Offset Path processing causing freeze on document open

[sergeyvt]

Platform: Windows 11.
Happened twice to me in two weeks already and has cause a fair amount of data loss. 

When opening an existing AI file, the program gets stuck on processing the "Offset Path" filter.
- Hitting "Stop" does not dissmiss or interrupt this dialog. Stop button is hovered appear to process my click, but does nothing.
- I can't navigate to any other open documents at this point. All of the unsaved changes elsewhere are lost.
- I can't close Illustrator with X or Close from Windows while this dialog is open.
- The only way to get past this is with a hard close or End Task from the Winbdow Task manager.

[Monika Gause]

How much RAM do you have installed?

What's in that document?

Did you already reboot the computer and then launch only Illustrator? No, not even your browser. Above all not Chrome.

[sergeyvt]

64gb ram
There are vectors and raster images in the document (and abviously, other offset path effect)

I reboot the computer recently, but I had Brave browser (Chromium-based) running side-by-side with Illustrator.

[sergeyvt]

What's the deal with Chrome running? Does it somehow interact nonfavorably with Illustrator and cause it to lock up like this?

[Monika Gause]

Chrome is eating meomry for breakfast lunch and supper. If memory is a question, then Chrome is not a good answer.

64 GB of memory should usually really be safe, but since I do not know your files … 

[sergeyvt]

Gotcha. But underlying you're saying this type of behavior seems to indicate an Illustrator "out of memory" freeze?

[Monika Gause]

It just looks like your files are somewhat too big for Illustrator to swallow. I assume this doesn't happen with smaller files? Simpler ones with fewer effects, paths, complexity?

You didn't get into the details of what is in your files. And just how large they are. Like how many GB, paths, which effects, how many fonts? Did you use Offset path effect in the files? Do you use plugins?

[sergeyvt]

Yeah I'm typically working with high-fidelity UI mockups that include a combination of both linked raster images, vectors, and plently of layer effect such as Offset Path etc as I needed them. The files can go into the hundreds of megs, somtimes over 1 gb in the most complex cases. 

I have a pretty beefy modern workstation - a 7900X CPU and Geforece 4000 series GPU so it's actually kind of suprising I'm runing up against these soft performace limits in Illustrator. 

And Illustrator doesn't exactly warn you that your files are getting too big, or that its memory is running out. Filesize/disk space is not a limitation for me, (nor probably for most designers), so I just use the full functionality the program provides for generating the kinds of mockups I need, and don't really worry about the size of my files most of the time. 

[sergeyvt]

Or are all of these question pointing a symptom of Illustrator simply running out of RAM?
(Again got 64gb in my system, so thought I was safe. But I am working with some pretty hefty AI files in the hundreds of mbs)

[Bobby Henderson]

Usually I don't have any problems applying the Offset Path effect to vector-based graphics objects. The only time I do run into problems, with either the effect glitching out or the entire application crashing, it's usually because I'm trying to offset a path that is far too complex for the system to handle. Maybe there's way too many anchor points or there is even something wrong with the source path itself.

You mentioned you're working with a mix of placed images, raster-based elements and vector-based elements. Are you trying to apply the effect to all of those kind of objects at once? If so that might explain the crashes.