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The perennial stuffed carrara file question.

HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
edited June 2014 in Carrara Discussion

Hi, I have a 1.2 gig car file I am trying to open, but Carrara just stalls.
I have tried zipping it and opening it with an unzipping prog - no joy.

I didn't save it compressed.
Tried it in Carr 8.5 though it was made in 8.1 - no joy.

I tried importing it into another carrara file, but no joy.

I have a backup o f it that also will not open.
I think what has happened is that I have saved it in a disc that was nearly full - seems to be a common denominator with stuffed Car files.

But this case is different. Carara just stops working.
No error message - zilch.

I regularly u se big files like this with no problems.

Any ideas in opening the file appreciated :) !

Post edited by Headwax on

Comments

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    But this case is different. Carara just stops working. No error message - zilch.

    I wish I could help more - I have ranted in the past about Carrara's useless error handling.

    Can you elaborate on "just stops working" a bit? Does the process actually go away? Or does it sit there in a hung state?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited June 2014

    thanks for replying Garstor :)

    Oh, it just has that beige coloured bar thing at the top of Carrara saying it's loading 100 percent

    , then nothing happens,......
    zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    when I go into windows 7 task manager it says Carrara is not responding

    Carrara is still using 13 percent of my cpu and approx 3,000,000 k od memory
    I have 16 gigs memory

    hope that helps

    cheers from here :)

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    when I go into windows 7 task manager it says Carrara is not responding

    cheers from here :)

    Okay, so the process is still running - it hasn't crashed. How long have you left it in this state...heck, it may eventually come back to the land of the living...

    Sadly, the best course of action that I can think of at this point is to trigger a series of memory dumps about 10 seconds apart. If DAZ would actually pay me and provide the debugging symbols, I'd do the analysis for them... :-P

    (confession: I'm actually extremely rusty with my debugging skills since leaving Microsoft...)

    I've said before that I would take dumps of Carrara without symbols just to see what's inside...maybe I should return to that idea.

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    The trick with taking a series of dumps like that is that you can see what threads are doing work and focus on them. From there, you can likely figure out why it is taking so long.

    The debugging symbols translates the memory addresses into the actual source code so that the dump is (mostly) human readable. A function call like ComputeRefraction() would otherwise look like: Carrara.exe+0x1a523009b

    :coolgrin:

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited June 2014

    :) yes dumps are handy ! whatever they are :)
    well I loaded the file up at at 4.41, time of my reply to you and when I hit submit post I will know what time it is, so back in a second....

    okay so it has been loading this time for ten mins !!!

    the cpu is still 13 percent but memory usage is 4,300,000 k now

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited December 1969

    heading towatds 5,000,000 now .....

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    heading towatds 5,000,000 now .....

    That is a long time to wait...but it is acquiring memory...so it is still doing something. It could either be doing a lot of work or it is stuck inside an infinite loop - in which case, it will eventually consume all the RAM on your machine (this is called a "memory leak").

    I'm assuming you are using Windows. Maybe we can setup a file share somewhere and I can try opening your file myself. I'm still on Carrara 8.1 64-bit.

    A memory dump basically hooks into a running process and freezes it...then writes out all the memory content to disk. Essentially giving you a snapshot of all that was happening at the time of the dump. At Microsoft, I would sometimes have to look at dumps of SQL Server to figure out certain errors or problems.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    What if the file is moved to a drive with more space? What kind of space does Carrara have to work with for its scratch disk?

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited December 1969

    Hya Garstor, that's very kind of you thank you.
    I'll have a go at rebuiulding the scene (again...) and if I have no joy then I make take you up on the offer!
    It's a complicated Jungle scene, lots of everything with replicators and a zillion plants etc.
    It's for the front cover of a book my agent should be sending away soon..... I have already redone it but she likes the orignal better
    but I need to move a few things..... gah :)

    Evil, that's a great idea. I have loaded the file up onto my half empty e - drive but still didn't work.
    Not sure what scratch disc I have set on my carrara (am at work) but will check it later.
    I think I have Carrara on my C drive (solid state thingy) but the data files were on my chockablock d drive.

    thanks for the ideas both of you.

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