Large empty white screen pops up causing me to force quit

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 01:50

Ok I had to work all day and am just now returning... before I left I turned off auto save and I have not seen the white monster since I got home. It has been about an hour so far... fingers crossed that turning off auto save was the solution... Thanks everyone for your help!!! Hopefully this will be the end of this post : /

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:02

Blasted! I thought that the turning off auto save had worked.... but alas he darn white monster is back looming over my sketch up...

So far I have tired, the two suggestions that Jeff had, reset sketchup by removing the plst files... and turning off autosave. I though that both of them had worked but eventually the darn whit thing came back.

I have run the GUI scripting that "driven:" gave me (not sure if they were able to make out anything from what I sent), also not sure they got what I sent as it seems that half of the posts the I am posting here aren't showing up?? (maybe because I am new or because i did not do something correct when submitting).

I am now going to look into Rich's suggesting regarding the splash screen on startup.

Thanks everyone for trying to help me. i am at a loss... It does seem to happen sometime after I render with vray...maybe vray is the problem? I am using the trial version of gray

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:21

Does anyone else see the similarity of the render screen size/location to the big whit box that randomly pops up shown in my earlier post? Just saying it is kind of weird how much the match up as far as size and local... any thoughts suggestions?

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:29

Sorry, I am new to this post and I did not realize that there were additional pages I was only looking at the first page of pots which is why I thought my posts were not beeing posted and why I was not responding to your additional suggestions and questions... I am going to read through them all and get back with my findings... the last thing I did was trun off the splash screen that comes up when I start sketch up... will see if that works but I was quickly reading through pages 2 and 3 of this thread and saw some other good suggestions and questions... will return with my findings and answers soon.

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:32

@driven said:

Ok,

If you 'Review Changes' then 'Save' or 'Discard' on both, does SU then close itself?

In either case often times the save or discard window is hidden behind the white box so I can't get to it to say save or discard... a couple of times I was able to grab a corder of it out then choose save... but usually I have to got to sketchup and choose quit...

jeff hammond · 3 Feb 2013, 03:35

@shannakae said:

Sorry, I am new to this post and I did not realize that there were additional pages I was only looking at the first page of pots which is why I thought my posts were not beeing posted and why I was not responding to your additional suggestions and questions...

nah.. the last 10+ posts have been off topic so you didn't miss a whole lot..

re: the vray window looking similar in size/locale.
sure..
turn it off for a while and see if the problem persists..

i believe vray is an extension that you can turn off in sketchup preferences..

(sketchup-> preferences-> extensions)

find vray in the list and untick the box. then relaunch sketchup

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:35

@driven said:

in your second image the menu bar says it's Safari?
long shot but, does the box go away if you close Safari?
john

Good thought... didnt work though : (

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:38

@driven said:

if you turn off 'Instructor' does it go away?

scroll area 1 of window "Instructor"

I closed it and it did not go away, is there a specific way to turn it of besides closing it?

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:39

This is what i got when i ran the apple script editor after I just now got the error again... I am thinking that it might be the auto save as suggested by, Jeff... I am going to go and turn it off now as it happened approx 5 minutes after I opened sketchup again... in the meantime if you can make sense of the stuff below I am impressed : ) it looks like chines to me.

shannakae · 3 Feb 2013, 03:59

@unknownuser said:

@shannakae said:

Sorry, I am new to this post and I did not realize that there were additional pages I was only looking at the first page of pots which is why I thought my posts were not beeing posted and why I was not responding to your additional suggestions and questions...

nah.. the last 10+ posts have been off topic so you didn't miss a whole lot..

re: the vray window looking similar in size/locale.
sure..
turn it off for a while and see if the problem persists..

i believe vray is an extension that you can turn off in sketchup preferences..

(sketchup-> preferences-> extensions)

find vray in the list and untick the box. then relaunch sketchup

Ok, so I turned off v ray... . We will see if that is the issue? If it is (which I am feeling like it probably is the issue) what do yall suggest? Does anyone else have a renderer they like better than vary? I have a project that I have been working on and I need renderings by Monday morning, I am worried that with these technical issues I might not be able to meet my deadline and that would be bad. If V ray keeps causing me to have to restart then I might need to try another renderer. I can, i guess reach out to V ray but I am guessing that will take a few days to get worked out... maybe a different renderer will work better for me anyway or at least I can download a trial verson of one that yall suggest. I do Interior design so lighting and materials are mucho important.

Thanks.

driven · 3 Feb 2013, 12:56

@shannakae said:

Ok, so I turned off v ray... . We will see if that is the issue?

hi,
I don't use it , but Vray was on that Window list generated by Applescript, and seeing it's size
and position, I believe it is the culprit, but why?

Here is a 'stab in the dark',

You also have an 'Untitled-Window' at the same time, if it has been saved you should re-name it, because it is one of the ways of identifying an 'un-saved model' (from code) so...

Vray may be trying to be helpful by letting you know that you need to save it before it will work...
It's actually a 'WebDialog' that's 'Vray' is using, and if opened by an 'un-saved' model could cause issues...
there are known problems with some 'WebDialogs' on macs, where they don't always show the content unless you 'click' or 'right-click' or 'right-click » reload'.
there's a 'possiblity' that 'Vray' is not handling the way mac's can have 2 models open in the same session.(it's different then on a Windows PC)

So...
if it is any of these, you could make sure all drawing have unique names and are saved, then close all but the one your rendering before turning 'Vray' on. If it still comes up 'blank' try 'right-click » reload'.

If it still plays up, run the Applescript on a 'healthy' version and PM me the results and I'll write a script that only turns itoff, to avoid needing 'force quit'.

good luck
john

shannakae · 5 Feb 2013, 02:15

@driven said:

@shannakae said:

Ok, so I turned off v ray... . We will see if that is the issue?

hi,
I don't use it , but Vray was on that Window list generated by Applescript, and seeing it's size
and position, I believe it is the culprit, but why?

Here is a 'stab in the dark',

You also have an 'Untitled-Window' at the same time, if it has been saved you should re-name it, because it is one of the ways of identifying an 'un-saved model' (from code) so...

Vray may be trying to be helpful by letting you know that you need to save it before it will work...

It's actually a 'WebDialog' that's 'Vray' is using, and if opened by an 'un-saved' model could cause issues...

there are known problems with some 'WebDialogs' on macs, where they don't always show the content unless you 'click' or 'right-click' or 'right-click » reload'.

there's a 'possiblity' that 'Vray' is not handling the way mac's can have 2 models open in the same session.(it's different then on a Windows PC)

So...
if it is any of these, you could make sure all drawing have unique names and are saved, then close all but the one your rendering before turning 'Vray' on. If it still comes up 'blank' try 'right-click » reload'.

If it still plays up, run the Applescript on a 'healthy' version and PM me the results and I'll write a script that only turns itoff, to avoid needing 'force quit'.

good luck
john

WE HAVE A WINNER!

IT was Vray for sure... I turned it off for a while and it stopped happening. Then I turned it back on and it happened again... I figured out how to make it go away without having to shut down sketch up... All I have to do is click on the R button in V ray tool bar to start a new render then I can close it.. not sure why it happens but at least it is something I can live with and I dont have to shut down sketch up now every time it happens... I thought yall would want to know what it was so that if you hear of it again you can help someone else... ! Thanks everyone for helping. : )

driven · 5 Feb 2013, 02:22

cheers for letting us know,
you could also post something at the vray help forum with a link to this thread, so they might have try and fix it...
john

TIG · 5 Feb 2013, 10:27

I recall that thomthom has devised something that stops Vray auto-running with Sketchup unless you specifically tell it to, or simple activate it when needed...
Why not post in the SCF Vray forum... or PM TT to see what's involved.
I expect that you won't want Vray running ALL of the time ?

Gaieus · 5 Feb 2013, 10:40

@tig said:

I recall that thomthom has devised something that stops Vray auto-running with Sketchup unless you specifically tell it to, or simple activate it when needed...

Here, V-Ray Toys. Has other, cool features, too.

shannakae · 19 Feb 2013, 21:23

One last note on this topic, I ended up taking my Mac back and getting an ASUS gaming laptop. I have not had this issue with my new computer... so i am assuming it was something to do with Mac... could have been the retina display or something... Anyway, just thought I would throw it out there as I am using Vray again on my new computer without any issues (knock on wood).

Rich O Brien · 19 Feb 2013, 21:28

I recently got an Asus g75VW..... nice machine and great for CAD

shannakae · 20 Feb 2013, 00:26

@rich o brien said:

I recently got an Asus g75VW..... nice machine and great for CAD

Got the G75V, It is pretty great so far and super fast! Quite a beast though : ).

dkendig · 1 Jul 2013, 18:44

V-Ray doesn't use web dialogs, and I am unable to reproduce the issue at all on my machine. We don't handle multiple windows of SU being open on OSX at all, because they have an entirely different way of doing things under that environment. It's something we would like to address soon, but so far have found no simple solution for it. We support 1 SU window open on OSX at a time. If you do open a second window, you will corrupt your scene, get crashes, and other horrible things. Thomthom's utility will likely not be helpful at all with the way the OSX version of SU works.

driven · 1 Jul 2013, 18:59

@dkendig said:

It's something we would like to address soon, but so far have found no simple solution for it. We support 1 SU window open on OSX at a time. If you do open a second window, you will corrupt your scene, get crashes, and other horrible things.

That's bad, can't you address the child process.

 pid = Process.pid

# Get the child pids.
pipe = IO.popen("ps -ef | grep #{pid}")

child_pids = pipe.readlines.map do |line|
  parts = line.split(/\s+/)
  parts[2] if parts[3] == pid.to_s and parts[2] != pipe.pid.to_s
end.compact

# Show the child processes.
puts child_pids

Each new window on mac generates a separate child process.

so 3 windows... returns
` 63486
63490
63493
nil

`
john