paulchoate

Thank you to you both. I'll likely end up getting a new rig with a 5070 and a CPU to match. I want it to last another 8 years! 

My desktop computer is just over 8 years old. I worry (not losing sleep over it but it's a concern) about a failure so I want to be proactive and order a new one. I typically buy things that are overkill but before I go ahead and order a $5,000 PC with a RTX 5090 and the latest and greatest AMD or Intel CPU I'd like to know at what point is it just throwing money away.  Will an RTX 4060 and a last generation CPU be just fine or will a 5090 and higher end CPU actually be worth it? My concept plans have lots of live renders and I've been using PBR a lot lately. Usually, at some point my layouts get so large as to cause significant lag (probably more of a "too many layers" turned on issue than anything). Any advice is appreciated. 

On 4/28/2025 at 1:10 AM, rwdozier said:

I asked my friend....

 

You're spot on that Hz (refresh rate) doesn't matter for Chief Architect X12 — it's mostly important for gaming, not CAD or design work. Chief is more about image quality and GPU/CPU handling the scenes, not high frame rates.

 

Now to your main question:

✅ Yes, higher resolution monitors (like dual 4K) do make the GPU work harder, even in Chief Architect — but not as severely as they do in fast-paced gaming. It's because your GPU has to constantly manage more pixels across all open windows and 3D views.

 

For your listed hardware:

Desktop Setup (Ryzen 1800X, 32GB RAM, GTX 1080, NVMe SSD):

• Running dual QHD monitors (like your 34" and 27" now) is no problem at all.

• Even dual 4K monitors would be manageable, but you might notice some slowdown only when working in large or complex 3D camera views (lots of surfaces, textures, or terrain).

• Basic plan work (2D) and standard 3D modeling would stay pretty smooth.

• Your GTX 1080 is still a strong card for this kind of workload, and your NVMe SSD also helps keep everything snappy.

Laptop Setup (i7-7700HQ, 32GB RAM, GTX 1050Ti, SATA SSD):

• This machine will handle single 1080p or one QHD monitor comfortably for Chief X12, especially for plan work.

• Dual QHD or dual 4K would strain the 1050Ti pretty quickly, especially when orbiting or editing 3D models. It’s technically possible but would feel sluggish in heavier Chief projects.

Summary:

• Your desktop is very well matched to your current dual QHD setup — no worries at all.

• If you moved to dual 4K, your desktop could handle it reasonably well for Chief, but expect a slight performance dip in complex 3D views.

• Your laptop is best kept to lower resolutions (1080p or maybe one QHD external monitor) for smooth operation in Chief X12.

Thank you! I need to update my profile as my computers have been upgraded and I'm using x16...It's been a while since I posted here lol.

A bit late to the conversation lol. I have an LG 34" QHD 60hz and a Samsung 27" QHD 100hz. Both have subtle curves which I find make a big difference in eliminating head turning because it puts the edges of the screens closet to you. I don't think the Hz matters for Chief. For gaming maybe but not for Chief. The only question I have regarding monitors is do the higher resolutions screens make the GPU work harder like they do when it comes to gaming. For instance would Chief run slower trying to "push" two 4k monitors as opposed to one 1080p monitor of the same size? 

You can save everything on one  drive and link all of your computers that way. I'm not saying to "work" off of one drive. Simply save/backup everything to your one drive folder so that when you open the file on a different computer it opens the most recent version and all of your catalogs, libraries, etc. are the same.

What was your solution?

Back clipped cross section showing the framing is correct as well.

Just tried it in x12 and it works without any issue. Raised the ceiling to 10' then dropped my roof back down to the typical 97-1/8" height. See the attached pic of the plan view and wall elevation view. 

I have been trying to find an acceptable work around as well. I tried the "balloon through ceiling" with no luck. I'm not satisfied with having to do a back-clipped cross section or CAD detail to get a wall elevation of a room with a vaulted ceiling.  I think if the ceiling is higher than the wall top plate then it should be shown in a standard wall elevation (but who cares what I think lol). I did find a work-around that was semi-acceptable but it wouldn't allow my rafters to be shown the way I wanted them...I forget exactly what I did but I wasn't crazy about the solution.

I'd like to change the default fill pattern for my footings. Chief has the default as concrete (which is fine) but I want to have the default footing fill background be grey instead of white and the concrete pattern lines in black. We can of course change the default fill patterns for concrete walls/foundations, slabs, etc. easily but I don't see any option for footings or anyway to change the default concrete fill. Is this possible? (FYI am using x12). The Chief "Help" guide just says that footings default fill is concrete but does not indicate whether it can be changed or how it can be changed.

Thank you.

1 minute ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Worth looking into. Well I can see exactly what your issue is, you don't have enough memory!!!

LOL...I think it's actually 32GB 

Thank you. I'll start looking into the layers. My system consists of a Ryzen 7 1800x CPU, Nvidea 1080 GPU, Samsung EVO 960 SSD, 654GB memory.

8 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

 

Sorry, but you are doing everything possible to make it run slower.  Chief isn't designed to be a "Game" creation tool.  There are other programs that do that.

 

 The 3D in Chief can be used to create pretty good renderings but Chief Architect is really a program to create buildings in 3D with the additional ability to quickly produce Construction Documents.  If this wasn't the case, most of us wouldn't be using it and CA would be out of business fairly quickly.

Like I said, adding all of the 3D objects are done to give the  clients realistic renderings of what the project can look like. Adding plants, furniture, etc. are a big part of selling a job to clients. If all I wanted to do was draw CAD lines I wouldn't need Chief. Back to my point, is there anyone who can tell me what I can do to speed up my computer if I want to use all of the features Chief offers?

8 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

To assist you need to describe precisely the issue you have and what you are attempting to do when things slow down. Better still is to post a problematic plan.

 

Looking at your system specs I'm not to sure there is much room for improvement as far as hardware goes. Your RTX 2080 can't be the problem and you have 32 GB of ram, both of these are far more than what CA needs. Your I7 7700 is a fairly good processor so upgrading this may not provide any significant performance boost, maybe 20% on average, also to upgrade this you will need a new motherboard that will add to the cost.

 

As others are suggesting, managing the display layer options to reduce display complexity is an easy one, especially in plan view if 2D panning and zooming lags. This can also help with 3D camera views but when choosing the things to turn off you need a different approach. In 3D things like textures, the number of active lights, the sun setting and shadow settings have a significant impact, if these are not needed then turn them all off.

 

In 2D plan views everything displayed are vector graphics and to rescale these each time you move around is highly CPU intensive. This is one of the major problems with say 3D plants, their cad blocks are way too complex, all those vector line details have to be recalculated when scaling. This is similar when additional content is imported such as high res pics or PDF content, it's not that the files themselves are a problem it's what has to be done to rescale them each time you pan and zoom.

 

You can also turn-off as many auto-rebuilds as possible so this is not happening to the entire model every time you make a change.

Great advice BUT I don't want to turn off layers. I want to use 3D plants. I want my framing on. So, just tell me what I need to do to get it to run faster! PLEASE!

20 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

I would look first at the 3D Layer Set and make sure you don't have the Framing Layers displayed.  In fact, you don't want anything displayed that's not needed for the 3D view.

Also stay away from 3D Plants and other high Poly Count objects.

But that is EXACTLY why we use Chief lol! It's a 3D modeling program and is marketed that way. WE (the designers and builders) don't care about the fluff BUT the fluff is what makes a good layout look Great to clients.  Inserting that fluff into plans Its like staging a house to help it sell. So, that said, if the engineers who make Chief are going to give us all these great 3d features then they really should provide us with some answers like EXACTLY what hardware to use (and not the minimum requirements...we are far beyond minimum here).

11 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

This is most likely due to the fact that much of the given advice is often based upon broad generalities concerning computer performance. Though valid it does not reveal the true picture of what's going on in respect to a specific software package, unfortunately this can lead one to misinterpret the role a specific piece of hardware has and its impact on performance. For example, if your monitor is 60Hz and you find the movement on your monitor to be jittery then there may be nothing gained by choosing a graphics card solely on the basis that the new one can put out 120 Fps. First, a 60Hz monitor can only display 60 Fps and no more, secondly all graphics generation involves the CPU and thirdly how the software is written is all part of the involved process. To make the appropriate choice one needs to understand what role each of these have, is it an inherent limitation in the software programing, is the CPU to slow and can't feed the GPU fast enough or is the GPU not fast enough. For CA it can be even more complicated as there are many computational processes that must be done before anything is done on the graphical side, so is it the this that's really the issue, maybe it has nothing to do with the graphical processing/hardware.

That's all fine but we are talking about Chief and only Chief. We don't need broad, general answers. We need to know what hardware will run Chief. Not just run Chief but run it so there is minimal lag on even the larges of files. 

I'm in the same boat. I'm running: an AMD Ryzon 7 1800x CPU, Nvidia 1080 GPU, Samsung 960 EVO SSD, 64 MB of memory, two 1080p monitors and an Asus Cross Hair mother board (if that matters). And though I do back up on OneDrive all of my work is done off my hard drive (I've heard working on files online can crash the system or cause other issues). Working on plan files is rarely, if ever, a problem (although I would like to have ZERO lag when going from a plan view to a perspective overview but I can deal with 2 or 3 seconds of lag). The issue I have is when the layout file gets big the lag time I experience for ANY operation on layout is near-unbearable (just moving atext box can result in 10 seconds of lag time!). I'd much prefer to upgrade my computer than to have to watch what I put in my plans (trees, appliances, terrain, etc.). I want to increase the horsepower so to speak but there is so much conflicting advice (Quadros are good. Quadros are bad. More cores, less frequency. More frequency less cores, etc.)  I could care less about ray tracing speed.  And my plans & layouts consist of both 2d and 3d (somebody said something like 2d and 3d are handled very differently by the hardware). I'm willing to spend a good chunk of change on a new computer or hardware (I already spent close to $5k on my current rig) as the lag time kills my drive, motivation, etc,. Sometimes it's so bad it takes the wind right out my sails! So, do I need to add another Nvidia 1080 GPU, change out my 8-core "medium" frequency CPU for a 4-core high frequency CPU, change from Gforce GPU to a Quadro GPU? Please, if anyone has the answers let me know. Tech support can't even answer me. The best I could get from a Chief Tech is to check the formus lol!  Or maybe does having microsft word, excel or quickbooks running on my computer at the same time the problem?

I'm having the same problem. The plan looks great on my computer screen in the layout and plan file. But when I print "Chief Architect Save as PDF" many of the lines are much thicker (on t he screen and on paper). Can't figure it out.

2 hours ago, javatom said:

Turning the layers off will help with rebuilding the 3d.  If all that extraneous BS is important to you, I guess you will have to live with the speed it is going.  I personally, would delete it all.  I'm starting to realize that you must be a homeowner not a professional designer.  You can get help here either way.  I can always tell an amateur created plan because it has all of these items.  Some professions use some of them but not all.  For instance, an interior designer may have a need for one room to have furniture and objects but they would not care about trees.  A landscape designer would have the trees but not the furniture.  Hopefully you get the idea.

Lol...you think I’m a homeowner. I’m a builder/designer who’s smart enough to know that a few trees, plants and furniture in the plan/layout can make or break a render.  These are concepts for homeowners not working plans (yet). A nice kitchen renovation looks good without furniture, plants, etc. but throw those things in and it changes the dynamic in a big way. But what do I know.

15 minutes ago, javatom said:

I use plot lines for elevations, never live view.  If you have a 3d image you can use live view if you check "update on demand".  PDF files imported into a layout are usually a problem.  I even try to not use jpeg images.  Two plan files feeding into one layout is alright.  Another thing that will slow everything down is a 3d live image that is water color and line style overlay.  It takes a while to rebuild the image.  Another thing to check is extraneous items that have nothing to do with plans.  Toasters, wall art, even furniture.  Delete it all unless you really need it.  Check the face count of items you have placed in the plan.  Just as an example, one washing machine may have 300 face count and another one may have 2000.  All these things add up.

Thanks Javatom. I’ll see what happens when I delete the furniture, plants, tree, fences, etc. I’m wondering if it’s the large number of trees I have (not the first time I’ve put trees in a plan but I put a lot of them). No PDFs but I did import quite a few jpegs.  I’ll look into all of the things you brought up...much appreciated. Question...even if I have the trees, furniture, etc. turned off they are still taxing the system?

19 hours ago, mmeadow said:

Interesting I am experiencing the same on lay outs.  Moving an elevation, plan or image seems to hang.  Change I noticed 30 days or so ago.  I have had a couple of window updates, these may be the cause.  I don't believe Chief has done any updates to X10.  Done complete shut downs and restarted clean and still have the slowness.

19 hours ago, mmeadow said:

Interesting I am experiencing the same on lay outs.  Moving an elevation, plan or image seems to hang.  Change I noticed 30 days or so ago.  I have had a couple of window updates, these may be the cause.  I don't believe Chief has done any updates to X10.  Done complete shut downs and restarted clean and still have the slowness.

19 hours ago, mmeadow said:

Interesting I am experiencing the same on lay outs.  Moving an elevation, plan or image seems to hang.  Change I noticed 30 days or so ago.  I have had a couple of window updates, these may be the cause.  I don't believe Chief has done any updates to X10.  Done complete shut downs and restarted clean and still have the slowness.

Any lick in resolving the problem?

20 hours ago, javatom said:

Well, I guess that's your problem.  Try to get rid of unnecessary items.

I got rid of an old CAD file I imported that I used as a CAD detail. Getting rid of that detail reduced my plan file from about 45,000 KB to 38,000 KB. The layout file is 16,800 KB.  No change in performance though.  I do have two plans linked to the layout (one of the as-built house and one of the remodeled house)...could this be the issue? I use the as-built house plan on a couple of pages in the layout to show what the house  looks like now: floor plan views, an elevation or two and a rendering or two. Almost all of my views (elevations and perspective overviews) in the layout are "Live View" but I only have them update when I manually update them so the live views shouldn't be the issue. This thing is running as slow as molasses...it's killing me: every move I do in layout takes 5-10 seconds for the computer to process. My drivers are up to date. It's gotta be something in the layout of plan file that is causing this. By the way, I always have the plan and layout file open at the same time.

Can't load the plan...file is too big

Levai_Mudroom_Layout.layout