Author Topic: 3d viewer nonfunctional  (Read 4439 times)

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Offline jekbradbury

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3d viewer nonfunctional
« on: June 24, 2012, 06:42 »
I just started using ATK/VNL, and it appears to be exactly what I've been looking for, but I can't seem to make the 3D viewer ever display anything other than blackness.  If I run a transmission analysis exactly analogous to the one in the tutorial and either drag a device configuration into the viewer window or click "show" on a transmission pathways object, the viewer doesn't show anything (even though, for the transmission pathways object, the progress bars that pop up show that the arrows were in fact calculated).  If I right click and select "Properties" in the viewer window, the only plot listed is "Graphics Scene."  I expect I'm missing something obvious...

Offline Anders Blom

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2012, 22:11 »
The most obvious explanation is that it's a glitch in your graphics driver. This is also the easiest one to fix (usually), so let's hope it's the case. Is this on Windows or Linux? Either way, you should make sure to use the latest drivers from the graphics card vendor, as opposed to the vanilla drivers that come with the Linux distribution.

You can also try the Builder to see if the same issue persists there; the Viewer and the Builder use very different graphics libraries (for now).

Offline jekbradbury

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2012, 23:11 »
I'm on Windows (Win7) and my graphics driver claims to be up to date (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470).  The 3D pane in the Builder is currently working fine.  What libraries does the Viewer use?

Offline Anders Blom

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2012, 23:18 »
Ok, that makes it trickier to troubleshoot...

If you send a structure from the Builder to the Viewer directly ("Send To" button in the lower right-hand corner), will it show up?

The libraries are the same, but the code is different for it.

Offline jekbradbury

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2012, 00:00 »
No, it still doesn't show up.  I think I'll try the whole thing on a completely different machine tomorrow.

Offline Anders Blom

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2012, 00:06 »
Windows is not trustworthy when it comes to determining your latest driver. What you really should do is visit the AMD site and get the right driver, like http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx (if you have Win 7 64-bit).

The good news is that in future VNL releases we will use the Builder solution for the graphics and retire the current Viewer code :)

Offline jekbradbury

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Re: 3d viewer nonfunctional
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2012, 02:41 »
After three attempts and two blue screens of death, I installed the most recent AMD driver...and everything works now.  Thanks for your help!