Allegro 23.1 with HF 006 Graphic Issues on Latest VMware Workstation Pro

Hi cstocci52

Can you elaborate on the "occasionally disappearing" section? 

Hi JaunCR,

Whenever I move the mouse cursor (not always, but many times) over some part of the layout, the entire picture of the layout goes black and only when I click elsewhere or open up another menu sub-item does the image of my layout re-appear.  I also see NOTHING when I click on the 3Dx viewer even though when I export, my eDrawings 3D STEP viewer sees everything just fine, so there is 3D data, I just cannot see it in Allegro's 3Dx screen.  I kind of thought it is something to do with these virtual machine video/graphics drivers which are not the best.

What are your thoughts.  BTW, I am running Allegro 23.1 HF006 on VMware Workstation Pro v 17.5x.

CT

Hi JaunCR,

Whenever I move the mouse cursor (not always, but many times) over some part of the layout, the entire picture of the layout goes black and only when I click elsewhere or open up another menu sub-item does the image of my layout re-appear.  I also see NOTHING when I click on the 3Dx viewer even though when I export, my eDrawings 3D STEP viewer sees everything just fine, so there is 3D data, I just cannot see it in Allegro's 3Dx screen.  I kind of thought it is something to do with these virtual machine video/graphics drivers which are not the best.

What are your thoughts.  BTW, I am running Allegro 23.1 HF006 on VMware Workstation Pro v 17.5x.

CT

What operating system are you running in your VM? 

I can give you a few things to try: 

1. Disable accelerate 3D graphics in VMware display setup

2. setenv noopenglgraphics 1 in .cshrc file

3. Set disable opengl in ENV file

4. Use allegro -safe -noopengl to launch the tool

However, due to the restrictions inherent with virtual and remote desktop environments, Cadence does not test, certify, or support any of the graphical applications in any virtual environment. Virtual environments include, but are not limited to: Citrix, VMware, and Hyper-V. Remote desktop environments include but are not limited to: Remote Desktop (Windows), Hummingbird (Windows), Remote X Desktop (Linux), and VNC based products (Windows and Linux).

Hi JuanCR,

Answers to your questions:
Software => VMware Workstation Pro v 17.5.2
Host System => Windows 10 Professional
Guest VM System => Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise LTSC

1. I did try disabling the 3D Accelerator in the VM properties, but then the Allegro 3Dx in the W11 VM would not even attempt to run telling me I needed to install Direct 3DX or something similar.  Other 2D stuff worked fine.

2. 3. and 4.  Did this and because there was no opengl, the 3Dx menu was present, but when activated, I get "Warning(SPMH3D-10) the 3DX engine is not available in the current environment.  Disabled by the enviromental option "disable_opengl""  That was it!

Evidently, the new Allegro 3Dx or, in general the Allegro X product does not like running in a VM because when I ran it as a normal Allegro without the "X" in the safe mode, everything is stable and no "black-out" of the layout contents, but no 3Dx capability other than the 3D mapper function which has been around for a while.  This issue is clearly related to the insufficient graphics capability within any VM.

Thanks for helping out!

No problem CT,. Glad I could help.

Even though it's not officially supported, I have seen people run Allegro in VM environments. So, like you said, it is very likely that Allegro X (being a new version) is still unstable in such environments.