Quartus 8.1 graphics problems

[Altera_Forum]

Quartus 8.1 suffers from serious graphics problems. When i open a schematic (bdf file. nothing gets drawn or sometimes only half the graphics get drawn. Its like the window is transparent. It shows the windows background. All graphics drivers are up to date. Versions of quartus prior to 8.1 do not have this problem. (same machine) 

 How do i fix this ? This is very annoying. It makes quartus 8.1 unusable.

[Altera_Forum]

As this problem is not generally observed with Quartus 8.1, you should tell your OS and graphics hardware details. I'm not working with *.bdf normally, but I never experienced the problem when occasionally viewing a schematic design.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Quartus 8.1 suffers from serious graphics problems. When i open a schematic (bdf file. nothing gets drawn or sometimes only half the graphics get drawn. Its like the window is transparent. It shows the windows background. All graphics drivers are up to date. Versions of quartus prior to 8.1 do not have this problem. (same machine)  How do i fix this ? This is very annoying. It makes quartus 8.1 unusable.  --- Quote End ---     Hi,  I run the schematic editor on Vista 32bit, Vista 64 bit and Windows XP 32 bit without any problems. What kind of PC did you use ?

[Altera_Forum]

PC: Intel Pentium D 3.4GHz 2Gbyte ram . nVidia 8600GTS , Win Xp SP2 running in dual monitor . each monitor connected through DVI and running at 1680x1050. 

 The strange thing is that : one graphical file open most of the time works. 2 graphical files open : 50% trouble. 3 open = guaranteed trouble. The mix can be one schematic one pin assignment. or 2 schematics  It's not only the BDF editor that has trouble: also the netlist viewer ( any of the four possibilities, pre mapping, post mapping , technology etc ). The pin assignment editor has the same problem. The area where the package is supposed to be drawn is just transparent ..  This is a very annoying problem. I rely on schematics for my toplevel and hierarchy. I frequently look at post sytnhesis implementation to optimize blocks, and the pin assignment editor .. well you try doing an effective assignment on a 400+ ball bga .... so the board can be done on 4 layers. The strange thing is that versions up to 8.x do not have the problem. I will try to install 8.0 today and see if that one exhibits the same behaviour.

[Altera_Forum]

I'm not sure if it helps in any way, but this thread seems to be related to a similar problem http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2009

[Altera_Forum]

Aha. i will try that. I too use the 3Gbn option in the registry... maybe that is what is causing it. Besides quartus my hobby is video editing.... Premiere runs better when it gets 3gig instead of 2 ... 

 i will see if that solves the problem.  Thanks for the tip

[Altera_Forum]

DAMN ! it all went to snot again. 

This is starting to really get on my nerves. Now i can not open anything graphical ( state diagrams , waveform viewer , schematics. all are emtyy screens with once in a while the text 'Please wait while quartus is processing....  This needs a solution stat !  This has nothing to do with the available resources. I can open lots of other very graphic intensive programs without programs on this machine without problems ( CAD programs, video editing with thousands of buttons ) I did the thing where i mod the registry to make more space avaialble.   I have this problem on 2 machines. i already reinstalled. no help. this is a big problem i am stuck beacuse i can not work on my project....

[Altera_Forum]

Hi free_electron,  

 here we have the same problem in two different PCs, I agree with you that it is really annoying.   ¿Have you found any solution to it?   Best regards,   Fernando

[Altera_Forum]

Here is what i have done , and this seems to solve it somewhat ( too many windows open and you still have this problem 

 - drop from 32 bit color to 16 bit color - drop resolution ( which i only do in certain cases. this is stupid. I have 2 22 inch monitors in 1680x1050 and i have to run them at 1280x1024 ... )  Contrary to some other posts this has nothing to do with the avaialble graphics heap.   quartus by itself : 3 graphics windows and its game over. quartus + altium desigenr + word + excel + powerpoint + adobe illustrator : 3 graphics windows and its over.  These other prorams are much more hogging the graphics resources than quartus does.  i think the bug is simply related to quartus not handling high resolution graphics. They are probably using some cross-os grpahics library ( quartus is avaialble on *nix too) that just doesn't work quite right. All those other programs are Win only and they 'play nice' with the graphics.  anyway. i only use schematic as top level ( it is ieasier to follow what is connected to what instead of dinning throught 300 verilog files en 30 pages of instantiation code ) and as project navigator. i have a hierarchical toplevel. there are some schematic sublevels but all they contain is wiring ( and the odd invertor here and there to make all logic positive. i like to use only active high signals throughout the entire design. makes thinking easier.)

[Altera_Forum]

Thank you very much for your answer, I've submited the question to the Altera mySupport service (giving them the link to this thread), I'll let you know what they say 

Best regards, Fernando

[Altera_Forum]

I too have this problem. I've tried the other two suggestions (memory and graphics resources) witch did not help. Some times rebooting helps get another window to display, but never more than three and often only one. 

I do have one work-around -- when I run Quartus on a Linux server and X-Win into the server from my desk all works fine (files which did not open, open) update: I've found that a startup script was enabling 3g support. After I disabled this I was able to open at least 5 screens -- so far without any problems. Though I can use Quartus this way, I would hope Altera fixes this problem.

[Altera_Forum]

Curious result, 

I wonder if this problem appears on Windows Vista too or not.

[Altera_Forum]

They told me to copy a file called "quartus.ini" on the bin folder (i.e., "C:\altera\81\quartus\bin"): 

 The content of the file is simply the following text line:   NON_LOCAL_DISPLAY=ON   Hope it works for you too!   Fernando