same files work fine on older systems using ACA 2007.


Repro Steps:

1) Open the file ADR_A_Main_602-CH.dwg

2) Open the xRef file ADR_xref_substructure_01.dwg

3) Draw <something> in ADR_xref_substructure_01.dwg, save it

4) In ADR_A_Main_602-CH.dwg, type xref, right click the xref just saved, hit ‘reload’

Crash . . .


Steps taken so far: We have audited / purged all project files in ACA 2009. NO errors are being found at all. We've also XCLIPed all files where possible to reduce load. WHIPTHREAD has been set to 1, 2 and 3 with no change in crash status.

Has anyone else seen this issue with ACA 2009? If so, do you know a fix or workaround?

Thanks in advance for any advice you all may be able to give . . .

[feargt]

have u tried using the command scalelistedit to remove uneccesary scales from both ur current drawing and also the xrefs? We have had several instances where the computers are crashing while using different commands, from hatching to text editing and this scalelistedit command usually solves the problem for us. maybe worth a try....

[hotrodz0321]

how big is the xref? i often crash when loading a large xref.....my computer specs are very similar to yours and my problem is a memory issue

....and try getting rid of unneeded layer filters....and the scale issue stated above in not uncommon

[NetDef]

how big is the xref? i often crash when loading a large xref.....my computer specs are very similar to yours and my problem is a memory issue

....and try getting rid of unneeded layer filters....and the scale issue stated above in not uncommon

Will try the suggestion you and feargt made then.

The xref file ADR_xref_substructure_01.dwg is about 327Kb in size. Memory use on the system during the start of the reload process hovers around 540Mb, gradually rises during the freeze to the 3.25GB limit. As stated though, on older AC versions, same files, we don't see this issue at all. The reload takes less than 5 seconds using AC 2007 - so unless the AutoDesk dev team really changed how memory is used (cough) then I am skeptical that memory limitations are the issue.

Browsing the AC site, I don't see any hotfixes for a reload memory leak, but that may be what we are seeing here.

[hotrodz0321]

there is an issue with the newer versions of Autocad not wanting to release memory....but im wanting to say (or believe) that there is a fix for it....i just cant say for sure

[johnnyj]

I'm new here but I was searching on this subject and this is the first thing that popped up.

We have AC2009 here and it has created a bit of havoc. Along with it being a major resource hog and buggy as hell, it has this wonderful feature of simply disappearing upon reloading an xref. No error, no recovery file, nada.

I'll be checking in from time to time to see if anyone has managed to find a solution or if I can pass along some info on this.

Time to do some poking around this board and see what can make my brain tingle a bit. Thanks!

[Markk]

We have had similar problems using Land Desktop 2009, what we have seen is that if escape is pressed we get a partial load of the drawing. The xref is not loaded, but everything else appears to be correct. If we do anything else other then escape, the drawing disappears and we get a white screen, and lockup.

the drawing in question loads in about 8 seconds in 2008, this same drawing has the same issues on a brand new vista box, as well as an older xp box.