All versions of the Expert Series programs have a rendering and object selection problem, when run on a machine with 64-bit Windows 7 and a ATI Radeon HD-series (HD3000 - HD5000) graphics adapter.
The problem has two different symptoms. First when selecting an object by pointing it directly in the graphics window, wrong object gets selected. Second when rendering a model with "Display Errors" flags enabled, massive amounts of memory get allocated. This can cause the program to crash when it runs out of memory.
The reason to the problem seems to be an error in the ATI Radeon driver for the 64-bit Windows 7. The currently latest graphics adapter driver version for ATI Radeon HD-series on 64-bit Windows 7 however still has this problem.
The problem does not appear on 32-bit Windows 7.
The problem does not appear with other graphics adapters.
All versions of the Expert Series programs have a rendering and object selection problem, when run on a machine with 64-bit Windows 7 and a ATI Radeon HD-series (HD3000 - HD5000) graphics adapter.
The problem has two different symptoms. First when selecting an object by pointing it directly in the graphics window, wrong object gets selected. Second when rendering a model with "Display Errors" flags enabled, massive amounts of memory get allocated. This can cause the program to crash when it runs out of memory.
The reason to the problem seems to be an error in the ATI Radeon driver for the 64-bit Windows 7. The currently latest graphics adapter driver version for ATI Radeon HD-series on 64-bit Windows 7 however still has this problem.
The problem does not appear on 32-bit Windows 7.
The problem does not appear with other graphics adapters.
The Expert Series version 7.1 (or older) programs have a serious drawing problem, when run on a machine with Windows Vista or Windows 7 and a NVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon X-series (X300 - X1900) graphics adapter.
The problem appears especially in the curve edit and scene edit functions. When dragging the curve points or the camera handles, the background is partly drawn with white color and some of the old curve positions are shown.
The currently latest graphics adapter driver versions for NVidia GeForce and ATI Radeon X-series on Windows Vista and Windows 7 still have this problem.
The problem does not appear if the Aero (the fancy GUI in Windows Vista and 7) is turned off. On Windows 7 you can do that by selecting one of the Basic Themes ("Windows 7 Basic" or "Windows Classic" etc.) in Desktop Personalize function. On Windows Vista open "Start->Control Panel: Appearance and Personalization". Under Personalization, click "Change the color scheme" and select the "Windows Vista Basic" or "Windows Standard" color scheme.
The problem does not appear on Windows XP.
The Expert Series version 8.0 (and newer) programs do not have this problem.
There is a known problem in running DeskArtes Expert Series programs on machines with NVidia Quadro4 graphics adapters. The symptom of the problem is that when drawing the geometries in Expert Series, nothing is shown in the graphics window.
The problem appears with all Quadro4 XGL series adapters: 550XGL, 700XGL, 750XGL and 900XGL, with older driver versions.
The problem is fixed in the version 41.03 of the NVidia driver for the Quadro4 graphics adapters, which can be downloaded from the Nvidia web-site.
The default hardware acceleration settings for the Matrox G-series (G200, G400, G550) adapters cause DeskArtes Expert Series to crash at startup.
This problem can be solved by disabling the hardware acceleration.
DeskArtes Expert Series cannot be run on a machine with S3 Savage 4 or MX graphics adapters. The problem appears at the startup of Expert Series programs. Usually the cursor first disappears and then the screen freezes totally.
Currently there is no solution known to this problem.
Printing from DeskArtes Expert Series to HP Color Laserjet 4600 produces empty documents or gray scale images with the default printer drivers from HP.
The problem can be fixed by installing the driver of the older HP Color Laserjet 4500 model.
The Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 run time DLL files are missing from the Expert Series 7.1.0.18 program installation packages (View Expert, Render Expert, 3Data Expert, Design Expert, Dimensions Expert and Spectral Expert). If the DLL files are not already installed for some other application in the same machine, the Expert Series programs don't start and show an error message complaining about missing MFC71.dll.
The problem can be fixed by downloading the zip-package DllUpg71.zip and then extracting its contents to the installation directory of the related Expert Series program. The installation directory of the 3Data Expert is for example as default "C:\Program Files\DeskArtes 3Data Expert 7.1".
In Expert Series 6.1 and IDS 4.5 the ExTrace batch process calculation has been changed. The image is now generated iteratively (like when previewing on-screen), starting with 4x4 pixel size. The information about calculated image rows is, however, only updated during the last iteration and therefore it may seem that the process is not advancing. Typically half of the calculation time is spent on the first iterations, depending on anti-aliasing settings.
This problem will be addressed in the next version of ExTrace.
Some versions of ASIC IGES export seem to produce files that are not valid according to IGES standard. IGES standard defines file creation date to be expressed using 15 or 13 digits. ACIS export tries to write the date using 13 digit format where year uses two digits. However, instead of writing the year 2000 as 00 it writes 100, which causes Deskartes IGES parser to fail.
If you have such problems, please contact the IGES export software vendor to get updated version of the exporting system. The systems where the problem has been noticed are Varimetrix and ACIS 5.0 IGES writer V5.0.
You can also correct the ASCII IGES files using the following procedure: