How many instances can you open?

[Anonymous]

My jobs tend to be small and I usually have 2-6 in queue. Just for brevity sake I usually start a job then leave AC running so I can quickly switch between projects, as I tend to work on or need access to all of them on a daily basis and I can save a lot of time by avoiding having to start AC every time I work on something.

I have found in the past that I could rely on 2 instances being open and remaining stable. With AC 14 I find that I can have 3 open and it doesn't seem to be a problem. More than that stability starts to become a problem though I've had 6+ instances of AC14 open before (with only 4gigs and Win7 on top of that) and had it not crash. Most of the time I usually have only 2-3 open. However sometimes I have 4 or 5 open.

But it can get spooky. When things start to go bad it can mean a total shutdown and restarting the computer. Sometimes I'm lucky and shutting down the instance that's crashing will stop the problem, but many times it means I have to shut down every instance and restart (especially when the problem affects the video).

So, out of curiosity, how does everyone else handle multiple jobs? Start and shut down every time? How many AC instances can you have open? Does Teamwork offer any advantages, even if there is only one person working on a job? Found any unique or particularly effective strategies for dealing with either multiple instances or multiple jobs? Do you run into stability problems with more than one open? Found ways of increasing stability?

[JaredBanks]

I'll often have 3 ArchiCADs open without issues. v11 or v14. Rarely need more than that.

[Anonymous]

I often run two or three in the Mac OS and may have another one or two going in a Win7 VM. Sometimes this will include other programs on both OSs and at times I'll have a VM with XP32 running as well. This is on a Mac Pro with dual-quad processors and 20GB RAM.

[Anonymous]

Multiple instances seems the norm. I'm sure Graphisoft must code and test for this need as it seems to me that AC has become more stable, at least since I've started using it. I'm a lot happier in this department. When I started with AC 11, I could only have 2 instances open or AC would eventually crash. But AC 12 and 13 have seen much improvement for me and like I said, I've had something like 8 instances of AC 14 open at once and I got away with it.

VMs are a good way of sequestering instability. I've never virtualized an OS before because of performance concerns. Especially 3D performance. Do you think that's it's mature enough now and hardware fast enough it shouldn't be a concern? Would you know if Linux virtualizing Windows is "good" enough for this task? I realize you don't use it but I have really no opinion on the subject and maybe you might know.

And just curious, why do you run some in Mac and some in Windows? Is it to access tools that don't work in Mac?

[Anonymous]

zeropointreference wrote:
...Would you know if Linux virtualizing Windows is "good" enough for this task? I realize you don't use it but I have really no opinion on the subject and maybe you might know.

And just curious, why do you run some in Mac and some in Windows? Is it to access tools that don't work in Mac?

I don't have much experience with Linux but I think some here in the forum have had some success with Wine.

My main reason for running the Windows VMs is for stuff not available on the Mac, like all the Autodesk products and some of the AC add-ons. It does come in handy though for running multiple processes in there own walled gardens so to speak. The performance is pretty good. I haven't benchmarked against booting up in Windows lately though. I should probably give it a try.

[Karl Ottenstein]

A caution about running multiple instances, at least on Mac - I did not test on Windows, but assume the issue is the same:

Any changes you make to your Work Environment in one instance are not saved until that instance exits. Thus, if you launch multiple instances and you close one in which you've changed your WE and later close the other instances - the other instances will have the old WE and will overwrite the changes made by the earlier close.

The best way to play it safe is to always also export your WE to a folder on your disk/network so that if this (somewhat rare) situation happens, you can reload your WE from the exported copy. (This is best practice anyway so that your WE is backed up.)

Karl

[Anonymous]

I have 2-3 instances running most everyday with 5-6 running fairly often... Haven't seen any issues with it... The WE tip is good to know though, thanks Karl..

Often I have multi instances open so I can copy an paste from an old job.... Though can't copy from a 13 job to a 14 job... Not sure if that was the case before. I only suspect that it wasn't the case since I noticed it this time....

Still wish cut/copy wasn't so freakin slow in AC14

[Barry Kelly]

SteveC0013 wrote:
Still wish cut/copy wasn't so freakin slow in AC14

Does this help?

http://www.archicadwiki.com/Bugs/SlowCopyCommand

Barry.

[Link]

Barry wrote:
Does this help?

http://www.archicadwiki.com/Bugs/SlowCopyCommand

Barry.

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

That deserves an award for the most obscure workaround of all time!

Cheers,
Link.

[David Maudlin]

SteveC0013 wrote:
Often I have multi instances open so I can copy an paste from an old job.... Though can't copy from a 13 job to a 14 job... Not sure if that was the case before. I only suspect that it wasn't the case since I noticed it this time....

That has generally been true, copying forward does not work.

David