Light Designer Graphics Issues

Light Designer 2.1.2(c)

I've been seeing blurred text in plan view (Design tab).  (Hopefully see attached picture).  All text in this view (stations, zones, space name), appear blurred while all other properties/fields outside of plan view are normal.  This only seems to occur when 4 or more primary spaces exist in a new project (.pcf).  I've been able to duplicate this several times, hence how I got to 4 or more primary spaces that cause the problem. 


The text appears normal at launch of LD.  In this example, create 4 or more primary spaces with all standard settings in the new project wizard.  Then cycle through the spaces in the browser.  I was just pressing up and down multiple times.  After about the 5th cycle, the text in plan becomes blurred.  Not too long after that, LD crashes with the dump file popup.  Again, hopefully attached is a dump file.


Side note, also in plan view, I cannot click anywhere on a zone object to select it.  I have to click on the perimeter of the object for it to be selected.  Marquee selects also work.

I have uninstalled all versions of LD on laptop as well as re-installed just 2.1.2(c).  Also ran a disk derangement just in case.  Problem still occurs.


Computer information:

Latitude E5530, Intel i5, Intel HD Graphics 4000 video card, Windows 7 Pro.

Any assistance is appreciated.  Thanks.

https://community.etcconnect.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/51/core_5F00_dump_5F00_0509_5F00_13_5F00_45_5F00_18.dmp

4 space test again, rev 1.pcf

  • Hi EVeik,

    First up, my apologies that you are experiencing these issues.  We are aware of the two you mention, the label display issue and also the Zone selection issue.  The former has been with us for quite a long time, and we suspect so has the latter but the prevalence of the Intel HD Graphics on which this seems to manifest has really increased in recent years.  My personal machine is affected with both and I agree the latter selection issue is seriously frustrating.

    The summary is that there are issues in the underlying support for OpenGL in our 3rd party graphics toolset that are responsible for both problems.  The label is issue is a documented issue for that toolset.  We also know, as stated above, that the selection issue seems to be limited to the Intel HD graphics hardware and its support of OpenGL.  A while back, ETC published a backstage article suggesting a workaround for some Dell machines that possessed alternative NVidia graphics hardware (Backstage May 2014: https://www.etcconnect.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=10737475475 ).  It only affects selecting Zones in the plan workspace, selection is fine in the tree and fixtures are fine too.  Check with that to see if it will help you at all.

    Regarding the label issue, you can click the [x] underneath the main red application X button to close any open spaces then reopen just one via tree click, and that sometimes temporarily alleviates things.  The issue here is related to poor use of graphics memory and closing spaces frees some up again avoiding the issue.
    We are working at both, but frankly a bit more concerned with the selection issue while still seeking for a longer term comprehensive fix.

    As such, your crash reports are really concerning, as we haven’t heard that either of these were causing crashes for anyone at all.  Unfortunately the files you provided didn’t reveal much useful data.  Do you have a configuration that causes the crash issue regularly?  The attached config was 4 empty spaces only, so there are no labels to corrupt (e.g. like the ones in your screenshot).

    Regards