Calypso 2021: Cant't create or open measurement plan. CAD window stays black

[[No...]]

I recently installed service pack 7.2.08 for Calypso 2021. Now I can't create or open measurement plans anymore. The CAD window stays black and the status line at the top says "updating graphics", then "restarting graphics". After that Calypso freezes and I have to kill it with task manager.
Before the service pack, 2021 (7.2.00) worked fine. This happens exactly the same on at least 3 different machines (2 CMMs, 1 offline seat)

Any suggestions? 🧑‍💻

[[An...]]

Must be an individual problem!
When I was still working with the 2021 version, I had all available SP's installed.
The problem you mention is unknown to me.

Did you install the patch file as well?

[[No...]]

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I would agree if it wouldn't happen on all 3 machines. While our PCs are not exactly on Zeiss spec, I think they should easily be able to handle Calypso's graphics.. To me it looks as if Calypso isn't able to establish a connection to the ACIS core.
I have to add, whenever we install a new version, firewall alerts pop up for ACIS.exe and vwnt.exe (Calypso main program), but my understanding in the past was that this is just some "phone home" feature and can be safely cancelled (which I often did). I hope this hasn't changed...?

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Yes, but without effect.

[[Th...]]

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Firewall shouldn't have anything to do with machine-local communication between the ACIS kernel and the Calypso GUI, so I doubt this is causing your problem. I always gave ACIS the firewall permissions, though, since CMM comms go out over a network interface. Never bothered to wonder if vwnt was the program actually establishing that connection.

[[Ri...]]

You need to check a few settings, and ensure they are correct.

- Make sure that both vwnt, and acis are allowed through the Windows Firewall

- In the Graphics Settings, make sure that bother vwnt and acis are using High Performance and the Nvidia GPU

- In the Nvidia Control Panel, set the Global Settings to Autodesk Motion Builder - compatible, and then add the vwnt and acis processes to use the High Performance GPU

[[No...]]

Seems like the problem solved itself over night. Very strange.

Richard, I changed the graphics settings to Motion Builder already yesterday, but to no effect. Zeiss support sent me the same hint. But I can't find the "high performance processor" part in my driver. Maybe it's too old?

Be that as it may, this morning it suddenly worked again - on all 3 PCs. I have no idea why, I didn't change anything since yesterday. But my gut feeling tells me it was not the graphics.

Thanks for all the hints!

[[No...]]

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but new information is available. Maybe it can help somebody some day.

This week the exact same problem happened again on the PC of our new Contura. It appeared after the PC had been included into the network domain and some additional programs had been installed. Unfortunately this time it didn't cure itself overnight.

By following a list of hints from the Zeiss support I was able to solve the problem, although I still can't believe what caused it:

It was the environment variables, specifically the one named "Path". You can view env variables by either opening a command prompt and typing "SET" or by going to the Windows advanced system settings (if you don't know how to get there, please ask Google, as it's hard for me to describe this correctly in English).
In the variable "Path" there should exist two paths pointing to ACIS folders. These two paths should be placed at the very top of the "Path" list, as shown in the image below. In my case, a program that was installed later, inserted two new paths at the top of the list, and this was all it took to choke Calypso.
I still don't really understand why this happened, since this is not how environment variables usually work. Normally, a program goes through the whole list of entries and looks for the desired data everywhere. I also checked our other CMMs and some don't even have both paths, yet it still works. So it's an inconsistent cause, but worth looking after if nothing else works.