ArchiCAD version 12 freezing

[Anonymous]

Our office upgraded from version 11 to version 12 2 weeks ago. I was fine working on it until last Friday. The program froze 6 times. There was nothing specific I was doing. 2 of the times I was hitting the save button. 2 of the times I was moving and object. Today I opened the same file and worked on it for 5 hours and then it froze again. I ended the program, opened it and not even 3 steps in, it froze again and then again.

I have renamed the file, saved it as something else, scanned the file, scanned the ArchiCAD program file and nothing comes up.

I am running Windows XP service Pack 2, have 3GB of RAM and 34 GB of empty harddrive space. I have Java 6 update 7 and Quicktime 7. The computer is a Pentium D. Everything else is compatable.

Any ideas? Help? Anyone else experiencing this?

[Rick Thompson]

I am surprised to hear all of you are having so many crashes, and that the bug reported is not opening? I don't think I have crashed once since the beta versions. And, I do have a library with very old parts. The new GUID could be the issue here. During beta I was having some weird library issues, but that cleared up. I am not sure if AC fixed the problem, or resaving the misbehaving object fixed it. If you can isolate to an object, and save that object (not "save as"), you might get through it.

[Anonymous]

I like that idea but the problem is I have done so many changes since bringing it in from 11. Can I save it as a .pla in version 12 and just bring in 12's library and the .pla library?

[Eduardo Rolon]

spaige08 wrote:
I like that idea but the problem is I have done so many changes since bringing it in from 11. Can I save it as a .pla in version 12 and just bring in 12's library and the .pla library?

The idea is to get the last library that was not giving problems.

Using this library with your current project should not affect your changes.

AS long as you have not created since upgrading the file you can open the previous(old and working) AC11 file do a pla of it and extract the library.

Then you open your CURRENT AC12 file and load the extracted AC11 library and the AC12 library only.

What you are doing is clearing up the extra objects that are being loaded with the project, if any object are missing then either you can open them in AC12 and save them to new "custom library" folder since they might be the culprits.

Obviously do it with a copy just in case.

[Barbara Sommer]

spaige08 wrote:
Problem is this file was started in 9, then upgraded to 11 and then to 12 so I have all 3 libraries loaded and the 11 migration library.

Rick could be right ... this might be a library problem.

It seems that many users do not pay attention when the library loading report lists tons of duplicates.
Please pay attention to this, you should avoid having any duplicates.
Since ArchiCAD 11 there exists a so called Subset Library.
What is this subset good for? (This short explanation is not for you particularly, but for users in general)

The Subset Library basically replaces the standard ArchiCAD 10 library. So for a project started in ArchiCAD 10 and continued in ArchiCAD 11 you have to load the subset and of course the ArchiCAD 11 library, but never the standard 10 and 11 libraries together. This way it is ensured that you won't have any missing elements and also no duplicates, which is very important. The Subset can be downloaded from the ArchiCAD Goodies page (which is accessible through the ArchiCAD 10 Help menu). If you would like to know more, please go to http://www.archicadwiki.com/Library_Subset

For ArchiCAD 12 the same thing is called Migration Library and is part of the ArchiCAD folder, so you do not need to download it anymore.
The Migration Library will not be loaded by default, so if you have a project started in 10, continued in 11 and now in ArchiCAD 12 and from each one are using elements, following should be done:
Next to the standard ArchiCAD 12 Library you will load the ArchiCAD 10 Subset and the ArchiCAD 11 Migration Library (Never all standard libraries together).

Now, the bad news is, that you have started your project with ArchiCAD 9 and there is no replacement for this library.
So what we suggest is either to only use the ArchiCAD 9 Library, in case your project is almost done.
Or, exchange all ArchiCAD 9 elements with the corresponding ArchiCAD 12 ones, if your project is not so advanced yet.
But as i said earlier: Your problems are not necessarily arising from duplicated elements.

So please try what happens if you are only loading your standard ArchiCAD 9 library and nothing else, does it still freeze then?

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

The US graphisoft rep thought the same thing.

I had many libraries loaded: Standard 9, Special Edition 9, Standard 11, Migration 11 and Standard 12.

I deleted Special Edition 9 and Standard 11 and so far by doing that and copying and pasting everything to a new file, things are working fine.

Of course from now on I will double check my libraries.

[Karl Ottenstein]

You should still address this ArchiCAD 9 library, even if things seem OK now. (Your message indicates that you have both the full 9 and full 12 libraries loaded.)

As Barbara notes, one should only have a single FULL library loaded - all others should be subsets, either created by GS for download, or created by you.

Eduardo gave the key to creating a subset 9 library for this project: the PLA. Save as a PLA from the last usable version of AC for this project, with the option to only save used lib parts (not all), then open this PLA in that or a future version and choose to create a library folder on your disk.

That library folder will have a normal file structure. Since you are only interested in the parts used from the old 9 lib, delete everything except the folder for ArchiCAD 9 Library. Put this someplace useful in the project folder with some meaningful (to you) name, and load it with the other libs you have listed (but NOT the full AC 9 lib - this is the replacement).

Finally, if there are any library error messages for duplicates/etc, resolve them by modifying the subset that you just created, and doing a reload. Repeat until there are NO library error messages or warnings. (For all users - because we consultants see this all the time - "NEVER" (to the extent possible) move past the library dialog if there are errors. Resolve all errors/warnings before commencing work to save future grief.)

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

My file has been crashing regularly on the same action: editing linework while a trace reference is on. Apparently this requires a consistant 50% +/- 5% of the processing power of both cores and 500mb of ram, and seems to be an infinite loop of some sorts (it will go untill I end the process in the task manager).

The project has no library errors upon loading, it has object library 9.pla and the project's library loaded as "local library". Significant work has been done since it was migrated from ac11 two weeks ago, and I would rather not eat the cost of re-drawing everything.

All I really want is to backsave to AC11 so I can at least get some work done, contractors and bosses are waiting, and there really isn't time for this.

So, I suppose the critical information is the file has migrated ac9->ac11->ac12 on windows xp, machine is capable (core2, 2gb, compatible video card).

[Anonymous]

I am back and forth with Graphisoft and they have worked with my file and it doesn't freeze for them... they are telling me it is a system error.

[Anonymous]

Well still going back and forth and I am coming up with it being a software issue...

After creating a new User Account and installing 12 there the file still froze

BUT

When I saved the file in v.11 it works fine...

BTW... did I mention that after installing it on a laptop with XP Pro upon opening the program it gives me the blue-screen-of-death...

What now?

[Barry Kelly]

I wonder if version 12 is a bit touchy.

I have had it freeze a couple of times while copying parameters from one object script to another.
Not just a temporary freeze while copying as has been reported before for previous version.
This is frozen solid and only killing the application in task manager gets out of it.

Barry.