Altium bug pcb file - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: aredhel_vlsi
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 10:57:42 am
content: Hello guys ! Thank you for accepting me in the forum! i'm new here but I have a very urgent question, could you please help?I installed Altium Designer 64 bits on my laptop. I finished the schematics, I created the pcb file. I watched a tutorial which indicates that this should be black. However mine , when i open it (the pcb) is identical to the schematics file. it also gets blocked and I cannot move the cursor. What do I do wrong? please note that I have done Design-> Update pcb/Import from shcematics. I m really blocked by this and I cannot continue to the pcb layer . Could anyone help me?I should see a screen like the attachment but instead of this I see the schematic again and I cannot move the mouse properly.Please note that I have macos and I use parallel desktop, but the ram dedicated to the virtual machine is at least 6GB.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 11:53:23 am
content: Altium and laptop graphics don't always mix very well.Now you are throwing a VM on top of that which is running on MacOS

author: aredhel_vlsi
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 12:45:52 pm
content: Thank you for your quick reply ! So what do you suggest? At the moment I have no option for windows pc. I followed all the instructions of the tutorials, I annotated my components, I did validation and then execution. I see that the minimum requirements are 4 GB and I assigned 6GB. Any other suggestion from switching to another laptop? Is there something I could set in the settings or I forgot in my schematics?Thank you !

author: aredhel_vlsi
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 01:08:16 pm
content: My card is Graphics Intel Iris Pro 1536 M. Do you think that would be problematic?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 01:26:14 pm
content: Altium plays very poorly with Intel graphics. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's just terrifically slow, sometimes it doesn't work at all.It also doesn't work with remote desktop, at least the Windows variety, if that matters any here.It looks like you are having a 2D/3D (DirectX) graphical problem. No amount of updating from schematics will make it work. Completely different subsystem.Also try pressing 1, 2 or 3 (in the graphics view area). These set Layer Stack Region view, 2D view and 3D view, respectively.Probably no difference, though.Tim

author: Omicron
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 02:50:30 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on August 23, 2016, 01:26:14 pmUntrue. I use Altium via remote desktop all the time. My main machine is running Linux. I have a dedicated Windows machine set up for Altium that runs headless. I access it via an RDP client (Remmina in my case). Works perfectly well, even the 3D stuff. Can't say I notice any performance penalty and I'm running it at 2560x1440 pixels full screen! I'm using a gigabit Ethernet connection between the two machines though. Before that I used the same setup from a Mac using Microsoft's RDP client. Worked perfectly as well. Never tried it from a Windows client but I assume that would work just as well.I also used Altium extensively in VMWare Fusion on a Mac. Works without a hitch.From what I've seen Altium's graphics requirements are pretty modest by todays standards.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 03:07:03 pm
content: Quote from: Omicron on August 23, 2016, 02:50:30 pmYeah, try doing it further away from the PC and latency will kill any productivity. You really should not run it on anything else, than a windows workstation. The license is expensive enough to justify the extra cost for hardware. And the data you are working with is even more valuable.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2016, 04:21:00 pm
content: Hmm, maybe it's just my RDP then (the remote machine is running XP).

author: Omicron
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2016, 01:55:37 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on August 23, 2016, 04:21:00 pmVery likely. RDP has improved a lot since XP. I think Windows 7 is the one that introduced the necessary improvements. I'm running Windows 10 myself. In only use RDP on a (fast) local network, but it surprised me how well it works. It's a very convenient alternative to using a KVM, which are generally very expensive if you need display-port support and even then they often don't work all that well.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2016, 04:05:26 am
content: Quote from: aredhel_vlsi on August 23, 2016, 12:45:52 pmAltium running in virtualBox VM broke after Altium v14 (to my experience). It is not VM/graphics memory size, it is specific rendering modes that the graphics adapter should support. I only have experience w VirtualBox, do not know about other virtual providers. If you are on subscription, try calling Altium techsupport and see what they say. Again, the primary reason you having the problem I believe the VM graphics not meeting one or more Altium requirements.

author: radar_macgyver
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2016, 05:13:59 am
content: Turn off DirectX rendering. I don't remember where in the preferences->PCB dialog it is, but there is (was?) an option to use GDI instead of DirectX. You lose some functionality (like transparent layers) but it will work. I used to enable it when running Altium Summer '09 (or was it Winter '08) over Remote Desktop, it would behave like you're describing ('frozen' PCB view). I haven't done this in recent years, so I don't know if the option exists any more.