Trimble Business Center

Yesterday, 11/6, I had HCE crash on me while working on a takeoff 5  times, although I was saving my progress every 5min due to this issue I was still managing to lose about 10-15min of work an hour. However, this workaround didn't last much as around 1pm, after restarting HCE after another crash, the crosshairs on the cursor disappeared and I was not able to do spot elevations, nor digitize any linework on the screen. Today, I uninstalled all Trimble software, restarted the computer, and reinstalled Trimble (BE-HCE_v4.00) and the issue persists.  My computer is pretty new, I got this computer specifically to solve the issue when importing sheets and 3d renderings. 

Computer specs: Window 10 Pro 64-bit, i7-8700 CPU @3.20GHz, 16 GB (RAM), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB

Javier

I was talking to one of our dealers last week and he mentioned having issues with digitizing PDFs of a similar nature to your report here, We have our developers looking at an issue that we found in TBCv5 while training at Dimensions and we think the issues are related. We hope that v5 will resolve this issue.

When you say it crashes - what happens?

1) Does the screen lock up preventing any further work

2) DO you get an exception error (if yes - can you send us the error log (use CTRL A and copy / paste into an email and send it to me please (alan_sharp@trimble.com)

3) Does the software just shut down?

4) Could you also share the project

It seems like this may be related to certain types of Graphics Card as it seems that it happens on certain types and not others  - if you could provide us with the spec of your graphics card that would also be helpful

Thanks

Alan

Hi Alan,
When this happens it will

1) Lock up at first and then it will

2) shut down the software the ".vce,lk" file will still be in the folder and will have a timestamp of a minute or two ago, but must be deleted "lk" file before opening Trimble document again.

All work not saved before shut down will be lost, because of this issue, I have added a 30min reminder to save in the
Trimble settings. However, when the issue starts happening again it will be within 5-`15 of working, rendering the 30min reminder useless. The other day it had happened 5 times in 1 hr, I re-started the computer and the digitizing cursor disappeared, as well. Hopefully, with the new update, it will resolve the issue.

Regarding the Graphics card, here are my specs: 

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip Type: GeForce GTX 1070

DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC

Approx Total Memory: 16185MB

Display Memory (VRAM): 8088MB

Driver version: 23.21.13.9125 

Thanks,

Javier

Javier,

I sincerely feel your pain. I’ve had a similar experience this year. In January I bought a Dell Precision 5520 Mobile Workstation. I thought having a powerful mobile device would allow me to go where ever and be able to display my work in person. All went well for the first couple of weeks until the random freezes and shutdown/restarts began. At one point the computer died before I could get my license removed from it. Sitech was very helpful but probably got tired of my calls for help. Dell replaced the motherboard on site and it sort of worked for a week or two then problems again. After two more onsite component replacements and sending it in to the repair center Dell finally exchanged the computer. That fixed the problem until Windows 1809 came out. I was one of the “lucky” users that got the update before Microsoft pulled it. It still hasn’t been re-released. Since then I’ve had one or two lockups of HCE. I run Windows File History to an external HD (something I highly recommend doing) and years ago had set my HCE save reminder to a very annoying 15 minutes. I continue to do daily checks for Windows updates and perform them when they come up. It’s been a number of weeks without a lock up on HCE. That said there have been a few times HCE would freeze input from me for some minutes. I let it do what ever then when I could I saved and restarted.

I have had HCE software freezes for as long as I’ve used it going back to version 2.X. As the software was updated the problems changed. My custom built desktop workstation gave me the best performance but I’m still going with the Dell laptop for now. I’ve queried the hardware folks looking for solutions. I think some of the built-in hardware safeguards for over heating have caused issues but I have no way to know for sure. I did have some issue with v4.00 that was fixed with the later updates. A few years ago when I was having graphics issues Sitech recommend changing setting Options for the Advanced Graphics. At that time DirectX 11 was not working well and I used one of the OpenGL options.

I hope you find a solution. Wasting countless, unproductive hours with hardware drives me crazy.

George

Make sure that if the file you are working on is on a cloud server folder eg. Dropbox, make sure syncing is paused. 

Our team did find an issue with Image Files that totally exposed itself in TBC v5 that we think may also be related to crashes in v4.1x and likely earlier versions as well. It is related to Project Settings - View - Plan View - Grid Line Definition. We found that when the Scale Bar is set to Full Scale Bar specifically but we also think Short Scale Bar would have a similar effect, the Scale Bar Image was clashing in some way with imported Georeferenced images causing the software to crash (Hang) when you  zoom In / Out or Pan quickly - if you change this setting in v4.xx to No Scale Bar this may assist with the "Crashes". This was fixed in v5 release but we don't know if it is the only issue or not. The issue was more prevalent on new Graphics Cards than old for some reason.

Please try v5 and if it still causes you problems please let me know

Alan