How to avoid crashes in APCD 1.5
I know many people have complained about crashes in APCD 1.5 but there are a few things to watch out for to make life easier.
Turn off Autosave but save manually every time you have done some significant work. See saving tips below.
NEVER use the terrain painter on an outside edge of the course - instant crash When adding top views to trees etc if you notice the fonts change to bold for no reason, save your course and exit. APCD is about to crash.
When planting make sure you have the objects rendering in low resolution. DO NOT zoom in or out (usually mouse wheel) while 2D object are showing.
For the most part work on planting in the perspective view using the "render hole only" option in your rendering options menu.
When seam mapping make sure all faces in your prospective path area are selected before attempting to calculate the path mapping. 99.9% of path mapping crashes occur for this reason. See example below
IMPORTANT - How to save your course files.
This is how I save my course files in order to minimize lost work due to a crash or bad save.
Instead of just hitting "save" always use "Save as" ..... I usually have about 10 different course files under which I save the course ie Kilderry1, Kilderry2 etc after I reach number 10 I then revert back to number 1 and so on. This ensures even if I have a corrupt save or a crash that I don't lose too much work.
When you save and validate make sure you have a backup of the file you are just about to S&V on. Don't multitask while APCD is saving and validating. Go and get some fresh air or something but don't be tempted to try and use your computer while S&V is in progress.
I hope these tips make it easier for you to use APCD. You will still get the odd crash when you forget to follow these tips as I sometimes do myself! Good luck and remember while a crash can be frustrating it's never the end of the world. There is nothing so perfect that it can't be improved upon the second time around. Some of my best work has come in places where I had lost work due to a crash and resolved to redo the work even better than it was before.