We noticed Autodesk DWG TrueView 2024 crashes while the Vault Job Processor was publishing PDF and DWF files. This should not have alarmed us as Autodesk Vault Professional 2024 has been a complete nightmare since we installed it. Actually, I’ll refine that statement to Vault Professional 2024 automated publishing with Civil 3D is a complete nightmare.
We received a Developer’s Ticket for the original instance of the problem after Autodesk was able to reproduce the issue. Unfortunately they tried to drop the matter, and our VAR, which will remain nameless, failed to ensure they didn’t blow us off after weeks of emails and research. However we know a bit more than we did then, and I will discuss this in a general sense. However the meat of this post is to try to help anyone else suffering from this new CTD occurrence.
It’s All About DWG TrueView
While the Job Processor is no one’s favorite process, we cannot blame it for the “Vault Publishing Trainwreck of 2024”. The problem is with DWG TrueView 2024. For whatever reason, DWG TrueView will display Civil 3D objects whose Display Layers have been frozen in viewports.
If you plot the AutoCAD Paperspace tabs from AutoCAD, no problem – the objects do not appear. However, when Vault’s Job Processor tries to create the PDF using DWG TrueView, the objects appear. Subsequent attempts to reproduce this in DWG TrueView by opening the DWG file directly are confirmed with the same result.
The problem appears to affect all Civil 3D objects. Points, Surfaces, and Pipe Networks have all been confirmed.
Pipe Networks Crashing DWG TrueView
DWG TrueView is now crashing on Pipe Networks. We didn’t understand it clearly at first with life and other occurrences obscuring the results. I spent a couple of hours yesterday hammering the problem and found the following, and reproduced it on another station.
Take a drawing with a Pipe Network, and change its Lifecycle State to a publishing transition in Vault. Vault will then hand the file off to DWG TrueView to create the PDF and DWF files as needed. When it gets to the PDF publishing it will CTD. Subsequently, the DWF publishing will trigger a second CTD.
If a Pipe Network is present in the current drawing being plotted by DWG TrueView, it will crash, even if the network does not appear in a viewport; I deleted all viewports and tried. However if the Pipe Network only appears through a reference XREF, then no crash, and the PDF files appear to be good!
Solution
Vault Professional 2025 release!
You think I’m joking? I’ve have never looked forward to a software release so much since Inventor 2012.
Will this solve the problem? Beats the shit out of me. If you have gone through all the hassle getting Autodesk to actually investigate the problem, and give them all the pieces to reproduce the problem, AND get a Developer’s Ticket, and they still do NOTHING? Then there is only marginal hope.
My suggestion is to invest some time looking at XREFs more if you don’t use them a lot. We increasingly rely on XREF references to reduce so much wasted time gathering and regathering data from sources. XREFs have been an incredible boost in downstream efficiency. I figured they’d be an occasional crashing problem; I never figured they’d be the solution.
Pack your Pipe Networks off in XREF files.
Closing
Autodesk DWG TrueView 2024 crashes when Autodesk Vault Job Processor is publishing PDF and DWF file and there are Pipe Networks present in a Civil 3D drawing. My hope by writing this is to let others know what may be crashing them, and what can be done to get around it.
I want to point out that NONE of this happened in 2022. Autodesk Vault 2022 was about as flawless as Vault can be. Then I suggested we migrate…
There is no solution to date.
![Autodesk Vault 2015 LicensingError [319] (20)](https://designandmotion.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Autodesk-Vault-2015-Failed-to-Acquite-License.jpg)
