[RANT] Stud.io

[ExeSandbox]

I'm gonna get absolutely demolished for this, but I have to vent my frustrations. Stud.io is a pathetic excuse for a LEGO building software. It is so sluggish, unstable, slow, unintuitive and buggy mess that is just an overall pain in the rear to handle. If it weren't for it's instructions maker I wouldn't go anywhere near it. I wouldn't be writing this if Stud.io hasn't crapped on me for the last time. 

I've spent the entire day now, working on the instructions for a model, making sure to constantly save because I know how asinine this software can be, until just now, it crashed BECAUSE I TRIED TO SAVE. (WTF?) I don't even know how the flipping hell this software works, but it seems to have completely got rid of my original .io file, and replaced it with a garbage backup version that only has half my progress. I don't even know what to say!  I wouldn't mind redoing all that, if Stud.io was in the least enjoyable to use!!!!!! 

I know this post has been incredibly unprofessional, and I'm very sorry to the developers for what I said, but come on, if Stud.io is to meet the proper standards, a lot of things got to be fixed. (Don't even get me started on that.) Building in Stud.io doesn't hold a candle to LDD, and even despite it's constant parts update, I won't switch over to Stud.io for a very very very very long time. Even Mecabricks feels better to build than Stud.io (like seriously, what is wrong with Stud.io camera controls!?) 

...okay rant over......sorry you had to read this....  

 

Edit: okay I feel a little dumb now. Stud.io didn't erase my original file, but instead turned it into a .backup file (but why does it even do that?). I'm still salty about Stud.io though, because I still have yet to start on the Page Designer, and it's not going to be fun. But I'm curious, is anyone else facing issues with Stud.io or is it just me?

Edited June 20, 2020 by ExeSandbox
Got my progress back

[Mylenium]

Yeah, Stud.io isn't great, but perhaps you might care to provide some system info and details about your project for some context? Funny enough for me it doesn't even crash while working, it just occasionally refuses to launch because the Unity stuff bombs out quietly behind the scenes.

Mylenium

[ExeSandbox]

21 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Yeah, Stud.io isn't great, but perhaps you might care to provide some system info and details about your project for some context? Funny enough for me it doesn't even crash while working, it just occasionally refuses to launch because the Unity stuff bombs out quietly behind the scenes.

Mylenium

Oh interesting, it looks not everyone faces the same problem. No wonder why I haven't seen more complaints about the software. I wasn't aware that Stud.io was built with Unity, that would explain why it functions so oddly. (I've also had issues with Unity made softwares in the past.)

Yeah, I probably should have included some more info from the start, but here they are. 

System info:

Windows 8.1

16 GB RAM

1TB Disk Space

Intel Core i7-4712HQ CPU @ 2.30ghz

64-bit Processor

**

I normally tend to work on 2-4k pieces models on Stud.io just to create instructions (which seems to be quite taxing on Stud.io), and on each project I've worked on, Stud.io would crash or hang a few times throughout the process.

 

 

 

[Mylenium]

2 hours ago, ExeSandbox said:

I normally tend to work on 2-4k pieces models on Stud.io

Okay, that could be a different story. My models so far never exceeded 800 pieces. On a hunch I'd say the issue is likely your Windows 8.1 and a potentially outdated graphics/ video driver because it's no longer supported. I think Unity stopped supporting it with one of their 3.x versions quite a while ago. Does the event viewer offer any insights into the cause of the crashes?

Mylenium

[1963maniac]

If this can help, I was able to upgrade to windows 10 from 8.1 for free this March through Microsoft. The free upgrade from 6 years ago was still available.

Of course now I can't find the webpage. Microsoft said/says they don't do it, but they did in March 2020.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/you-can-still-upgrade-to-windows-10-for-free-heres-how/

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-download-windows-10-for-free-now-that-windows-7-is-dead/

I have now found the website. Microsoft converts your windows 7 license for use as a windows 10 license. And you use this tool to do it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10  This will take you thru the whole process. I did this to an old PC in March and all my files remained where I left them.

Edited June 23, 2020 by 1963maniac
new information

[JopieK]

I just upgraded, that caused an interesting issue: the bricks palette now takes up the whole screen and I can't seem to resize it. I use macOS.

[SylvainLS]

7 minutes ago, JopieK said:

I just upgraded, that caused an interesting issue: the bricks palette now takes up the whole screen and I can't seem to resize it. I use macOS.

It happened to others.  You need to hide/unhide/resize the panels.  Look in the Studio forum for the exact procedure.

[JopieK]

8 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

It happened to others.  You need to hide/unhide/resize the panels.  Look in the Studio forum for the exact procedure.

Well and others seem to have issues with it getting to work again:
https://forum.bricklink.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3940&p=12297&hilit=resize&sid=9be3bd9507b0d667568aa63d2696827c#p12296

I fixed it though: removed Stud.io and reinstalled it,

[ExeSandbox]

10 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Okay, that could be a different story. My models so far never exceeded 800 pieces. On a hunch I'd say the issue is likely your Windows 8.1 and a potentially outdated graphics/ video driver because it's no longer supported. I think Unity stopped supporting it with one of their 3.x versions quite a while ago. Does the event viewer offer any insights into the cause of the crashes?

Mylenium

Yeah, that's is perhaps the case, my graphics driver always crashes at random times lately. The event viewer showed this message but I don't know what to make of it.

Studio [version: Unity 2017.4.30f1 (c6fa43736cae)]

KERNELBASE.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
  in module KERNELBASE.dll at 0033:d5887afc.

Error occurred at 2020-06-19_115218.
C:\Program Files\Studio 2.0\Studio.exe, run by Tong Xin Jun.
36% memory in use.
16308 MB physical memory [10344 MB free].
18740 MB paging file [10031 MB free].
134217728 MB user address space [134216263 MB free].

(Also Stud.io crashed once more probably because of a Windows update, and might have totally corrupted my file. This could be the end. I foolishly didn't back it up, and the project was so near completion.)

mono.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
  in module mono.dll at 0033:a5bf30f9.

Error occurred at 2020-06-22_092624.
C:\Program Files\Studio 2.0\Studio.exe, run by Tong Xin Jun.
29% memory in use.
16308 MB physical memory [11442 MB free].
18740 MB paging file [12219 MB free].
134217728 MB user address space [134214654 MB free].
Read from location ffffffff caused an access violation.

[M2m]

I really suggest to update to Win10. Win 8 is really not up to it!

[ExeSandbox]

Also why are Stud.io files password protected!? Is there something so "precious" that they're trying to keep from everybody!!?

[zweifuss]

2 hours ago, ExeSandbox said:

Also why are Stud.io files password protected!? Is there something so "precious" that they're trying to keep from everybody!!?

Yes it is quite funny. If you do some googling you can find the password easily. Apparently it's in a DLL file. The. Io file is just a zip container for a bunch of. Ldr files. I also find the software quite sluggish and prefer to build in ldd or ldcad which runs way faster. 

[ExeSandbox]

Welp, I officially lost all of my progress. Windows did an update, Stud.io crashed, and the file got corrupted. (One .ldr file was missing inside) Not sure what happened. 

I ain't even mad this time, it's my fault for not backing up even though I know that Stud.io could backstab me at any moment. 

Edited June 22, 2020 by ExeSandbox

[ExeSandbox]

1 hour ago, zweifuss said:

Yes it is quite funny. If you do some googling you can find the password easily. Apparently it's in a DLL file. The. Io file is just a zip container for a bunch of. Ldr files. I also find the software quite sluggish and prefer to build in ldd or ldcad which runs way faster. 

Oh nice, wonder why they bother putting the password there in the first place. Totally agree on it being sluggish, and that's not too bad if you get used to using it. But if you try to work fast, Stud.io is bound to explode, killing you in the process.

[Mylenium]

5 hours ago, ExeSandbox said:

Yeah, that's is perhaps the case, my graphics driver always crashes at random times lately.

Could definitely be. The crash in the mono.dll might also indicate a network issue. Perhaps it's trying to connect to Bricklink at random times and crashes when it gets blackholed.

Mylenium

4 hours ago, ExeSandbox said:

Also why are Stud.io files password protected!? Is there something so "precious" that they're trying to keep from everybody!!?

It's probably just a means of keeping the operating systems from peeking into the ZIP files. Also password-protecting files creates an extra hash value, which may help with integrity checks.

Mylenium

[ExeSandbox]

1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

Could definitely be. The crash in the mono.dll might also indicate a network issue. Perhaps it's trying to connect to Bricklink at random times and crashes when it gets blackholed.

Mylenium

Thanks a lot for the help.  I suppose it was the network issue, as it got turned off at that time, but I didn't think that was the cause of the crash. Although would that lead to the .io file being corrupted or is that a separate issue?

 

1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

It's probably just a means of keeping the operating systems from peeking into the ZIP files. Also password-protecting files creates an extra hash value, which may help with integrity checks.

Mylenium

Oh I see. Wow, I didn't think there could be so many other factors to that. I was always under the assumption that passwords are meant to keep people away. 

[M2m]

2 hours ago, Mylenium said:

It's probably just a means of keeping the operating systems from peeking into the ZIP files. Also password-protecting files creates an extra hash value, which may help with integrity checks.

Mylenium

If you want to hash then there are better ways (SHA) to do. You should definitely use hash functions and hash values, if you want to hash. Also if you want to have error correction one should look into reed-solomon, hamming codes, crc and this stuff. Just using zip is a bad shortcut, as because of the encryption (and non-public password) the risk of data loss for the acutal user is higher.

[Mylenium]

4 hours ago, M2m said:

If you want to hash then there are better ways (SHA) to do. You should definitely use hash functions and hash values, if you want to hash. Also if you want to have error correction one should look into reed-solomon, hamming codes, crc and this stuff. Just using zip is a bad shortcut, as because of the encryption (and non-public password) the risk of data loss for the acutal user is higher.

Yeah, sure. Couldn't agree more. But there's the rub: In order to even make it worthwile, you'd have to come up with a better file format in the first place. So for all intents and purposes, this is merely an academic discussion.

Mylenium

[M2m]

Just now, Mylenium said:

Yeah, sure. Couldn't agree more. But there's the rub: In order to even make it worthwile, you'd have to come up with a better file format in the first place. So for all intents and purposes, this is merely an academic discussion.

Mylenium

Yeah surely - but I guess using zip (without passwords) and adding a shasum.txt file containing all the sha-1 values of the included ldraw files would be much more user friendly *rant finished

[supertruper1988]

Having read this and looking at everyone's complaints I would like to throw in my rant.

I doubt the studio developers build LEGO at all. 

I also doubt they have ever designed a function program. things like file handling, UI scaling, basic navigation in menus do not work. 

Some examples:

• You cannot tab between fields in most places
• Fields are not adhered to a character type, for instance, I can type a rotation value in the page editor but if I hit "D" on the keyboard to go to the next page, it places a D in the rotation field, causing an error
• Part files, are not able to be imported directly into studio. 
• Locked ZIP as file type? that is incredibly dumb and a major security flaw.

This is just a short list, never mind, relying on the user base to be the QA/QC team. 

[Trekkie99]

I've been following this topic, and I wanted to ask a dumb question which is if not Stud.io or Mecabricks, what does everyone typically use? I see LDD tossed around but isn't that discontinued? 

[supertruper1988]

39 minutes ago, Trekkie99 said:

I've been following this topic, and I wanted to ask a dumb question which is if not Stud.io or Mecabricks, what does everyone typically use? I see LDD tossed around but isn't that discontinued? 

I never said I dont use studio. I have been slowly transitioning to LDCad. It has some quirks but as a lifetime CAD user its pretty simple once you get the hang of it. 

MecaBricks has come a long way from its inception and I highly recommend watching the tutorial videos. 

[KotZ]

5 hours ago, Trekkie99 said:

I've been following this topic, and I wanted to ask a dumb question which is if not Stud.io or Mecabricks, what does everyone typically use? I see LDD tossed around but isn't that discontinued? 

I personally use LDD for building and most minifigure posing, as I find all of it a lot easier in LDD. I'll then import the .lxf file into Stud.io for decals and then rendering.

[M2m]

5 hours ago, Trekkie99 said:

I've been following this topic, and I wanted to ask a dumb question which is if not Stud.io or Mecabricks, what does everyone typically use? I see LDD tossed around but isn't that discontinued? 

Im still using LDD because I am so used to its workflow. Thanks to the effort there are also new (new old) parts available. I personally think Mecabricks also looks really cool, both from UI and rendering point of view. Still I'm a fan of LDD 'parts snapping'.

 

[Mylenium]

23 hours ago, M2m said:

Yeah surely - but I guess using zip (without passwords) and adding a shasum.txt file containing all the sha-1 values of the included ldraw files would be much more user friendly *rant finished

It would have to go much deeper than that, with the actual point being that the LDraw file format specs are very 1990s and could need some major enhancements or more specifically need to be re-invented from the ground up IMO.

Mylenium