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_Altium Designer PCB graphics, components disappear....

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fala

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Hello board, I have _altium designer 6.8, but when I drag components in PCB to another place, other components that are beneath them disappear(become invisible) sometimes only one pad of them is visible but when I click on the place that I knew they should have been they again become visible, is this normal? can be avoided?
thanks,
 

altium designer vista 64 bit

It may be the transprency setup, chek its level. The setting is at bottom-left hand side of your screen.
 

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    fala

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Hello Johnson, it is not. the components remain invisible even when I move the dragged component over them to another place. the only way they become visible is either to click on the place I guess they should have been or press END to refresh the screen. As far as I remember, I never encountered such scenario in version 6.6. It should have something to do with graphics and new features introduced in 6.8
regards,
 

some versions have serious bugs. for example 6.3 removes half of my routing just like that...
6.7 is good and stable. try to reinstall, but with updates up tu 6.7 only.
 

Hello buenos, are you using 6.8 and experiencing the same problem? if it is a bug then most probably our friend House_Cat knows about it. Frankly, new 3d visualization feature introduced is so attractive for me that I prefer to tolerate that annoying bug(if it is a bug) and do not get back to previous version and someone says these words that is so conservative that many of his softwares are years old. I actually considered to upgrade my computer just for using this feature better. 3d visualization is so demanding that my AMD 3200+,2GRAM,GForce6100 250M, can't handle it properly and when I use 3d panel and want to watch (3+1)3d graphics of my board on my dual monitor displays, it is not fast enough. I hope it is not a bug and can be fixed by a trick .
regards
 

The refresh problem with component pads or whole components disappearing results from changes made in the DirectX display mode of AD6.8. It is a graphics card/driver refresh problem (that's why doing a manual refresh using the "end" key fixes it), and it is most common with ATI video chipsets. Most people have found that the problem is solved by installing the latest ATI drivers for their video cards. Nvidia chipsets don't seem to have the problem as often, but those that do are older video cards. If you use GDI display (DirectX Preferences option turned off), you won't see the refresh problem; however, you won't be able to use 3D display either.

The AD6.8.1 update fixed most of the display problems in DirectX, but the selection highlighting is a crosshatch pattern that many people don't like. The reason for all of the display changes is a change to the internal graphics engine used by AD to allow for faster pan, zoom, and 3D operations.
 
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    fala

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    ciccioc74

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Thanks a lot House_Cat,
This is Altium suggestion for a system

Home \ Products \ Altium Designer \
System requirements
Altium Designer System Requirements
Recommended system for optimal performance
* Windows XP (Professional or Home)
* 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor or equivalent
* 1 GByte RAM
* 2 GByte hard disk space (Install + User Files)
* Dual monitors with 1280x1024 screen resolution
* 32-bit color, 64 MB graphics card*
* Parallel port (if connecting to a NanoBoard-NB1)

Minimum system requirements for acceptable performance

* Windows 2000 Professional SP2
* 1.8 GHz processor
* 1 GByte RAM
* 2 GByte hard disk space (Install + User Files)
* Main monitor 1280x1024 screen resolution
Strongly recommended: second monitor with minimum 1024x768 screen resolution
* 32-bit color, 32 MB graphics card*
* Parallel port (if connecting to a NanoBoard-NB1)
but dose really waht they recommend works smoothly with new 3d visualization feature?
what do you recommend for a system, single fast AMD chip/ Intel dual core, single graphic card with dual monitor out/ 2 separate graphic cards, is 64M graphic memory enough? what about ram is 1GB enough? if you have experience with a system that works smoothly and perfectly with altium designer especially new 3d visualization feature please tell us.
thanks again
 

I don't want to get into the business of recommending specific hardware. However, user experience has been that at least 1Gb of ram is required for medium to large size boards to avoid excessive swap file usage by Windows. Users with 2Gb of ram seldom have problems. Windows XP can't use more than 3Gb for user programs. So if you install 4Gb of ram, Windows will use 1Gb, and user software will use 3Gb. Note that this also depends on the motherboard chipset and bios.

If you run AD in 64 bit Vista, it runs under what MS calls "WOW", or "Windows on Windows" virtual machine because it is a 32 bit program. When running under "WOW", you still have a 3Gb limit because the 32bit program running in the virtual machine cannot access the 64bit memory controller or driver.

Nvidia graphics cards have proven to be the most reliable. However, the Nvidia Desktop Manager does not get along well with AD or a number of other graphics design programs. It is best to either not install it at all, or to remove it after installing the latest Nvidia drivers.

The graphics card MUST support BOTH DirectX 9.0c AND Shader Model 3 in order for the 3D features of AD to work. Nvidia graphics cards from GeForce 6600 models up through GeForce 8800 models have proven to work well. The newer GeForce 8800 cards give the fastest 3D response. If you are planning to do a lot of 3D work, it would be best to get one of the newer cards. If you don't mind slower panning and rotation in 3D modes, the older 6600-7950 series cards will work. Just be sure that the model you choose supports BOTH DirectX 9.0c AND Shader Model 3.

ATI graphics cards will also work for AD; however, there have been a lot of driver problems. Some cards and drivers work OK, but others seem to have random problems with screen refresh, panning, and unpredictable crashes. I don't have much faith in ATI graphics cards for any serious business application, but especially not for AD.
 

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    fala

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House_Cat said:
I don't want to get into the business of recommending specific hardware. However, user experience has been that at least 1Gb of ram is required for medium to large size boards to avoid excessive swap file usage by Windows. Users with 2Gb of ram seldom have problems. Windows XP can't use more than 3Gb for user programs. So if you install 4Gb of ram, Windows will use 1Gb, and user software will use 3Gb. Note that this also depends on the motherboard chipset and bios.

If you run AD in 64 bit Vista, it runs under what MS calls "WOW", or "Windows on Windows" virtual machine because it is a 32 bit program. When running under "WOW", you still have a 3Gb limit because the 32bit program running in the virtual machine cannot access the 64bit memory controller or driver.

Nvidia graphics cards have proven to be the most reliable. However, the Nvidia Desktop Manager does not get along well with AD or a number of other graphics design programs. It is best to either not install it at all, or to remove it after installing the latest Nvidia drivers.

The graphics card MUST support BOTH DirectX 9.0c AND Shader Model 3 in order for the 3D features of AD to work. Nvidia graphics cards from GeForce 6600 models up through GeForce 8800 models have proven to work well. The newer GeForce 8800 cards give the fastest 3D response. If you are planning to do a lot of 3D work, it would be best to get one of the newer cards. If you don't mind slower panning and rotation in 3D modes, the older 6600-7950 series cards will work. Just be sure that the model you choose supports BOTH DirectX 9.0c AND Shader Model 3.

ATI graphics cards will also work for AD; however, there have been a lot of driver problems. Some cards and drivers work OK, but others seem to have random problems with screen refresh, panning, and unpredictable crashes. I don't have much faith in ATI graphics cards for any serious business application, but especially not for AD.
Click to expand...
Hi House_Cat,

So you mean the AD can actually works properly in Windows Vista 64-bit OS? Do we need to do any configuration settings?

Did they actually claim that the AD can work under Vista? I cant seem to find it in the recommended hardware specification.

Thanks.
 

at the right bottom side of your screen ...you should change your mask level
be successful
 

ericmar said:
Hi House_Cat,

So you mean the AD can actually works properly in Windows Vista 64-bit OS? Do we need to do any configuration settings?

Did they actually claim that the AD can work under Vista? I cant seem to find it in the recommended hardware specification.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Altium doesn't list it in their recommendations because it wasn't written for Vista. There are a couple of things that don't work for AD under Vista. For example, the parallel port support for the NB-1 FPGA develpoment system doesn't work under Vista because of the port driver changes that Microsoft made. You also have to run AD under Administrator mode in Vista to ensure that the OS will allow you to write to the files that AD needs to access. The help file support that existed in WinXP was dropped from Vista by Microsoft, so you have to go to the Microsoft web site and download the help file dll to get to the help file information in AD.

Regardless of the changes made by Microsoft, and the few things mentioned above that don't work under Vista, there are several users who are currently successfully running AD under Vista 64bit (actually Microsoft 32bit WOW virtual machine under Vista 64 that Vista automatically loads to run 32bit applications on the 64bit OS).
 

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