viz renderer / 2004 adt bug?

I think I've discovered a bug with acad2004/viz renderer. It's to do with
the file linking mechanism.


Things go pete tong if you move the files around, or rename the file or
files.

Here is a scenario.

I have a acad file blah.dwg
I link it to viz and have a file blah.drf
I make changes, add lights... to blah.drf

Fine.

If I move the two files, (or rename them to crap.dwg and crap.drf), then
viz renderer goes tits up.

I open crap.dwg
Link to viz.
All the changes I've previously made on blah.drf are there, indicating
that the linking mechanism works by file name and relative path, thus:

blah.dwg -> blah.drf
crap.dwg -> crap.drf

however, crap.drf is all screwed up, the toolbars become inactive. That's
all. Tool bar buttons don't work no more. Menus work, but as far as I can
tell, you can't actually do anything. The scenes become effectively
inactive.
This also happens if I move the blah.dwg and blah.drf to a different
location.

Renaming crap.dwg and crap.drf back to the blah.dwg and blah.drf works
fine.

I assume it's a bug because crap.drf loads. Just screws up the interface
completely. This is a serious problem. You basically can't move files
around once you've started working on a project. You can't make copies
either. I can't download the same drf and dwg from the web and expect
them to work on my computer.

Or may be its my installation? But this happens on two installation, my
laptop and desktop. (in case you're wondering, we have a network license,
thus i have multiple copies, and can run as long as it's networked).

Has anyone come across this problem?

I've been using AutoCAD for about 10 years, and 3dstudio Max for about 6
years. We've purchased acad2004adt to replace 3Dstudio Viz in our lab for
our architecture students. I'm trying to teach this dam thing, acad2004
and viz renderer, and I'm having real problems. I'm trying to write some
tutorials, with corresponding dwg and drf files downloadable from the
web. The above "bug" makes this impossible.

Any ideas?

Henry
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering
University of Bath
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/abshhkc
http://www.3thirteen.co.uk

 

Sure that'd be good. I've written loads of little tutorials, all available
on http://staff.bath.ac.uk/abshhkc
No doubt, there will be loads of typos and stuff.

regards
Henry