2012 Crash - Wacom Intuos 4 Drawing Tablet

[Ian.Kidston]

Hi All,

There is a known issue with the Wacom Intuos 4 drawing tablet driver and Revit 2012 Architecture Suite for some configuations - mine unfortunately

When changing a material appearance in the materials dialog box, Revit will crash without any recovery file save.

As noted above, Autodesk are aware of the problem, (and are hopefully working around the clock to fix it!?!), but at the moment, the only options seem to be removing all traces of the Wacom driver and putting the tablet in the bottom drawer for a while or use a different computer - one without a tablet - to change material appearances.

Damn :banghead:

[JeffreyMcGrew]

I'm not having this problem? Windows 7 has some funky pen stuff you have to dig into the registry to turn off that I've found does cause problems with Revit + Wacom.

Can you tell us more about your configuration?

I'm using Win7 64bit, RAC 2012 64bit, an Intous 4 Wireless model & a DTU-2231 (it's like a Cintque) Wacom flatscreen.

I have had instability when editing materials, but not when simply changing them.

[Ian.Kidston]

Hi Jeffrey,

Config:
MACHINE SPEC:
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Max Clock Speed: 3.70 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Number of Logical Processors: 8

Total Physical Memory: 15.98 GB
Bank0/1: 4.00 GB @ 1333 MHz
Bank2/3: 4.00 GB @ 1333 MHz
Bank4/5: 4.00 GB @ 1333 MHz
Bank6/7: 4.00 GB @ 1333 MHz

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Graphics RAM: 1.00 GB
Driver version: 8.17.12.6658

Chipset sandy bridge 1155 socket on Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD5 motherboard

RAC 2012 Architecture suite

Intuos 4 Wired Tablet Driver: 6.1.6-7

This problem became apparent during beta testing. Initially, I thought it was due to a conflict between the FlexM Licencing system as I could change the appearance of materials when running in safe mode - Licence off. After a fair bit of digging, Autodesk beta team advised me that it was a conflict with the tablet driver.
Cheers,


Ian

[JeffreyMcGrew]

Crazy. That's very simular to my setup. I'm having some random lag problems that I occasionally have with Revit (had them with 2011 too), but no outright reproducible crashing. My lags are caused by weird issues of fine-tuning the wait time of the clicks in the registry after turning off all the pen stuff in Win7 that was conflicting.

I've got some engineers to talk directly with at Wacom. Give me an e-mail ([email protected]) and I'll hook you up with them.

I've also got a Space Navigator hooked up. Don't know if having yet another USB input device in the mix does anything.

[willsud]

I have a similar setup with both Intuos 4 medium tablet, space explorer 3D mouse and haven't noticed any major problems so far - (rare) crashes have been when rotating complex models.

I've just tried editing a few materials and it all seems fine - but I'll look out for it, thanks.

As Jeffrey mentions, I spent a while in Windows 7 turning off as much of the Windows Tablet stuff as possible while keeping the Intuos tablet working.

Over the years the Intuos tablet drivers have come in for a lot of flak from support people I've spoken to but I don't know if they are really that bad (although a quick look in the Intuos forums is interesting).

Someone from Wacom emailed me last year to say that they were working on improving workflow for Autodesk product users and could I give them my thoughts - which I did - so hopefully things will improve.

Does the problem go away if you remove the Wacom driver?

/edit:
Found this relating to Revit 2011 in the Wacom forums (love the reply from support which has nothing to do with the product in question)

http://tinyurl.com/4yco9rt

[Ian.Kidston]

I have a similar setup with both Intuos 4 medium tablet, space explorer 3D mouse and haven't noticed any major problems so far - (rare) crashes have been when rotating complex models.

I've just tried editing a few materials and it all seems fine - but I'll look out for it, thanks.

As Jeffrey mentions, I spent a while in Windows 7 turning off as much of the Windows Tablet stuff as possible while keeping the Intuos tablet working.

Over the years the Intuos tablet drivers have come in for a lot of flak from support people I've spoken to but I don't know if they are really that bad (although a quick look in the Intuos forums is interesting).

Someone from Wacom emailed me last year to say that they were working on improving workflow for Autodesk product users and could I give them my thoughts - which I did - so hopefully things will improve.

Does the problem go away if you remove the Wacom driver?

/edit:
Found this relating to Revit 2011 in the Wacom forums (love the reply from support which has nothing to do with the product in question)
http://tinyurl.com/4yco9rt

Sadly, yes, the crash disappears once I have uninstalled the tablet drivers - back to the mouse at the moment. One thing I have never checked is whether the tablet drivers are loaded when you boot up in safe mode.

A bit of second, or indeed wild, guessing here, but I don't believe that it is a problem for those who have Revit Architecture as a single piece of software and may well be confined to those who have purchase the AutoCad Architecture Suite which includes Revit.

Some time after I became aware of the problem I bought a new computer. The very first bit of software I loaded on to the new box after google chrome and Thunderbird email was Revit 2012 Beta. At that point, being aware of the previous problems I tested the materials. All worked as expected without any crashes. I then loaded AutoCad (and possibly tablet as well - can't really remember) - crash on changing materials in Revit. Naturally, I assumed that ACad was the culprit.

I might reload the tablet drivers, as I would be interested to learn if the tablet is active if one has booted up in Safe mode with networking.

Interesting that Wacom suggests optimizing AutoCad to reslove Revit issues. Will have a read through the documentation.

[willsud]

While on this subject, I see that the Properties drop down still doesn't work in Revit 2012 with the Intuos 4 tablet and pen.. at least not until it has been opened once or twice using the Edit Type button.

[JeffreyMcGrew]

While on this subject, I see that the Properties drop down still doesn't work in Revit 2012 with the Intuos 4 tablet and pen.. at least not until it has been opened once or twice using the Edit Type button.

This problem has been a plague.

It's a weird bug I've been trying to help the Wacom people chase for a while now.

I think it has something to do with the click wait time, for it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, when using my Intous 4. I've tweaked the registry settings and gotten it to work most of the time, but I still have problems occasionally.

However, on the same machine, without changing a single thing, it totally works all the time if I switch to using the flatscreen pen directly on the DTU-2231. WTF?

[Steve_Stafford]

Seen both issues as well. I didn't attribute it to the Intous 4 specifically and I haven't had the compute up and running without it to see if it works without...but it definitely crashes on my Dell m6300 laptop. The type selector issue stinks too on both 2011 and 2012.

[willsud]

I see there is an updated Revit Clinic blog post relating to this issue:

http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/revit-crash-when-launching-the-materials-or-render-appearance-dialogs.html

Strangely, I don't see these crashes.

I do notice that a right-click with the Wacom Intuos 4 pen does not bring up the option to put the Properties dialog in the QAT:

http://insidethefactory.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/2012-little-things-type-selector.html

you need to use a 'real' mouse to get this to work.