Creating a new Waterfall 3D graph crashes LabVIEW 2011

[RichardBallantyne]

When I try and insert a new 3D waterfall plot to a front panel of a new VI in LabVIEW 2011, LabVIEW crashes.  See attached screenshot for the error message.

Also, sometimes the Z scale of an Intensity Chart does not update when I feed in a value to this property: Z-scale-->Range-->Maximum.

I'm using the 64-bit edition of LabVIEW 2011 on Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

[hanrock]

Hi Richard,

Do you encounter the crash every time when dropping a 3D Waterfull? I am using the 64-bit edition of LabVIEW 2011 on Windows 7 Professional x64 but I do not get the crash. Can you try dropping other 3D controls such as Surface or Line Graph?

[RichardBallantyne]

Yes, I get the crash every single time.  It is 100% repeatable.  It happens regardless of what 3D graph I use.  I will try it on a different computer with an different video card to see if it is related to some core 3D driver.

[Benjamin38]

Richard, 

Can you confirm whether you are still dealing with this error?  I have been working with LabVIEW 2011 32-bit myself, however on another LV 64 machine, the error did not occur.   If you are still having troubles, please let me know and we can move forward on working with the problem further.  

Regards,

Ben N.

Applications Engineering

NI 

[RichardBallantyne]

LabVIEW 2011 32-bit edition does not crash when I place a 3D plot on the front panel.  It must be something either with the 64-bit edition or my computer.  I will try to reinstall LabVIEW 2011 64-bit edition to see if the problem goes away.

[RichardBallantyne]

After performing the following steps in this order:

1) Uninstall all NI software from my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit machine

2) Reboot

3) Delete C:\Program Files\National Instruments

4) Delete C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments

5) Reinstall LabVIEW 2011 Professional 64-bit, default options except do not install hardware drivers.

6) Reboot

7) Launch LabVIEW 2011, create new VI called, drop 3D waterfall plot on front panel of Untitled.vi

...LabVIEW 2011 64-bit still crashes

What is up?  Some weird low level 3D bug?  This is a Dell Optiplex 780 with on-board video.

[Benjamin38 · Accepted solution]

Richard 

When you restart LabVIEW after the crash does it recognize this and ask you to send a report or to investigate the issue?  

Apparently some of the system calls made by the waterfall plot are not compatible with some graphics cards, particularly Intel integrated graphics cards which you commonly find on some laptops and desktop PCs. Can you confirm that your graphics card driver is up to date?  Strangely, sometimes these issues disappear when you enable/disable the Aero desktop environment in Windows 7. Instructions for how to do that can be found here; 

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-aero-on-windows-vista/

These system calls are based on the OpenGL framework, so you might want to search for the model of your graphics card and known incompatibilities with OpenGL. Try many different settings for hardware acceleration and see if LabVIEW crashes. There was one other possible fix that I ran across. Try changing the compatibility mode to disable desktop composition. You should be able to change this setting by right click on the LabVIEW icon and selecting Properties. Then, in the compatibility tab, check Disable desktop composition. Let me know if these suggestions work for you. 

[RichardBallantyne]

OK. If I enable Aero (which I detest since it messes up the fonts in LabVIEW), then LabVIEW does not crash when using the 3D plots.

How can I have Aero turned on but also have the Windows Classic look?

[Benjamin38]

Unfortunately to enable Aero as a workaround, the caveat in this case will be the font issue.  There really isn't a "fix" because the step itself is a workaround for a compatibility issue with your video card.  You can look into a work around for incompatibilities and OpenGL with your card so that you wouldn't have to worry about Aero.  Apologies for the inconvenience, let me know how it goes.