One of those days when 3DS keeps crashing!

[PGD]

Don't you just love it!?

I dont think this is in anyway related to V-Ray by the way, so don't panic Chaos team

But this scene I'm working on seems to bomb out whenever it feels like it. I could be zooming out, deleting an object, moving a spline, selecting an object.. Anything, then boom, 3ds vanishes and the 'report an error' window pops up. Great, that's another 5-10mins down the pan - again

So there's the rant.. It's frustrating, and quite a waste of time, but I wish I could find out what the issue was. Is there anyway of actually identifying the problem?

So far I've:
Imported the scene into a fresh new 3ds file
Saved out Proxys just to see if they were the trouble, but the problem persisted anyway.
Resorted to saving every couple of mins (which slows things down a little given the 180mb file)
Installed SP2

The building model is exported from ArchiCAD
This does come after a Win10 install, but I do think this is file related as a previous file I worked didn't suffer with the issue.

Any words of wisdom would be super

[Alex_M]

I know how frustrating this can be. Some suggestions from me:

1. Did you try resetting Xform on the imported CAD geometry?
2. Are your objects centered in the 3ds max workspace? Sometimes CAD geometry gets imported several miles from the center of the scene. Max doesn't like objects to be very far away.
3. Create a box and attach all the imported geometry to it.
4. Sometimes helper object get imported with the CAD file such as CAD blocks, symbols and such that are not even visible in the scene but appear in the objects list. They might cause problems. I've had several occasions where even selecting or deleting these objects crashed my file. Try importing just the geometry from the Revit file to avoid these getting into your scene.
5. Don't import the Revit file directly. Export it to OBJ first so that all non relevant Revit junk data is stripped (I assume you need only the geometry) and then import that OBJ file.

I'm sure there are more but that's what I can think of at the moment. Hopefully some of these help!

[PGD]

I didn't reset Xform as I'd loose the UVW maps wouldn't I?

Objects are centered on the origin yes. We create a new CAD file and hotlink the building and site model into this new file, then place everything at 0,0,0 before exporting the model. Otherwise the geometry comes into 3DS like a crushed crisp packet. But, when I select an object in the Perspective or Orthographic viewport the model will then vanish off screen, suggesting the model is still miles away from the origin.

I've not come across helper objects tbh. This model information is Saved out as a 3ds file from ArchiCAD, as opposed to Revit. So I'm not sure if such objects would interfere.

An error log file, which gives some reasonable explanation of the crash would be nice, would it?

[Neilg]

could be links/blocks/invisible helpers. is it feasable to collapse everything to edit poly, select all meshes and save selected to merge that into a fresh max file?
Often merging in from a busted file will merge all the things that are causing the issue too, it's always best to select what you need (not with ctrl a) and save selected before doing that.

[mikeh]

If it were me, I'd save out the Archicad model as its own file and see if it crashes when working on that file alone. I'd separate other stuff the same way and then make a new file where all is xref-scene in that file for the final. At least you might find out what is causing the problem.
mh

[PGD]

After stuggling with that first scene file I've now moved onto another job/scene file, and still I'm getting crashes

So I've run through your suggestions:
Added the Reset AForm - still crashes
Merged the ArchiCAD geometry into a new scene file and moved geometry, points, polys etc and all was fine - no crash
Merged the 3ds geometry into that file and continued to move things - no crash
Merged the rest of the file contents into this new file and continued to move things - no crash

At this point the new file is still set to Scanline Renderer (which I though would have changed to V-Ray having merged the file but hey ho)

Switch the render to Vray 3.30.03 and within a minute of using the file - the crash has appeared once again

Specifically I was rotating a UVW map which is placed onto the ArchiCAD geometry, this would re-create the crash time and time again.

So I saved selected that bit of geometry and opened that file. Here I can move the UVW as I wish, and V-Ray is set as the renderer.

[Morbid Angel]

Can you post that scene here? and name of the object which produces a crash? It can be a number of things, gpu driver, etc. What is your 3ds max version?

[vlado]

If you can send me the crash dumps to vlado@chaosgroup.com I might be able to get you more information what causes the crashes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[PGD]

Can you remind me how to retireve these crash dumps please? Then I'll send it on.

I did think this was file related.. I worked on another job and after a while it remained crash free, but then - crash

I've sent the crash report to Autodesk and they came up with this:

Checked with the AMD Control Centre on the machine and I think I have the latest driver.. (15.20.1062)

[JezUK]

Win 10 or gpu driver related ?

I work on ArchiCAD models a lot (particularly recently) and don't have issues.

Hang on..... 2016...... that'll explain it - each time I try to make the jump to that version the reliability of 3DS Max goes down and I'm back on 2014. I can't be doing with the headache.

[PGD]

Hang on..... 2016...... that'll explain it

Seems to be the way with 3ds to me, one step forward but half a step back too. And given the price of the software that's pretty poor imo.

But yes, this has come to light after an 'upgrade' to Win10. Which we've done to enable GPU rendering with the AMD graphics cards (I haven't had chance to check if that's even worked yet)

[PGD]

*cough - bumps the thread

Still gettign this issue with a veriety of different 3ds files now. (all of which have reasonably the same content btw, but a different building model)

I've run through the 'AMD Cataylist Control Centre' to check for updated software and get the message 'Not Available'

Current driver is: 'Driver Packaging Version -15.20.1062.1004-150803a-184226E' which I think is the latest one?

[tashko.zashev]

Have you tried to get the 3ds max crash dump file ? It should be stored in the Win temp folder.
Another way to get this dump file is from the task manager - right click on 3dsmax.exe in Task manager and select "Create dump file" when the crash occurs.

[PGD]

Have you tried to get the 3ds max crash dump file ? It should be stored in the Win temp folder.
Another way to get this dump file is from the task manager - right click on 3dsmax.exe in Task manager and select "Create dump file" when the crash occurs.

Could anyone be more specific on where the dump file is, and what file type it is? I'm looking but don't really know what for, even searches aren't revealing much

I Un-installed and Re-installed 3D Max 2016 yesterday (just incase the Win10 upgrade messed something up) then V-Ray etc but unfortunately I'm still getting crashes
The AMD graphics driver was updated again yesterday too

[tashko.zashev]

Should be something like that:

But this is in case that the file has been created by the Customer Error Reporting (CER) dialog and successfully saved in that location.
Otherwise you will have to create it manually from the Task manager when the crash occurs.

Have you tried to change the Max Viewport driver?
It will be very hard to troubleshoot issue like this without the dump file or a crash reproduced in our environment.