Affinity Designer hanging/crashing in Yosemite

[j.king]

I use an older iMac running Yosemite (OS 10.10.5). Affinity Designer for the most part has been great, but every now and then it will lock up my entire system. The only way to get back to work is to force shutdown my machine. Very frustrating as I've not been able to pinpoint a cause. It has bitten me several times so I save often. Anyone else had this issue and is there a fix? I will add... I use a trackball with a scroll wheel and I use the wheel for quickly zooming in & out. More than a few times the freeze has occurred as I scroll to zoom into a document. However, that has NOT been the only times it has locked up. Hopefully someone can help.

[Dan C]

Hi j.king

This isn't an issue likely related to our OSx version, it sounds like Affinity is running low on resources. Could you please confirm your system specs and if possible provide a screenshot of activity monitor with Affinity Designer running?

[j.king]

Screens attached of system specs and of activity monitor with AD open. Activity monitor is a new one on me; the info there is changing constantly so not sure what to look for.

[Dan C]

Thanks for that, the Activity Monitor shows me there aren't many other programs running that could be affecting your system.

Although a little underpowered (no offence!) your machine shouldn't have so many issues running Affinity. Resetting the software may help, you can reset your app back to its default settings by holding down the CTRL key while launching the app. When the Clear User Data window appears, click Select All and then Clear. The app will now open.

Be aware that resetting your app back to its default settings will lose any custom settings such as keyboard shortcuts and brushes etc. To backup such settings before resetting the app, please watch our Affinity - Exporting User Settings and Keyboard Shortcuts video.

[j.king]

Yeah I don't typically keep a lot of programs open. Sometimes Affinity Photo is also active but not often. Mail or Safari is about it.

Thank you for the suggestion! I'll give it a shot.

[j.king]

The newest version (1.8.1) is still locking my machine up when trying to Union, Combine (Xor) or Subtract complex vector objects. For example, a field of vector distress marks I need to first Ungroup, then Combine as one object so it can be used as a 'cookie-cutter' for Subtract on another object. Locks it up every time and have to force shutdown. I have tried app reset as mentioned above but it didn't resolve. I have also Verified and Repaired disk. What makes this scenario really sad - I can use Inkscape to do any of these same functions without issue. I can just barely tolerate working in Inkscape but am forced to with AD failing on these specific Geometry tasks. I've gone back & forth with the Performance RAM settings, and I keep the Undo limit way, way down from default. Nothing seems to help. Does anyone have any other suggestions on this? Would a crash report help? I kept a copy of the last one I received from system when I left a task in process to see if it would ever succeed. Let me know.

[j.king]

This has become a major issue. Earlier this evening I turned the machine back on fresh and was drawing a simple paw shape.
Also in the doc was a set of trees I had just welded together in frickin Inkscape... since it will weld shapes without issue
and without crashing my system. Was almost done drawing the shape and (CRAP!) the entire system locks up... again! Yet another
forced shutdown for the day. Is AD incapable of handling anything where vector objects may have more than a few nodes?! Or, could
this have something to do with drawings originating or being edited in other software then opened in AD? Beyond frustrating as
the software is becoming almost unusable. Ideas or fixes?! AP tends to do the same thing to my machine (severe stalls or lock-up)
but I'm not in it nearly as often as AD. Please help?

 

[Old Bruce]

On 5/18/2020 at 12:45 PM, j.king said:

The newest version (1.8.1) is still locking my machine up when trying to Union, Combine (Xor) or Subtract complex vector objects.

The newest version is 1.8.3

[j.king]

Thanks Old Bruce. Yes, I learned that earlier today in the beta forum. I completely forget to check app store for Affinity updates. I downloaded the latest version from app store and also "1.8.3.2 beta" from Affinity for testing. Still have issues about which I posted in the beta forum. The 1.8.3.2 version locked up my machine after working around an hour.

[Dan C]

Hi @j.king,

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here, I can see you have posted regarding this and other issues elsewhere and I do appreciate all the steps you've taken thus far.

I note you have previously reduced your RAM & undo limits, have you found this to be helpful to stability, or are you still seeing frequent lockups?

If so, could you please confirm the following for me:

• Does this happen in any document, or only specific ones?
• Can you replicate a freeze/crash by following a set recipe, or does it occur seemingly randomly?
• When the app is freezing, does it also crash (generating a crash report) or do you tend to close the application before this point?

Can you please also the Affinity app, navigate to Preferences>Performance and provide a screenshot of this window for me also?

Many thanks in advance!

[j.king]

Thanks Dan. Reducing RAM and Undo limits ultimately did not help. Machine still locked up. It can happen in any doc. Ya never know when its gonna bite. I've not been able to replicate it, it just happens randomly. I will say this - it does seem to happen if AD has been left open for a long while (an hour+). And, it has happened a few times when zooming using the mouse wheel. When the issue occurs, the entire machine locks up. No way to force quit app or anything like that. The only option is hold power button down to force shutdown and start over. It has also occurred before when trying to use Add or Subtract operations with objects that had many, many nodes. I have since purchased a new PC laptop (yuck!) and the apps are stable. No crashes or lock-ups thus far on that platform. The instability on the old iMac was driving me insane. Performance Prefs attached. I have tinkered with View Quality and Retina Rendering as well trying to resolve this.

[madebywitteveen]

Hello j-king,

did you find a solution to your crash-problem? I'm experiencing similar problems when using the XOR function.

@Staff: Please take a look at the attached file, it's a simple drawing made out of several curves which I would like to combine into one curve using XOR

The result is that my PC (windows 10) consumes lots of memory, CPU and disk and after a while affinitiy stops working and after that crashes and exits.

Any ideas?

 

 

Opener_Empty.afdesign

[j.king]

Never was resolved for me on the iMac. I prefer mac but couldn't take it anymore. Broke down and bought a (cheap-ish) windows laptop. Really have had no serious hang-ups on the laptop. I need to add RAM but thus far it has performed well. Will try your file and let you know if I run into the same issue.

[Gnobelix]

10 hours ago, j.king said:

Never was resolved for me on the iMac. I prefer mac but couldn't take it anymore. Broke down and bought a (cheap-ish) windows laptop. Really have had no serious hang-ups on the laptop. I need to add RAM but thus far it has performed well. Will try your file and let you know if I run into the same issue.

I think the problem is the open curvs, close the curves, then XOR works.

 

Cheers

XOR-Test.afdesign

[madebywitteveen]

Thanks Gnobelix!

Merge Curves did the trick and ends up giving the same output as XOR (with my file)

Best regards,

 

Henk

[Gnobelix]

1 hour ago, madebywitteveen said:

Thanks Gnobelix!

Merge Curves did the trick and ends up giving the same output as XOR (with my file)

Best regards,

 

Henk

You're welcome.