• F.A.Q: Common solutions to crashing scenarios

    Okino's software development team has always placed #1 priority on fixing crashing problems with our software. This has lead to very stable and clean software releases. For stable software releases the most common problems that lead to crashes are buggy video drivers or mismatched software DLLs.


    1. What help can I get from Okino to solve a crashing problem?
    2. The software seems unstable and causes my machine to crash.
    3. What else can lead to software crashes?


    1. What help can I get from Okino to solve a crashing problem? - Top

    Email support@okino.com immediately. We are always receptive to crash reports and can provide immediate assistance from some of our prior experience. Our software is one of the most stable and crash-free products on the market - we rarely see a crash situation each year, and if we do it is due to changes in 3D CAD file formats that naturally require updating.

    The first thing we will ask for is your product registration number and the version of software you are running (see Help/About dialog box); many times a crashing problem can be solved by simply updating your software to the newest version. If you have the newest software then please ZIP up your dataset and email it to support@Okino.com (if under 10MB). It is a simple matter for us to crash the software into our debugger and find the root of the problem quickly. When software crashes do occur we will patch it up and return to you a fixed and working version. We always appreciate working with customers to resolve problems like this.

    - Updated: June 25, 2010


    2. The software seems unstable and causes my machine to crash. - Top

    This is the only time we will state this blatent answer: the cause is your video driver. Every single incident of such errors from users since 1996 has always been due to the machine using an old video driver.

    Okino's PolyTrans & NuGraf implement real time shaded 3D objects in their user interfaces via the OpenGL realtime rendering API. The implementation is multi-threaded, meaning that each view window is updated in parallel with the other view windows. Also, tri-strips and display lists are used to heavily accelerate the display performance. Older video drivers which have their own OpenGL implementaiton are often buggy and lead to crashes.

    Our first suggestion which always works is to update your video driver, in particular the OpenGL driver portion. Second, you can revert to "Non-OpenGL, Wireframe" viewing mode which uses Windows GDI calls and not OpenGL calls. Third, you can disable multi-threaded output and/or display list usage for the view windows (press the small icon in the upper left corner of any view window and select the "Configure OpenGL" menu item).

    Statistically speaking, we often see a 2 month spat of customer video driver issues roughly every 4 to 5 years, when a new (major and breaking) release of Microsoft Windows comes to market. Customers always believe that the video drivers they download must be bug free since they are the newest ones, but that is incorrect reverse thinking. The newest drivers are most often the most buggiest ones. Video drivers mature over a period of years, so that they are quite stable from the video driver manufacturers once they have had a good year of customer testing and use.


    - Updated: June 25, 2010


    3. What else can lead to software crashes? - Top

    Mis-matched DLLs are a culprit for users who upgrade their installations of PolyTrans or NuGraf but don't update all necessary DLLs.

    All Okino DLLs are located in the main PolyTrans or NuGraf home directory (typically "c:\program files\polytrans" or "c:\program files\nugraf"). The DLLs all begin with the letters "vc4_".dll" for historical reasons. The same "vintage" of DLLs are needed to successfully run Okino software since they all act as one big family of software.

    From our experience the biggest problem for mis-matched DLLs is with the special plug-in modules for 3ds Max and Maya (PolyTrans-for-3dsMax and PolyTrans-for-Maya). These special plug-ins exist with the 3ds Max and Maya plug-ins directories; however, they depend upon the vc4_*.dll files located in the Okino home directories. Some users go and copy these vc4_*.dlls into the 3ds Max home directory or the Maya "bin" directory. This can lead to problems in the future.

    Thus,

    - Make sure you have not copied any vc4_*.dll files into the 3ds Max home directory or the Maya "bin" directory.

    - Ask Okino for download instructions for the newest versions of PolyTrans and NuGraf. Exit all running copies of these programs as well as 3ds Max or Maya. Perform the update. This will patch the vc4_*.dll files and the main PolyTrans or NuGraf executables.

    If you still experience crashing problems due to mis-matched DLLs then please send email to support@okino.com. We can resolve your problems.

    - Updated: June 25, 2010


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