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White screen

Discussion in 'Control Software' started by William Harper, May 2, 2019.

  1. William Harper

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    Hello all, I just loaded a large g-code and the screen went white on the controller page. I had started the project and it continued to run but I could no see the 3D window to watch it or stop the project. Any thoughts?
     
  2. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    1) which controller software are you running?
    2) where is the gcode from? (what application do you use for CAM, which post processor, etc)
    3) maybe submit the file too so we can test with it too
     
  3. William Harper

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    Running 1.0.162. gcode is from carbide create. I'm running a Lead Machine with Spark Concepts x pro
     
  4. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Post the gcode file please - use the Upload button below the text entry box. ZIP it first (helps with size and filetype) before uploading
     
  5. William Harper

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  6. William Harper

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    I'm not very good at this hope it works.
     

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  7. sharmstr

    sharmstr OpenBuilds Team
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    That's a pretty big file. Behind the scenes, Control is throwing a "Paused before potential out-of-memory crash" message.

    No need to respond to this. Just talking to myself since I havent seen that before and giving myself a way to search for that message next time it comes up months from now. Peter will respond with something meaningful.
     
  8. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    I had to try four different Gcode viewers before I could finally even see what it is! It crashed all three different ones I tried, eventually got it to preview in CAMotics.

    I think the issue here is more workflow: It looks like you are doing a massive pocket with a very small endmill

    I would break this job into 3 phases:

    1. Outside Cut of the letters with a smallish endmill
    2. Inside cut of the Perimeter with a smallish endmill
    3. Pocket to remove the rest (but using a decent size endmill or router bit like a 1/2 inch as thats a lot of of material to remove with such a small but, not only leading to unruly large gcode, but also will be a very long cut!
     

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    David the swarfer likes this.
  9. William Harper

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    Thanks I'll give it a try.
     
  10. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    I'm getting "White Screen" while trying to run a 3D file. This project has four separate files to run. 1st is the 3D roughing pass. 2nd is the 3D finishing pass. 3rd will be the Vcarve text. 4th will be the cut out pass. I have only been able to get the 1st job to run (3Droughing pass). That worked great. The problem is when I try to load the 2d job which is the 3D finishing pass the program (OpenBuilds Control) in the 3D View has the little icon animated and reads "Rendering, please wait" then all of a sudden the screen goes WHITE!!. Very frustrating!!. Everything freezes at this point and all I can do is close OpenBuilds Control. If I try to open OpenBuilds control it goes straight to "White Screen". I then have to reboot my computer and then OpenBuilds will reload. I then can load the 1st, 3rd and 4th job passes and all will load but if I try to load the 2nd (3D finishing) job the screen goes WHITE!. It's a large job created in Vcarve Pro (latest version). I'm running the latest version of OpenBuilds Control. As a matter of fact just before starting this project OpenBuilds Control wanted to "update" itself. My machine is a Workbee 1010. I control the workbee with the Xcarve controller reloaded with the latest Grbl from OpenBuilds. Everything has been running very smooth and have had no problems with other vcarve projects. Just this first 3D project created in Vcarve Pro.
     
  11. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Large Gcode files causes issues on PCs with insufficient resources
    At this time there is no magical fix.
    Lowering resolution of the gcode, or using a different host (bcnc, cncjs, etc) are the options
     
  12. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    Not sure what you mean by "PCs with insufficient resources". My PC is a new desktop with a processor (GHz and RAM) that exceeds the requirements needed to run VCarve Pro. The only thing on this PC is Windows 10 and Vcarve Pro and OpenBuilds Control. The file that I'm trying to run/carve is an 11MB file. What do you mean by "Lowering resolution of the gcode"?
     
  13. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Internally the 3D viewer has quite a lot it has to do:
    Each line of gcode ends up as a vertex object, which has a position vector, a material, data to use for the Simulator, modal parsed data, and a host of other JS and WebGL 3D data to it. Chrome only allows somewhere between 2-3gb of ram allocation before it crashes. WebGL objects get big quick! As such, like I said, sorry. If the file is too big (a 300,000 line gcode file could balloon to a 4gb 3D Object) it will crash. Use bCNC or CNCJs when you find files thats too big, as they aren't focussed on Beginners like CONTROL does, they can handle them a little bettwe
     
    #13 Peter Van Der Walt, Jun 14, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2019
  14. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    I looked at bCNC and I'm not sure how to install it. I'm very new and don't understand most of these programs. Is bCNC something I can just download from "GitHub", install it and go or will I have to set up machine settings like I did when I installed OpenBuilds Control? Of the two that you mentioned bCNC and CNCjs, which would be most perfered with a Windows 10 and the Xcontroller running the latest Grbl from OpenBuilds Control setup?
     
  15. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Well, if you have difficulty with bCNC (See vlachoudis/bCNC for install instructions) then CNCJS might be easier for you (Download either the 32bit or 64 bit exe from cncjs/cncjs as appropriate to your pc)

    Machine setup is saved to the firmware on the controller = once off setup

     
  16. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Can you upload the finishing pass gcode file for me here? Would help to have more of those large test files on hand to see what can be optimised in future versions of the software
     
  17. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    Sure thing. Hope you can make it so that OpenBuilds Control can run large files. I was able to run it using some software that came with VCarve Pro.
     

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  18. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    (; Oh you bet its coming.

    As we started selling Vectric products this past weekend, I can finally spend the time to fix this old bug. (; initial test code looks great, can render a 600k line gcode in under 20 seconds (; - and my PC dates from 2012!
     
  19. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    (;

    side.PNG

    1.PNG
     
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  20. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    v1.0.178 and up :) head over to software.openbuilds.com to download
     
  21. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    On occasion when I open Control software it want's to upgrade. Is that just bug fixes or is it upgrading the whole Control software?
     
  22. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Its 'as a whole' which includes the Fixes. Its best to stay up to date, as the whole ecosystem evolves, it just gets better all the time!

    You can check the changelog on the Troubleshooting tab to see whats changed (Changelog is also on Git and on the software.openbuilds.com pages)

    If you wanna skip, you can cancel on the Serial Console tab (10 second countdown prior to download once GUI opens)

    There may be plenty of updated but thats just because we rapidly make this better than it already is! :)
     
    #22 Peter Van Der Walt, Jun 17, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  23. FredTheNuke

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    Woohooo! I'm not alone anymore (I also love these insanely large and complex 3D gcode files)! LOL - Thanks, Peter for all of the hard work on this software upgrade!
     
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  24. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    Upgraded to the latest version of "Control" and no more problems with large 3D gcode files. Runs them without a problem. Thanks to Peter Van Der Walt and the OpenBuilds team. Love the Workbee 1010 and OpenBuilds Control. Learning to use Vcarve Pro and producing some great v-carves and 3D carvings.
     
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  25. Adam Joseph

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    Hello I'm trying to do a photo with the jtech laser. Gcode generated by pic laser. I have a black box controller with a c-beam xl. And when I open the gcode it crashes to showing only the white screen. Even after I close the program and reopen it. Only way for it to start is with a restart of the computer. Any advice here? Do I need to buy the picsender software as well?
     
  26. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    If Control is a little heavy for your pc, there are many other free alternatives too. Blackbox just runs Grbl so any Grbl compatible software will do
    Try UGS Platform, CnCjs, bCNC, or many more. Laser specific also checkout LaserWeb4
     
  27. Adam Joseph

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    Not sure what you mean by a little heavy? I have the newest control software. My PC has an i7 6700 processor with 16gb of ram.
     
  28. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    When it runs out of resources it crashes to white. Usually over 1 million lines of gcode
     
  29. dlhoulton

    dlhoulton New
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    Peter, can you explain why OpenBuilds Control can't handle anything over 1 million lines of gcode? If you can, dumb it down in simple explination so I can understand it. The reason I ask is that a lot of my 3D carvings have been in the 900K range and every once in a while I'll get the "Whit Screen" and I know right away it is because the carving has over 1 million lines of code. I started a carve just the other day and I reduced it in size slightly because I was going to use a 1/16 tapered ball nose bit. Sure enough I got the "White Screen". So I went back in and changed to a 1/8 tapered ball nose and reran the code and that brought the gcode count down for the carve. I can usually tell if a toolpath carve goes over 18 to 19 hours it will be ether close or over that 1 million count. I'm just curious and would like to learn the reason why. Thanks!
     
  30. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Under the bonnet the 3D viewer uses three.js – JavaScript 3D library
    I've been refining the 3D viewer for about 4 years now ( oldest git record I can find is from about here Updated to include GCode viewer · LaserWeb/deprecated-LaserWeb1@d86f338 in Nov 2015! and its older than that as that commit just shows adding it as already working... the code has been following me for various projects in my time as lead of the LaserWeb project, and then kept following me when I joined OpenBuilds) - sooo many hours into it - you might think its inefficient now, but the early ones before switching to bufferGeometry, could only do like 10k lines. More recently switched to a more efficient parser and webworkers, its just always getting better :) (History of the latest version OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL - as recent as 5th september)

    Inside threejs things get complicated but I'll try and dumb it down:

    Suppose you have a file with 10 gcode lines
    The parser looks at the file and makes 10 rows of "from here to here" for each move.
    Attached to that line it stores some parameters to use later (is it a G1,2,3 or G0, is it a move, if not is it a comment, what color should it be. If its a laser file the S-Value gets saved to be converted to an opacity value later to show grayscale engravings. It stores position points later used by the simulator, etc.
    That data is then passed on and converted to "Geometry" that forms a more coherent structure of what line goes where, and what color should what segment of what line be. This can get quite memory intensive. Its already been optimised quite a lot since May 2019 though. Uses all the latest tweaks in ThreeJS and the logic of "how" it builds what you see
    That data is then added to a SCENE (render area) along with a bunch of supporting objects like a Camera, OrbitControls, Grid system, Rulers, A couple different Lights to light the Scene (OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL) (this is a proper 3D rendering in the browser (; - insane!)
    All of that runs in the DOM on an embedded instance of Chrome called Electron Electron | Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. - which we need for a tonne of other advantages (cross platform apps with one codebase, easy distribution, built in updating etc). It also still stores all the data from the parser earlier to be used by the Simulator
    All in all there is a lot that goes on
    Checkout just this screenshot of the "gcode object" - a lot going on to make the Gcode look pretty (;
    data.PNG


    So "million" is totally a made up number. On different PCs and different files, that number will differ. But at some point while preparing the preview, your PC will say "uhm, no more RAM!"

    Why, because Electron also has to play nice with whatever else is running on the PC, so the OS gives it X amount of RAM, and thats all we can play with. We can force the OS to give us more (google max-old-space-size Chrome/Electron) but that causes bigger issues for the PC.

    Press F12 on Control, open the Devtools on the side. Click the Memory tab, load a big file and watch the numbers (;
    If you keep it open, instead of white screen, it'll pause the parser and warn you that its close to our of memory (with devtools closed it just crashed the execution at that point)

    memory tab.PNG
     
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