I'm on SharkCAD Pro, v12. Win 11 native (versus my pre-Oct 22 SharkCAD in Win7, in VirtualBox, running in Windows 7) with ~ 48 GB laptop system RAM, and (need to revisit/possibly correct) 8gb graphics RAM.
I recently had a crash a few nights ago. IIRC, it was while editing a radius while blending a simple proxy pump. Nothing special. Probably 16 curves, 8 surfaces, a bunch of blends. Probably was the result of too many Undonops and random edits.
Also, while trying to mimic a YouTube tutorial for FreeCAD and constraints, I largely achieved it. But, had I not done a lot of Save As steps and bracketed certain revisions, I would not have been able to recover from wacky constraints issues blowing my model apart. Constraints in Shark should allow for point selection. I thought that SharkCAD innthe form of its sibling ViaCAD had a noun-verb and verb-noun tool selection indifference. Since I didn't fully constraint the geometry, I kept seeing radius changes trash my simple model. Constraints are nice, but, for now, I can't make much use in my shop files unless I can see snd use a macro allowing me to create hull stiffening by example geometry and the tool operating in a way not creating dizzying amounts of same-number parts innthe History Tree.
Fortunately, my main working file (vastly huge ship of 182 meter) was not in this instance of Shark. So, I blew off the crash, largely because I learned something by chance than from reading the help PDF.
Until a few nights ago, despite having previously made poor-man's propellers and blades (hub of 4ft, blades making prop 17-18 ft dia) in the previous few years, I didn't know there could be a stark difference in the sequence of and size of selection of curves or edges.
Picking short edges first results in downstream blends having pointy corners, not radial/radiuses corners.
By chance observation, I noticed I kept failing to reproduce rounded corners orwsent in a FreeCAD tutorial.
Due to size of the proxy pump and my errant sizing of the radius, I luckily realized the (default selection) auto select edges/chain select of adjacent edges, the blend tool nicely sometimes does magic.
Esp in cases of decent or clean geometry, geometry not involving haphazardly created Booleans, it spares me having to zoom in to find the right edge nestled among others.
Honestly, sometimes, I'm able to learn to get more out of Shark by watching YouTube vids of stuff made in FreeCAD, then lying to myself "I can do that in under 5 minutes in Shark", then taking 10 to reorganize my thoughts, then ultimately spend 25-30 to reproduce what a presenter shared.
I tested out Model to Sheet and shading (I hardly do, and generally don't care about shading, sometimes think it's overrated by people attracted to shiny things, like glossy magazines have effect on people wanting more than a few informative images), too, and was generally pleased.
Somewhere in that session, I did some Undo ops and trashed the underlying geometry.
I wish that Ctrl-C copies and drag-off copies got their own ID number and could always more consistently be differentiated from their parent. I sometimes get lost in the History Tree, and only rarely in change the order of a curve. So, I suspect doing all sorts of random things maybhave trashed or whacked History in the ankle or kneecap here and there.
I also wish that whether the user selects "Duplicate with History" or "Duplicate as Instance", the geometry creation would cause a new sublayer home for that geometry to reduce the need to OCD differentiate what is what. Further, I wish there was a clone option that acted like a cloner. (If one cloned a person, one would expect organs, bones, and memeoy engrams to come with the clone, not just the skin or husk being deposited onto a new layer, a layer that if innthe wrong branch cannot be simply dragged to there.)
(But, asking for and getting that wishlist item would open the long-standing beg for the Layer Tree in SharkCAD to act like a database and allow nearly complete reorganization powers. If the company doesn't accede, it's probably going to be within 5 years that AI will empower users worldwide to make their own interior table CAD tools, barring some cartel hogging graphics kernels and embargoing domestic and cross-border file and code sharing between users needing to share files. My mental quirks cause an initial arrangement rhat easily and wholly unacceptable layer organization. Between drawings and variants of a work, it is an incredible ask that users map out in advance every last one of hundreds or multiple thousands of layers by function, groups, or presentation.)
(I'm still at times muttering and seething that I can't regex-like hunt for layers and temporarily mask out unrelated errors so I can clone branches along with geometry so a common shape and its underlying structure can be made in timesaving ways. It may be my imagination, but, I could swear that in one version of ViaCAD, before 2014, there was a search bar in the Layer Manager. Am I imagining things? I suppose so.)
It would be nice if, for dummies like myself, Shark would say, "Hey, Butthead, your attempted blend radius os on a scale of 0.01, but your object's real-world edge is on a scale of 0.001..."
Being tired, moving too fast, and jumping between proxy shapes, I failed to realize the scaling or the relative size difference. So, I for 30+ minutes of trial and error increasingly grew frustrated that work successfully achieved barely an hour earlier was blowing up in my face. This was on a proxy pump leas than 6ft long, too time proximate, maybe, to working on a propeller sketch, where the propeller is of an 18 ft diameter, so it has far bigger blends needed, and proximate to another shape just randomly drawn without regard to its real-world scale/size.
It was my fault, but a few clues or glowing edge hints such as attempted radius wildly disproportionate to existing geometry might have helped.
Once I realized I was the problem, I was humming along.
But, the crash I ultimately had came from either too many Undo ops, or a drag tool op.
As for drag or copy-paste crashes in my vastly huger file, those are few and in-between, but can be traumatizing when they do happen.
See separate post, as I'm not on either 14 or 15, whether release or trial/beta.
