Instant crash trying to edit a face...

[SimonB]

Hi there.
My first install today, never used the program before, however I have a problem with it crashing the instant I try to edit a face on my case design.

I'm running Windows XP SP3, Core 2 Duo at 2.2 GHz with 4 gigs of ram.
Graphic card is an ATI Radeon HD 3650 running two monitors in dual view.
Direct X 9.0c is installed.

I may try installing it again tomorrow, but any ideas as to a possible cause?

Cheers.

[SimonB]

Some further updates:
Works fine on my Vista 64 home pc using Nvidia graphic card.
I've found that I need to set the graphics hardware acceleration to 3rd notch in (Disables all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations, as well as all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations...) for it to work in my XP work PC.
However this also generates another issue with Protocase designer software throwing an OpenGL error and disabling silkscreen functions.

[steve.manley]

Thanks for the feedback.

As you noticed, lowering the hardware acceleration will also disable the textures.

Are you running current video drivers on your configurations? We have seen driver updates cure similar issues.

Steve

[SimonB]

Hi Steve.
Yup the video drivers are up to date.

[steve.manley]

You can try lowering the level of hardware acceleration. That might help.

We haven't been able to replicate this on our test setups but we're are working on it.

Steve

[secarica]

I experienced the same problem and solved it by using an older video card driver. Apply here for ATI 9550 series video card, on AGP.
I tested several past drivers, Protocase Designer works ok with any driver up to version 7.x included (approx version, I have not tested absolutely every version step between 7.1 and 8.12 to find exactly from which version things are screwed up). With the latest driver version from ATI (9.x this year) the face editor crashes the program for sure on my system.

A good place for old ATI drivers is this. As 3D gaming is not a hobby for me, I decided to go with version "Catalyst 5.12 Win2000|XP|MCE (Standard)" as this was the latest (AFAIK) that uses the system control panel for advanced video card settings (all next versions uses own .NET control panel). Everything goes smooth now.

(tip: if experiencing, in order to be sure the old drivers are removed, use the ATI removal utility located at C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\UninstallAll\AtiCimUn.exe)

Cristi

[steve.manley]

Thanks very much for this investigation!

We still do not understand exactly what the problem is but this will help a lot in tracing it down.

Steve

[secarica]

With reference to the old drivers from guru3d.com, it appears that driver file version 8-4_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_60999.exe is the last one that works fine with Protocase Designer's face editor component.
Starting with driver file version 8-5_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_63030.exe available from that site, the face editor component always crashes the program.

When it crashes, the error given here is something like:
AppName: casegen.exe
AppVer: 0.0.0.0
ModName: gl__init___.pyd
ModVer: 0.0.0.0
Offset: 000031da
and a xml-based text file with who-knows-how more or less useless garbage report.

Installing back the 8-4_xp32_etc. driver file version the functionality comes back to normal.

Cristi

[koksy]

I am having the exact same issue.

System:
Vista Enterprise 32bit
Biostar TPower I45
Intel Q6600 @ Stock
ATI HD4870 @ Version 9.6
4GB Ram
Newest DirectX9c drivers.

I have not tried downgrading my drivers, and I do not plan to. I've been trying 3D modelling programs for months now, and this one is the simplest and best so far, and it really makes me sad that I simply can't use it.

I really, really hope you will find the source of the problem and figure out how to fix it.

hm, I think I found the error log?

casegen:38: DeprecationWarning: The wxPython compatibility package is no longer automatically generated or actively maintained. Please switch to the wx package as soon as possible.
Error in sys.excepthook:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "casegen.py", line 13, in exceptionHandler
AttributeError: 'Blackhole' object has no attribute 'writelines'

Original exception was:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "casegen.py", line 38, in ?
File "wxPython\__init__.pyo", line 15, in ?
File "wxPython\_wx.pyo", line 3, in ?
File "wxPython\_core.pyo", line 15, in ?
File "wx\__init__.pyo", line 45, in ?
File "wx\_core.pyo", line 105, in ?
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'WINDOW_STYLE_MASK'
Error in sys.excepthook:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "casegen.py", line 13, in exceptionHandler
AttributeError: 'Blackhole' object has no attribute 'writelines'

This goes on several times

Original exception was:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "casegen.py", line 3232, in ?
File "wx\_core.pyo", line 7700, in __init__
File "wx\_core.pyo", line 7352, in _BootstrapApp
File "casegen.py", line 3135, in OnInit
File "casegen.py", line 636, in __init__
File "wx\_core.pyo", line 3036, in ConvertToBitmap
wx._core.PyAssertionError: C++ assertion "wxAssertFailure" failed in ..\..\src\msw\bitmap.cpp(822): invalid image

Just installed ProtoCase on my Windows XP VMWare Machine (with no drivers) an everything works perfectly fine.

[w3sz]

Protocase Designer also crashes for me immediately upon selecting a face to edit.
I don't have time to troubleshoot, especially when alternatives are available for both the CAD software and panel production.

I use and test a lot of software, and have had no other software crashes in years.

I am moving on...