Animation questions/observations

[Ros. Riha]

1. in the preview mode, what to do to cancel the running preview? If I hit X button on walkabout window, AutoCAD freezes.
2. On complex model, preview often freezes on its own (computer is powerful enough to handle it - Win7/64, 8MB RAM, Autodesk certified graphics - and it does handle it on still renderings.
3. During preview, I would expect to show values for resolution as set in the animation settings - it shows something else - probably last used values for last still rendering instead.
4. Subsequent attempts to run a preview are shorter and shorter - it seems incorrect endings of AutoCAD once nXt freezes are leaving something in the memory

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I'll check into these when I get a chance next week.  Be prepared for me to ask for example drawings if I can't reproduce.  Anything which causes a crash or hang is a bug that needs to be reported.  The preview does use AutoCAD's display mechanism, so if things are very slow there it can take a long time.  Use the esc key to cancel (I believe.)

[Ros. Riha]

not a problem - except the size, number of xrefs etc. Once you ask, I will send them staight away. they require ACA 2010, hope you got it.

Important fact:

it is easy to zip up all dwgs into one archive, but it is very difficult to find out what textures are used.

As explained on earlier posts, we cannot embed textures, because it makes our projects unmanageble - as we typically use more than 50 xrefs, any embedded texture increases overall filesize dramatically, because it repeats in all project files - if there was a way to save a project including all linked textures, materials, decals, itwould have simplified the exchange dramatically.

 

To the preview issue - probably something related to memory - if I keep preview length on some 20-30 frames, it does not crash, once I increase it it is prone to crash...

[Ros. Riha]

before I forget - couple more wishes/possible tweaks:

1. Lighting setup to be saved together with animation
2. Save dialog to behave the same as View Name dialog does - i.e. to enable to choose the existing one to overwrite it.

General wish: on all resolution settings dialogs everywhere, it would help to have the "lock" icon to keep aspect ratio