Animated zoom works only sporadically

[HenkeH2]

I´m losing my mind. 

Animated zoom can work at first in a document, the suddenly revert to the old behaviour. However, if another document is open it might still work in that document. Contents in a "zoom not working document" can be copied into a new one, and then the zoom will work. 

I´m running Big Sur 11.2.1 on a Mac Pro 2013 and Illustrator 25.2, but the problem has been around before Big Sur and some Illustrator updates.

Sometimes the issue is triggered by pressing Shift+G (document measurements)

GPU is switched on, as well as Animated zoom. But still it just switches off intermittently. Totally ruins my work flow, it´s like someone is tripping my legs constantly.

[Monika Gause]

Is you graphic card listed on the system requirements page? https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/system-requirements.html

[HenkeH2]

I´m not sure. The list says this:

• AMD FirePro V Series Graphics
• AMD FirePro W Series Graphics

And I have this:

• AMD FirePro D300 2 GB

[HenkeH2]

Alright, I have double checked it now.

Whenever I choose the Artboard Tool in the tool panel, the animated zoom stops working.

The document window tab goes from (CMYK/Preview) to (CMYK/CPU-preview) and the animated zoom stops working.

If I open a new window, the zoom is fine again. Unless I open a new document with the artboard tool still active, in that case the zoom won´t work.

If I press my shortcut for Artboard Tool the result is the same.

I´m gonna try uninstalling and reinstalling Illustrator.

[HenkeH2]

Well, reinstalling Illustrator didn´t do anything.

I´ve heard about an Illustrator "settings file" that you can delete and thus remove bugs and issues. Anyone have any info about that?

[HenkeH2]

I used the search function and found info about the prefs file. Maybe resetting it will do the trick. But what I haven´t found info about is, what actually happens when resetting prefs. Will my shortcuts and palette layouts go away?

[Monika Gause]

Yes, they will be erased.

If you want to try the preferences reset: rename the folder. If it doesn't help, rename it back. https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

You could ask the manufacturer if your card belongs to that series. If the card is not on the list of supported cards, then that might be the cause of the issue.

[HenkeH2]

My coworker with a setup identical to mine is not having any issues with the zoom, so I suspect this is not a hardware problem.

Thank you.

[Monika Gause]

Then perhaps you can evaluate what is different in your setups. Or maybe you just create heavier documents?

[HenkeH2]

I´m a little confused.

In order to reset my prefs, I renamed this folder as a spare:

/Users/henme/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator/25.2.0 

I restarted Illustrator with new prefs but this did not solve my problem so I renamed the folder to the original name. (this folder btw contains only four items: Debugdatabase.txt, SCRPriorstate.json, Trace Database.txt and a folder named Blacklists)

However i found another folder:

/Users/henme/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 25 Settings/sv_SE

What´s this? Has this something to do with prefs or should I leave it alone? It contains a lot more files than the above one.

[HenkeH2 · Accepted solution]

Solved by downgrading to version 25.0. I got the tip from illustrator.uservoice.com.