Pro E Crashes - The Sum of All Fears

[caivetmec1]

Greeting, I'm new to the forum but not to pro/e, I've been using it for 2 years now, and other cad/cae before. Since the very begginig that we bought pro/e, we've had premature exits on the program, by any random activities, there is been no way to determine a pattern so far, thus neither a solution.

Name a situation, and it has caused us a premature exit, creating extrusion, revolves, dimensions, sketchs, constrains, pro/program editing, family table regen, relation editing, dimension editing, saving files, paning, zooming, rotating, printing drawing, exporting drawings, pre-visual of parts, seting work directory, creating flat states and some other I dont remember right now.

We had to change our 5000$ workstation, because they "were not certified" for new 8500$ "certified" workstation, and still the same problem. So far in three computers, 2 different models by the way

Tech support hasn't yet been able to help us, Is anyone on earth, suffering this same illness??

So far, only since last thrusday I have lost 384 min of working time because this exits (try guessing how much is it 2 years so far), sometimes is not only the re-work, but files are corrupted and information is lost.

The situation is completely out of our hand and we are calling for HELP!!!

 

[caivetmec1]

this is been happening since WF2 M060 untill now WF3 M080. So far no new build of pro/e is solving the problem because ptc tech doesn't know what causes it ergo they cannot solve it.

Is not happening in a single model, it happen with any of our hundred of models, or even as I mentioned it when you set the working directory!.

We have installed every possible driver, new, certified, supported, whatever, and so far it makes no difference. Hardware as I said is a configuration recommended and certified by PTC in their website as top of the edge. (I've seen pro/e running normaly in cheap laptops, I doubt that a 8500$ dual Xeon 3.2Ghz Workstation cannot handle this CAD)

 

[ttx]

OK - This is a long-shot but....
Did you have any previous full or demo versions of either: 2001 or Wildfire installed on those machines?

We lost a week on a new machine - after we could not install 2001 and have it run properly. This was after a Wildfire demo had been installed and removed from the same machine. Cleaning registries did not work....
We had to do a system restore to a date prior to the Wildfire demo install.

Good luck.

JW

 

[caivetmec1]

ttx

About your question. We had two workstation brand were we installed wf2.0 and it crashed constantly, then ptc pled that those computer were not certified. So we bought 2 newer computers, certified, supported, signed by the pope and ptc. We installe on them wf3.0 and still crahsing

We reformatted them 2 times, installed nothing but windows Xp and pro/e, and still.

So yes it is a low punch, so far for 2 YEARS its being happening, we are desperate so far, we've tried as many crazy and odd thing that you can imagine and nothing works.

HELP!!!!

 

[Speedy]

We too have similar problems in my company with Pro-E crashing. It happens on more than one computer.

Don't have a solution for you just to say that I save quiet a lot....crazy, but what else can you do?

 

[caivetmec1]

Hey speedy, thanks for the post. This is really what I'm looking forward, to see how many people have this illness.

Well, savind a lot is an option, but I've had several crashing while saving too... Those times the file was completly corrupted. So sometimes I'm tied down

Also as this wonderfull program does not have an undo command, sometimes you try not saving yor work in case you need to roll back by closing and erasing the memory and then start allover, unless ptc thinks that a pro/e designer must be a superior mind uncapable of conceiving wrong ideas or mistakes, therefore he doesn't need to undo

Am I asking too much??

 

[cadcamguy]

Am I asking too much??

No you're not.. I think ptc has a serious hearing problem.

 

[davidinindy]

Yea, They're more worried about aqcuiring other products than fixing their existing core product...
Wonder how CoCreate is going to work into all of this.
As far as crashing, or premature exits... I have them occasionally, for random reasons... but not to the extent you describe. Maybe once a week or so. Definately not a major issue.

David

 

[caivetmec1]

Well, as you mentioned that your crashing are random, I assume you have not found any repeatable pattern, nor the crash happens when you do exactly the same again right??

By the war the frequent of the crashes are also random, We've being reporting them in excel sheet, and there is a week when it only happend twice, and there was a morning when it happened 6 times. So far this last month, I've lost 651 minutes of working time...

Should my company bill PTC for that time?. I mean honestly, I had to pull some extra hours out of my daily working time in order to complete what I lost when Pro/E crashed, and my company doesn't pay them to me...

If Pro/E really means: saving money, faster design, etc, they are missing this big issue

 

[maxxismudder]

It has gotten so bad for us, we have also started keeping excel sheets to log our lost time.

I know off hand of 12 different people who have been using Pro/E for years that have "checked in" (PDM Link lingo) assemblies and have hard copies of their final work to only open the assembly at a later date, sometimes the very next day and have the assembly reverted back to a prior iteration. Every time this has happened over night.

Constraints change them selves at will with no given reason along with the unexpected exits every day. CAD systems cant seem to find a cure and PTC doesn't seem to care.

 

[caivetmec1]

We have similar issue about the assemblies reverting back to prior iteration, specially with family tables, sometimes the instances of a family table doesn't save its last value and every time you reopen the assembly, they show up with the value of the generic (we imput the dimension for these instance through assembly relations).

Maybe this is not the logic that pro/e accepts, though it is pretty logic to me, what does it takes to program in pro/e accordinly to what it desires?.

On the other hand, you mentioned you are keeping a log too... How many pro/e user are in you company? does it happen to all of them? you know, do they have the same crashing rate, model of computer, etc.

In my company, there are only 3 designer, its a small team, 2 of us have a pretty new workstation (certified and supported), same model, and the other has a bit older one (not certified). We all suffer crashes but in very diffent rates, thought they are all ramdon causes.

 

[maxxismudder]

We have over 80 users at any given time located in various parts of the country. We all have the same machine except for one individual who is testion out a 64 bit machine with 8GB of RAM. The group I'm in work with so large of assemblies on a daily basis, we are forced to work in simplified reps with all of the components that we must have at that time set to graphics reps to reduce the amount of RAM usage. Today I have been pushing 2.66GB page file, when I hit 2.8GB is redline and a crash is comming.

There is absoultely no rhyme or reason to any of the issues we are having, sometimes working with a large assembly as mentioned above, other times editing a text block or moving a item balloon on a small drawing. It can never be duplicated. The crashes, script errors, CIP SOAP errors, stale cache errors and server disconnects are common across all the users, then you have the other oddoties that happen to various other users at any given time.

 

[Hora]

Hi,

If you are working in a 32 bit environment, then upgrade the RAM to 3GB and force WINDOWS with a command line to use 3 GB of RAM. Unfortunately win 32cannot acces more RAM.

-Hora

 

[maxxismudder]

We are.

 

[maxxismudder]

You have to have 4GB to command windows to use the 3GB switch.