dear Michael,

thanks for your response and your advised. but please don't worry; i don't think it is a problem of your software, but simply of my computer (user)...


to answer your questions:
- in ~/Library/Saved Application State i didn't find any wineskin data. that is no surprise, since i don't like this resume function and switched it off.
- for fixing file permissions i tried out something new, according to this description: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/os-x-repair-home-folder-permissions it lead to some small temporary improvement, but did't solve the problem.
- it's quite surely not a problem of the disc. because usally i save the data on the NAS, but also copied it to the internal hard-drive to make sure that the whole issue is not related to an unstable connection to the NAS.


last but not least a further description of the problem:
- usually i don't have problems with small items. maybe up to 10 MB. no matter if i open a STP file or native 3dm data.
- STP files around 100 MB (when saved as 3dm they are around 300 MB) cause a lot of problems. often they don't open at all, or just partly
- when the files open just partly, i only see those objects, which are listed in the browser in the section objects (it can be 10% or 30% or 70% of the original objects in a file)
- when showing/hiding objects, it happens that not the hole object is shown, but only some lines of the object
- none of the above problems happen, when i open the files with another (new created) user

today i tried to fix the permissions and then i was surprised that i could open a 300 MB file. first it worked fine. then MoI started to get slow. then i had the showing/hiding issue, and in the end the program crashed.
i reopened then with the other user, and everything worked fine.

Hi toggie, if you only see the problem with large files, probably MoI is running out of memory during the file loading - that's probably the only other explanation for that kind of partial load behavior than a failing disk.

MoI is currently a 32-bit program and so it has some limits on the amount of memory it is able to use.

One thing you can try is to alter a view setting to make a coarser display mesh which will consume less memory.

To do that, go to Options > View > "Meshing parameters" and set the "Mesh angle" option to 25 degrees and uncheck "Add detail to inflections". That will make a somewhat rougher looking shaded display but will also consume a lot less memory on complex models and that may help avoid running out of memory in the middle of the import.

I am in the process of a major rewrite of MoI for version 4 to make it 64-bit. It will still be a while before that is finished but when it is that will enable MoI to use all your system memory and that should help with larger imports then.

I'm still not sure why you see different behavior with different user accounts though, that's pretty mysterious.

- Michael

dear Michael,

thanks a lot for your detailed answer. even as this didn't solve my problem, i could learn something about the way MoI uses the RAM.
it already happened to me, when saving certain views as PDF, that i get a message that i'm out of memory. i was always surprised, since i have far enough RAM (32GB). and also the activity monitor didn't solve the mystery.
but actually i was not aware that MoI is a 32-bit program. well, this explains the issues with the RAM.
so i'm looking forward to the 64-bit version.

in case i can solve the issue with different behaviour on different users, i'll post what i found out.
but i guess, i'm simply switching the profiles, depending on what i'm working on. that's not very elegant, but it hardly needs time and works for sure.

best regards:
_toggi