9
appendix b
This section describes a collection of problematic
situations and what you can do to diagnose and
fix them. These include many common problems
that are reported to Autodesk Product Support,
and the things you can try in order to resolve the
problems yourself.
When starting to diagnose a problem, by yourself
or with the intent of contacting Product Support,
you should take stock of the situation by answering
the following questions.
• What’s changed since the last t i me I ran
3ds Max?
• Has the 3ds Max display configuration been
changed?
• Was an updated v ideo driver or new operating
system service pack installed recently?
• Has 3ds Max been running successfully without
lockups or crashes?
Handl ing File Cor rupti ons
Few things are more aggravating when attempting
to open a scene then encountering an Assertion
Failed er ror, File Open Failed error, or perhaps
no error at all. The file just does not load. This
typically occurs when the file is corrupt. A number
of factors can cause file corruption, including the
following:
• Some component built in another program has
been imported or referenced with an XRef.
•Thescenefailedtosaveproperlyduetoapower
failure or system crash.
• A poorly coded plug-in corrupted an object in
the scene.
Probl ems a nd R esoluti ons
Asser tion Failed Er rors
The assertion failed error occurs commonly when
you try to load a corrupt file. The error gives you a
line number and fi le name where the corruption
occurred. You are t hen left with the options to
retry or cancel.
Unfortunately,thelinenumberandfileoftendon’t
help because that isn’t necessarily w here the error
is actually occurring. Most peop le click the Retry
option a couple of times then give up, fearing
they’ve lost many hours of work. Don’t panic yet.
There are a number of things you can try before
you have to start rebuilding.
The first thing to t ry is keep clicking the Retry
button. If there is a corruption to the vertices of
an object, you might have to parse through each
vertex until you bypass the object completely. For
Tr oubleshooting 3ds M ax