Animator Bugs

Sounds exactly like a bug I reported ages ago. I've tried everything I could think of to get around it. SolidWorks has never bothered to fix it and I feel it's a huge problem!

On my system, I can almost pinpoint the moment things go south. The top of the document window changes color to gray (you know when you click on another window and it goes to the background).

The only remedy I've found that works is to lower the resolution of the AVI (or bitmaps if saving as separate images).

I feel your pain!

Mike Wilson

GRRRR As I'd feared Mike..... Oh well... thanks for the suggestions.... I've been trying to do a huge flash rendering but maybe I'll dumb down the res a little bit and keep my fingers crossed it'll help.... there's a long weekend coming up so if I can I'll try and get it to render the whole thing over that and hope my PC doesn't go postal while I'm away :)

thanks,

I have also had this problem. It seems intermittent though. When I've run into this I just cancel out of the animation and start it over again. Eventually it works.

Goes like this.

Have all your animation and PW2 settings ready. Save the animation (I usually save avi 600 x 800 at 15fps). Once the animation starts the animation control box will be on the screen along with the PW2 status box. Let the animation run through the first two frames (render box will go through completely (2) times). Once those frames are done check the animation control box. In the bottom right corner it gives info on the total time of your animation and how much time has saved out (ex: 1.00/20.00) If the two numbers match or the first number is still zero after the first two frames have gone through then SW will just keep saving the first frame over and over. At this point I hit cancel on the PW2 status bar You have to hit it a number of times and SW usually crashes to desktop. Open SW again and try saving the animation. After the first two frames if the first number begins climbing in increments (based on your FPS setting) then the file is saving correctly.

I may have to do this 20 times but I have always had it work at some point. It's VERY frustrating!!

I regularly do 30-40 second animations that may take 14-18 hours to save. It's no fun to come back 18 hours later and have nothing.

I also submitted this back in 2004 beta testing.

Such a simple concept, yet I've never tried it. I must say, I'll be giving that idea a shot!

Thanks, Mike Wilson

What do you guys use for a codec? Do you do your videos without compression.

None for me.

Yes for me.

Mike

Should'nt you use somewhat "standard" size's for your animations:

for NTSC 720x486 @ 30(29.97)fps

or for PAL 720x576 @ 25fps

Have you tried rendering your animations on these sizes, does the PW2 still hang the system?

I COULD use those resolutions and frame rates but the rendering time would be horrendous.... I've knocked the resolution back to 640x480 from 800x600 and that SEEMS to have rectified the issue on my PC.... it cuts down the rendering time too.... 10FPS seems good enough to yield a fairly good animation.

I'll let you know how things turn out.

George.