Affinity Designer crashes after using shape tool

[drdrewnatic]

This issue is very similar to another issue posted by @YuconCarneleous.

I am tracing a logo. I'm trying to clean up using the shape builder tool but whenever I try to use it, Designer crashes. Sometimes I will be able to add and subtract shapes for a little while before it crashes but in the case of the screen recording, it crashed as soon as I went to the tool.

 

System Specs:

Windows 11 Build 22621.963

Affinity Designer V2.0.3

CPU: Intel Core i5 12600k

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB 3200 CL16

MB: Gigabyte B660 Aorus Master DDR4

GPU: ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2070 OC

BOOT: Crucial P5 Plus 1TB

SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 500GB

HDD: Seagate 2TB 7200RPM

blueshockey.afdesign

[SrPx]

Hardware acceleration-Open CL is off, unchecked, in preferences-> performance ? (if not, I'd try to set that off, first  thing).

(maybe also would help a screenshot of your preferences->performance screen)

Edit: Also, be sure you have installed a recent version of your graphic card's driver (if not, uninstall it, install the newest one)

And something very required here, to have all the latest windows updates.

[drdrewnatic]

Interesting, after turning off OpenCL acceleration, the problem goes away, but after turning it back on, the issue re-appears. So, I guess this is just a software bug? What do I do now?

Never mind, it didn't fix the issue. Windows is up to date. GPU Driver is up to date

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by drdrewnatic

[drdrewnatic]

56 minutes ago, SrPx said:

Hardware acceleration-Open CL is off, unchecked, in preferences-> performance ? (if not, I'd try to set that off, first  thing).

(maybe also would help a screenshot of your preferences->performance screen)

Edit: Also, be sure you have installed a recent version of your graphic card's driver (if not, uninstall it, install the newest one)

And something very required here, to have all the latest windows updates.

Forgot to quote you

Edited January 8, 2023 by drdrewnatic

[SrPx]

It's unclear to me  if with Open CL off you are still having the problem, or that you want to have it on, and then if so, it keeps crashing. The advice was not to set it off and then back on.

I would still leave it unchecked (open CL), it has been reported multiple problems with it (at least till a future release). Also, if you are using one graphic app at a given time (imo best use with 16gb, different case with 32 or 64), I would increase the RAM setting there in preferences like to 10 or 12. Undos, I know by default is 1024, but I suspect that eats memory, too. I usually set it at 30 or 70 as much.

That scene has many nodes, and the boolean operations might be very intensive. So, imo both doing the above (for memory) and maybe simplifying not with shape builder or booleans, but "old style", manually, the scene, and by all means -as also wouldn't be proper for a logo- discard any raster layer effect, live filter, live anything, etc. Flatten all as much as you can. Maybe once it is a lighter scene, shape builder can help better.

Also, it might be related to certain bug... we've been having a problem (actually several problems, but I think all come from a same root) with text converted to curves lately. Generating problems with knife, booleans and shapebuilder. There's some sort of bug. We've found two "dirty" tricks that allow to work in all those situations meanwhile that gets fixed :

Method 1) - (credit for this one goes to @,,, ) In document properties (document setup in File menu) set the width of the document to 1 pixel. Then do all your booleans (add, subtract, etc), knife or shapebuilder tool operations then, and once you are finished with all those operations (logo simplified, etc), then you can set in document properties the correct dimensions you want it to have (in mm,  inches, points or whatever).

Method 2) - Wouldn't recommend this one (I discovered it, btw) for a complex project like this, it'd be tedious (or maybe not, if you can just melt all). But in case the above doesn't work in this scene.  My trick is to set in preferences-> general-> "clipboard to copy as SVG" (no need to restart). Then, select all and do right click, 'geometry', melt curves (unless you already did so, it'd be fine) so it's combined to one thing (not group),  then with it selected, copy (ctrl + c  or right click "copy"). Now in top menu Edit, click on "Special Paste" (you can set a shortcut key for this) and in the tiny window that shows up, click on "Scalable Vector Graphics". It creates a "cured" curves element, but with like a parent layer or group, just grab the generated curves layer out of that layer, and then delete then the empty layer. This new pasted curve object can receive all knife, booleans, and shapebuilder operations without certain bugs. But I don't know if this is would avoid your crash (it might). If the pasted object does not get placed in the exact position of the original,  with snapping activated (and the right settings in snapping) you can place it (it will snap to the old) matching with the old melted curves object's position.

[drdrewnatic]

19 minutes ago, SrPx said:

It's unclear to me  if with Open CL off you are still having the problem, or that you want to have it on, and then if so, it keeps crashing. The advice was not to set it off and then back on.

When I turned Open CL off, the problem appeared to have gone away as I did not have a crash after using the tool for a while. I decided to turn Open CL back on to see if it would crash and it within the first minute of using the Shape Builder Tool. I then turned off Open CL to continue working on my project and it crashed even with it turned off. Turning off Open CL does not fix the problem.

26 minutes ago, SrPx said:

I would still leave it unchecked (open CL), it has been reported multiple problems with it (at least till a future release). Also, if you are using one graphic app at a given time (imo best use with 16gb, different case with 32 or 64), I would increase the RAM setting there in preferences like to 10 or 12. Undos, I know by default is 1024, but I suspect that eats memory, too. I usually set it at 30 or 70 as much.

Good to know. I come from Adobe Illustrator so I'm not very familiar with Affinity Designer.

 

I'll try your suggestions to see if they work. Will let you know. Thank you for helping me.