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Feature Tree Glitch

Question asked by Paul Kellner on May 27, 2011
Latest reply on Nov 7, 2012 by John Sweeney

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SW2011, any SP on Windows 7

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

Open an assembly
Open one or more parts in the assembly
Tile horizontally
Maximize one of the parts or the assembly
Look at the feature tree

I am getting:

The maximized document feature tree shows up the way it was displayed when tiled.
The feature trees of the other open parts show through but are not pickable.
Moving the resize FMT handle will refresh the FM and the FT will display properly.

The way it should be:

When any of the tiled documents is maximized the feature tree for that part should expand and fill the entire FM window.

TIA

Jeff Mowry May 27, 2011 4:43 PM

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Yes, I've seen that on two machines running Windows 7, 64-bit, in both SW v2010 and v2011. One machine had an ATI FireGL V5600 and the other a Quadro FX 4000. So I'm not sure why it does this. Closing/restarting SolidWorks solves the problem, though that is terribly cumbersome.

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Scott McFadden May 27, 2011 11:29 AM
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Paul,
Can you post some images?
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Deepak Gupta May 27, 2011 11:39 AM
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No issues here on SW2011 SP 4.0 EV XP 64 bit

Try updating the graphics card if that helps.
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Jeff Holliday May 27, 2011 11:47 AM
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No problem on SW2011, SP3, Win 7, 64-bit.
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Jeff Mowry May 27, 2011 4:43 PM
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Yes, I've seen that on two machines running Windows 7, 64-bit, in both SW v2010 and v2011. One machine had an ATI FireGL V5600 and the other a Quadro FX 4000. So I'm not sure why it does this. Closing/restarting SolidWorks solves the problem, though that is terribly cumbersome.
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Paul Kellner @ Deepak Gupta on May 28, 2011 6:35 PM
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Deepak,

Seems to be a Windows7 problem. XP users like myself do not see it.

Did you have the problem previously?

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Paul Kellner @ Jeff Mowry on Jun 20, 2011 11:06 AM
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I'm seeing it with a Quadro FX1400 and SW approved driver or with the latest NVIDIA driver. Restarting SW doesn't help.
Update 6/20/11: Also seeing it with Quadro FX1500 and Quadro 4000.

I just went through a clean install of OS, Office, and SW. Nice way to spend Memorial day weekends.

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PS Thanks guys. Big help.
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Deepak Gupta @ Paul Kellner on May 29, 2011 2:10 AM
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No I never experienced that
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Paul Kellner @ Deepak Gupta on May 30, 2011 6:01 PM
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Deepak,

I have received enough input from users to be satisfied that it is a SolidWorks/Windows7 issue. A number of users have come forward on various fora including this one with the same or similar problems. The fact that the problem doesn't go away with Software OpenGL or with different video cards takes the focus away from that cause. Why it doesn't occur with every SolidWorks 2011/Windows 7 Ultimate combination I cannot say, but it does occur with some. A programmer friend familiar with Windows but not SW suggested that SolidWorks was losing track of the handle for that window. I don't know about that because I am not a programmer.

Sorting out why it occurs on some installations and not others is something SolidWorks is best suited to figure out because they get the RX reports and have the means to interpret them and they have access to the source code so they alone can debug the problem.

Thanks for the responses,

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Paul Kellner @ Scott McFadden on May 30, 2011 6:19 PM
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The attached file is what the customer sent me. I had to get approval to post it. Pretty simple to reproduce.

Windows 7 SP1 64 bit
SW 2011 SP0 and SP3
Office 2010, but no Outlook
Aero Wallpaper turned on or off
Various Monitor resolutions
Intel Sandy Bridge
P67 motherboard
8GB DDR3
NVidia Quadro FX1400 with approved driver and with latest driver from NVidia
Software OpenGL

Testing was done on a clean install of the OS and SW with no virus checker or any other unnecessary software installed.

Event viewer was checked for OS and/or application issues. None found.

Machine runs Anna Wood's Punch Holder in 47 seconds.
Attachments
- tree problem.doc1.2 MB
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John Sweeney @ Paul Kellner on May 30, 2011 9:48 PM
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Hi Paul,
This sounds like the same problem discussed in the following thread: https://forum.solidworks.com/message/173153#173153 This was believed to have been fixed in SW2010 SP4, but it sounds like you may have a new scenario that is causing the same issue. As a you mention in your post, you should be able to get rid of the "screen junk" shown in the lower portion of the FeatureMgr by dragging the edge of the FeatureMgr window to change its width. The screen junk you see with the stale display is actually screen area where a window has failed to resize itself, so you're seeing dead space where no window exists. Since, technically, there is no window in that area, the area doesn't get painted and shows that last thing which occupied the area.

This particular issue was happening on x64 machines and related to window heirarchy and the window messaging used by the operating system to resize all child windows. I've tried to lay out my SW session like yours with the pinned taskpane and docked bottom toolbar, but I can't reproduce the issue my Win7 x64 laptop. Is there anything else unusual on your machine? Do you have any addins loaded that might also be watching document actions, etc.? Does the issue reproduce every time you tile and then maximize one of the docs, or for example, does the problem go away if the taskpane is unpinned, or if you remove the docked toolbar from the bottom row, or perhaps if you maximize the document by double-clicking the title bar vs. clicking the "restore" button? I've tried quite a few variations, but can't come up with a reproducer...

Thanks in Advance,
John
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Paul Kellner @ John Sweeney on May 30, 2011 11:47 PM
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John,

Thanks for the other link. I tried searching first and didn't find that one.

The machine was configured as I stated in my response to Deepak. Not everybody sees this problem, but those that do have no problem identifying it.

Fresh OS install, fresh Office install and fresh SW Standard install. So no addins, no virus checker, nothing extraneous. I don't recall pinning the task pane. I may have pinned the menu bar.

The machine is back at my customer's office. He is satisfied it wasn't the hardware and so am I. He put in a report through his VAR before I got the machine so SW should see it coming in at some point soon.

He had another issue with selection boxes not resizing properly when mating. He uses the 125% bigger display font option in Windows 7. SW doesn't deal well with that either. The workaround was a custom resize of 122% which seemed to work fine.

As far as your description of the problem there is another aspect to it. It isn't just that what was underneath is showing through, but the FT doesn't resize to fit the FT of the current document. That only happens when the resize is performed.

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Paul Kellner Jun 2, 2011 11:01 AM
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Another update on troubleshooting graphics problems.

Do this at your own risk!!

A troubleshooter went into Device Manager and disabled the graphics card. This actually solved the problem temporarily. When disabling the graphics adapter you have to reboot. The computer then comes up in 640x480 VGA mode.

This technique goes one step further than SoftwareOpenGL mode which only makes SW think the graphics card is VGA only. This mode makes the OS also think the graphics card is VGA 640x480. This is necessary because SW will not run in SafeMode.

Disabling the graphics adapter got SW to handle the Feature Manager refresh correctly. Sometimes if you re-enable the graphics adapter SW will still function correctly. But on the next cold reboot SW will behave as before with the refresh problem.

Since disabling graphics adapter temporarily solved the problem and SoftwareOpenGL didn't, this suggests that the problem is with the Windows 7.

To further resolve the issue I looked at the Hardware Compatibility List for Windows 7 x64 and there is only one Quadro graphics adapter that is Windows 7 Logo certified and there are 9 NVidia Quadro adapters that are listed as compatible. This is a far smaller list than that appearing on SolidWorks Graphics adapter list (31 vs 9) especially because the MicroSoft list specifies part number and manufacturer, not just type as is common in the NVIdia world.

In the ATI FirePro world the HCL lists 13 adapters as compatible and 12 as Windows 7 Logo certified. SW list has 20 FirePro adapters listed and 5 FireGL adapters listed.

The street price of the only Windows 7 Logo certified Quadro is currently $858.44 - $2,960.99
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Paul Kellner Jun 8, 2011 11:08 AM
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UPDATE 6/8/11

WORK AROUND (at your own risk)
In Windows 7 it is not possible to run SW in SafeMode. In previous OS and SW versions it was possible to do this to completely disable the graphics drivers.

Using Device Manager to disable the video drivers will allow a complete, clean un-install of the graphics drivers. After un-installing I used a registry cleaner (CrapCleaner) to remove all registry entries pertaining to the graphics drivers and then I removed all the driver files from Program Files.

On reboot, after the foregoing, Windows7 x64 will install the WDDM drivers which will provide the same resolution as the video card's driver provided, but without OpenGL support. This forces both the OS and SW to operate in Software OpenGL mode. And this fixes the problem with the Feature tree at the expense of not having hardware OpenGL and thus with a performance hit.

DRIVERS AND HARDWARE
I found that the video card, while being a SW tested and approved card was not on the Microsoft HCL for Windows 7. I obtained a similar card that was both SW approved and on the Microsoft HCL and it made no difference.

MORE OCCURRENCES FOUND
This subject came up at our user group meeting last night. Several commented that they had this problem including a CAD Manager with quite a few seats. Unfortunately they just were putting up with the problem and not reporting it. So I can now say that I have found the problem to occur on at least 25 machines and the number is climbing. Unfortunately many of those people are not reporting the problem.
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K. Hampton @ Jeff Holliday on Jun 8, 2011 11:15 AM
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I have the same, SW2011 SP3 on Win7 64 Bit and I do see this from time to time. Never really bothered me enough to do anything about it though...just drag the arrows a little and it goes away.
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Paul Kellner @ K. Hampton on Jun 8, 2011 11:50 AM
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A quick RX sent to your VAR wouldn't take too much time to do. Besides this problem, in talking to people, other parts of the GUI have problems too. It can only get worse.

What graphics card are you running?
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K. Hampton @ Paul Kellner on Jun 8, 2011 11:53 AM
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NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800
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Jeff Mowry @ Paul Kellner on Jun 8, 2011 12:29 PM
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Paul, thanks for the detailed follow-up.

I've since found that I can do some window-jogging to get the issue to clear while SW is still running. So I'll tile the windows horizontally, for instance, click another part/window that's not exhibiting this problem, and then either tile horizontally again (and select the previously problematic part/assembly) or select Window > (previously problematic part/assembly). I'm not exactly certain which combination of this window jogging does the trick, but I've had it work several times. If you try messing around with this, you'll probably have similar results--just pay attention to exactly what you do, or you'll end up not remembering the "trick" that solves the problem (like in my own case).
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Paul Kellner @ John Sweeney on Jun 20, 2011 11:01 AM
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John,

Just an update.

The problem was sent to the VAR. The VAR sent it to SW. SW told the VAR they couldn't reproduce the problem which doesn't surprise me. The VAR sent a Quadro 4000 graphics card to try. I installed the card after uninstalling the old drivers and the problem presists. This problem does not happen on the customers laptop (NVidia FX2700) just like it can't be reproduced on your laptop. Some people have it and some don't. We used this problem to show our user group how to use RX at a meeting a few weeks ago. One CAD manager (maybe 15 seats) has seen it and another user popped up right away and had seen it. But they haven't reported it to SWX.

I have attached the system.nfo file which is human readable and shows what hardware the problem is occurring on. Of course the problem doesn't just happen on this hardware. It has been reported with both ATI and NVidia graphics cards.

Just to mention again, wiped the machine and reinstalled the OS, Office and SW and the problem persisted. Of course approved and tested graphics drivers were used. This was before installing any other programs including anti-virus software.
Attachments
- SystemInfo.nfo.zip43.8 KB
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Paul Kellner @ Jeff Holliday on Jun 20, 2011 11:04 AM
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Jeff,

Can you run an RX on your machine and attach the .nfo file from the RX zip archive? I don't need the whole RX file, just the nfo file.

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Paul Kellner @ Jeff Mowry on Jun 20, 2011 11:08 AM
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Jeff,

Can you run RX and attach just the nfo file for the machines on which this occurs?

TIA
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Doug Seibel Jun 20, 2011 11:17 AM
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I often have the same problem...very annoying.

Here are a couple pics. Notice how the "Bad Tree" has a relic on the lower half, like the screen is not repainting correctly.
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- Bad_Tree_Display.png467.4 KB
- Good_Tree_Display.png514.0 KB
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Doug Seibel Jun 20, 2011 11:20 AM
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...another example of the issue...
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- Bad_Tree_Display-02.png254.4 KB
- Good_Tree_Display-02.png248.7 KB
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Paul Marsman Jun 20, 2011 11:54 AM
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I'm seeing the same issue on Win 7-64 running SW 2011 SP3.0
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Jeff Mowry @ Paul Kellner on Jun 20, 2011 12:02 PM
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Let me see what I can do. I've rarely had an instance in which RX caught what was actually going on (and provided useful problem-solving info), but it may work this time.
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Doug Seibel Jun 20, 2011 12:02 PM
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Here are my system stats:
Software Version: SolidWorks 2011
Service Pack: 3.0
Hardware: Dell Precision T7500, 64 bit, Intel Zeon 2.00 GHz CPU, 12 GB Ram, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800, Windows 7

And as you can see by my pics, I do indeed have the same issue.
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