Script caused Fatal Error, what am I doing wrong?

[Zbuffer]

Hi

Garbage collection is used for cleaning up memory (RAM) that Max uses internally.
a maxscript function: gc() is used just for that
Working with bitmaps is known for beeing a memory eater.
so use gc and/or freesceneBitmaps fns
There is a topic on that issue ine the Maxscript help.

[msmith81]

Thanks for replying, ZBuffer

When the problem occurred, I tried using gc() in the listener, and it gave me the same message about an error occurring during garbage collection. Shortly after this is when Max crashed and gave me the fatal error and would not re-open. Also, I do not want to put gc() in the script itself because I want to be able to keep the undo history.

I didn't know about freesceneBitmaps() but I'm not sure if this will help as I am only dealing with 2 bitmaps at a time and there aren't any others in the scene. But maybe my script is making lots of copies of the same bitmaps? I will try putting the freesceneBitmaps() line in my script, just before the bitmaps are created and see if this helps.

The error does not occur every time, so pinning it down to one cause is tricky for me and I'm sorry I cannot be more specific about when it happens (because I just don't know). The Fatal Error was scary though, I saw on some CAD forums that brand new RAM was needed, or clean install of Windows was needed, etc - so I really want to avoid triggering this error again.

[LoneRobot]

gc light:true

should allow you to call the garbage collector without flushing the undo history if that helps.

[msmith81]

thanks LoneRobot, I will try adding that to my script and see if I am still getting errors

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