AGI-Light FAQs

Installation, System Requirements & Licensing

Q. Do I have to register AGI-Light every time I install the software?
A. No. AGI-Light only requires a registration key with the first installation on any given computer. Installing the software on a different computer or reformatting your hard drive will require a new registration key.

Q. What version of Windows do I need? Is one better than another?
A. Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 are theoretically all acceptable. However, we prefer Windows NT or 2000 as they have proven to be much more stable platforms and support additional Open-GL hardware acceleration. The various versions of Windows 98 (FE,SE,ME) have been implicated in a variety of problems from video to output. We recommend that they be avoided.

Q: Will AGI-Light run on Macintosh, Linux, BeOS, or Solaris?
A: No. At this time none of these markets justify porting the program over.

Q. Can I delete temporary files generated by AGI-Light?
A. Yes, provided AGI-Light is closed. Temporary files are self-deleted under normal circumstances. However, abnormal termination of the program can leave these files in the following folders beneath AGI-Light; Temporary job files, Temporary Render files, Temporary files.

Q. Can I move my *.AGL files to another computer or share with another user?
A. Yes, AGI-Light files are completely transportable. They automatically contain all associated photometry and symbols. Simply copy the <FILENAME.AGL> to the new location. The files can be quite large so a zipping tool is very useful.

Q. Will AGI-Light read AGI-dos files?
A. No, AGI-Light only opens *.AGL files. AGI32 opens AGI-dos files.

Q: How does hardware effect performance?
A: The most important hardware factors for AGI-Light are CPU speed, amount of RAM in the system, hard drive speed, video card type and RAM, and Virtual Memory allocation. Lighting calculations are extremely math and RAM intensive, and will push your computer to the upper limit of performance capabilities. This means that AGI-Light is more likely to expose limitations of your computer system than simpler programs.

RAM ( Random Access Memory) holds the instructions and data which are run through the CPU The CPU "fetches" these from the RAM at a very high speed, measured in a few nanoseconds (in one second there are a billion nanoseconds) RAM is usually a few hundred times slower than the CPU. More RAM allows the CPU to have more information within quick reach compared to the very slow hard drive.

Hard Drives are stacked spinning platters with a magnetic surface which can permanently store data. They are measured in speeds of milliseconds (in one second there are a thousand milliseconds) This means that the CPU must wait several thousand of it's own clock cycles for the hard disk to return information, choking it of data. At the time of this writing there are hard drives that can store up to 80 Gigs (Gigabyte=1 billion bytes), however, some of the smaller 10 to 30 Gig drives are faster at transmitting data. The hard drive must interface well with the motherboard disk controller and therefore should be selected by the computer manufacturer.

The video card takes drawing instructions from the CPU and turns it into the video signal sent to the monitor. Present day cards will take on more responsibility, drawing in 3D perspective and smoothing shading across a surface. They do not directly effect calculation time, but indirectly will free up the CPU to take on more lighting calculations. AGI-Light uses the industry standard OpenGL language to send rendered instructions to your video card and the card must have correct video card drivers to understand them.

Q: What processors will AGI-Light work with and what is recommended?
A: AGI-Light will run on all computers which support or emulate the Intel 80586 or above
Intel: Pentium, Pentium Pro, 2, 3, 4 (Willamette, Tillamook), Xeon
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) K6, K7 (Athlon, Thunderbird, Spitfire, or Duron),
Cyrix: M and GX series,
Transmetta: Crusoe family (TM3200, TM5400 and above).

Recommendations currently are Pentium 3-500 MHz and above or AMD Athlon of comparable speed.

Q: How much ram do I need?
A: A minimum of 32 Megabytes of ram is required. More memory will significantly improve performance.128 Megabytes is recommended if you are multitasking with other CAD or office applications.

Q: My system is running low on memory. Is there anything I can do?
A: In Windows you can increase the "virtual memory" size to up to several hundred megabytes. This is a slower representation of RAM on the hard drive, which can help Windows juggle large segments of data in RAM. This is changed in the Systems Settings under the Windows Control Panel. Available space for Virtual Memory will depend on how much hard drive space you have available.

Q: Will AGI-Light work over Novell networks?
A: At this time we recommend that you do not use AGI-Light over Novell 4.1 system. The workaround is to copy all .a32, .Des, and .dxf files to the local hard drive and use them from there. Do not use the shared drives. We are currently investigating this situation.

Q: My icons are invisible, red or scrambled
A: A very perplexing problem we are currently trying to understand. The red icons syndrome is usually cured by a simple reinstall of AGI-Light. However, the invisible icons and scrambled icons are more difficult. We have noted the latter problem occurs only under Windows 98. Things to try:

1. Install latest drivers for video card from manufacturers website
2. Use MS-Internet Explorer, Tools menu, Windows Update to get the latest version of Win 98.
3. With AGI-Light closed, delete the files AGI-Light_Toolbars*.ATB. Then restart the program and go to View-Toolbars-Custom and turn them all back on. You'll have to rearrange them to your liking.
4. If all fail, consider upgrading your operating system to Windows 2000 or NT4.

Q: I get a black screen when going to Render mode.
A: You may be running in 256-bit color, you need to change your display settings in the Control Panel to increase to 16- or 32- bit (true) color.

Q: I get random crashes / blank screens / no mouse cursor
A: Most of these problems are tied to the video card and its drivers. Drivers are a piece of software provided by the hardware vendor to act as a "glue" between the operating system, applications, and the hardware. AGI-Light takes full advantage of modern video card hardware through OpenGL, so the driver must support this. These can be downloaded off of the video card manufacturer's website or may be present on the CD provided by the video card manufacturer.
Due to the fast evolution in computer technology, the original video card drivers provided with a piece of hardware tend to be released with many bugs and not supporting all features. Newer drivers can be found on the website of the manufacturer.

Q: I updated the video card driver and I still can't see the cursor sometimes, now what?
A: In the display menu in the Control Panel, In the Settings tab select the Advanced button, there should be a slider bar to turn down the level of acceleration. Try knocking it down a few notches, this will use safer methods to redraw the cursor.

Q: Can I use AGI-Light in a multi-head display?
A: We have seen good results with Matrox dual-head monitors. Avoid all video cards using Permedia chipsets. Under Windows 98/ME/2000 you also have the opportunity to plug in several different video cards into the same computer and spread the desktop across multiple monitors. Check the Microsoft website for computability listings.

Q: On my multi-head display, when selecting an icon on the second monitor, the sub-menu will "jump" to the first screen, what can I do?
A: This is a limitation of Visual Basic. We are working on a solution at this time.

Q: My video card says it has OpenGL hardware acceleration, will this help AGI-Light?
A: Yes. You will see an indirect gain from the amount of time the CPU is freed from drawing graphics.
Also, the hardware acceleration will speed up the display and manipulation of the system in render mode. Hardware Acceleration means that there are custom silicon chips present on the card which can perform select graphic and mathematical tasks, several hundred times faster than the general purpose CPU of the computer. These were once limited to very expensive professional cards but with the large numbers of 3D computer simulation games, the cost has come down significantly.

Q: Why do I get a Run Time Error 52 when opening AGI-Light for the first time after installation?
A: AGI-Light needs to copy additional files to the AGI-Light directory when it is launched the first time. These files are located on the AGI-Light CD. If you remove the AGI-Light CD after installation (before AGI-Light is started), you will get the following error: Run Time Error 52 - Bad File Name. Keep the AGI-Light CD in your CD-ROM drive until you have started AGI-Light once.