KTransue

Am I missing this? Is there a way to establish preferred default settings for Saved Plan Views? That is, for any new saved plan view, I'd like the Saved Plan View "General" Specifications pre-set to my preferences.

Quite fast for me as well. No problems in Mac OS (Catalina) on a 2018 MacBook Pro. It's not necessarily the size of the structure you're designing, either. One of my current projects is a 10,000sf addition to a 5,600sf existing home, and Chief holds up well, even in that environment. Your problem may be an ugly build-up of mold, mildew, and plaque. That is, you may be dragging along a lot of content in your files, and you might need to do some housecleaning in your favorite plan files, especially if you use those as models, templates, or starters for new plans. Also, a lot of performance issues involve what you've asked the software to keep up with, like open camera tabs, or live updates in open layouts, or automatic regeneration of framing, terrain, etc. I keep my house pretty clean and, other than some dust bunnies that get caught in my socks sometimes, I'm never frustrated by a dirty environment. There are some pretty good housecleaning techniques that might help you regain control.

Looks like you've done your research, and that may lead you to just what you need. Personally, I run Chief (since X6, I think it was) natively on a MacBook Pro and am quite happy with the performance. I'm currently working on a 15,500sf residential plan, and yeah, it's taxed a bit, but I've found that simply turning off auto-rebuilds fixes most performance degradation. If you think about that, it makes sense ... If it has to rebuild everything every time you do anything, the more complex the plan, the more power is needed. Now, I just rebuild whenever I jump back over to an elevation or 3D view, and not otherwise. Other than this unusual project, my typical projects (less than, say, 4000sf) are smokin' fast on my MacBook Pro.

After investigating and trading observations with Cameron Lacombe (Chief Architect Technical Support), who diligently stayed with me trading countless replies to the end, it seems that we had both misunderstood a feature of the Mac OS regarding Function Key specifications in the System Preferences, so I’ll answer my own question by summarizing our discovery here in hope that it helps someone else … Function Key operating system-wide behavior defaults can be set in the “System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Shortcuts” dialog, allowing any Function Key to be assigned any typical behavior of the operator’s choice. On a MacBook Pro with the “Touch Bar” feature, the function keys are not physical buttons but are simply displayed on the touch bar when they are needed. The typical display shows the possible choices of any application’s current state. But, via the "Function Key" setting, that behavior can be changed to force the display of the typical function key names (F1 through F12) for any specified application. My misunderstanding was that this setting was telling the OS that the noted app could override the system's specified defaults with its own behaviors. NOT TRUE, it seems! it looks like having an application listed in the Function Keys section only changes the display of the keys, nothing more. In actuality, it is only used as a toggle so that the function keys are readily visible within the specified application. But, the behavior of the function keys is set by the System Preferences dialog, which then overrides the behavior desired by the application! Whatever shortcuts are specified elsewhere in “System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Shortcuts” are what gets used. Period. Not the way I would have written it, but they didn't ask me. Therefore, years ago when I set my function keys to do the things I wanted them to do, I was unknowingly also disabling Chief from being able to do what Chief wants to do. VERY CONFUSING, when in the middle of something and the Hotkeys don’t do what the menus say they do! The bottom line is that MacOS has a preference setting for specifying custom Function Key shortcuts, and if those are set they're simply overriding what any other application can do with those shortcuts, and there's nothing Chief Architect can do to change that; Chief merely accepts key input and performs the appropriate action. This makes no logical sense to me, so if I ever discover differently I'll try to update this answer. Your only choice, it seems, is to change your System Preferences, or change the Chief Architect hotkeys under “Tools >> Toolbars and Hotkeys >> Customize Hotkeys” to something that looks similar to what Chief menus indicate (like “Shift+F9” instead of just “F9”), but that will assuredly lead to further confusion. Anyway, be careful out there …

Am I the only one having problems getting Function Keys to work on a MacBook Pro (with the Touch Bar feature)? They didn't work on my 2016 model, and still don't work on my new 2018 model. Function Keys do perform their expected behaviors as assigned by the operating system, but not as "Hotkeys" assigned within Chief Architect. I am concluding that CA has not tested or remedied Function Key behaviors on Mac notebooks newer than 2015, and that they must not be supported on these newer Macs. Am I wrong about this? Please tell me I'm wrong about this...

If your graphics card can display at 4K resolution, you'll probably love it. And, if your graphic card supports it, then you probably also have HDMI video output capability as well. That said, there is a reasonability issue at hand. If you're going to try to get 4K's worth of real estate (3840 x 2160 in the TV world), then a small-size 4K TV will probably also mean using a magnifying glass to see the details. :-) 4K TV's are a joy to watch when they're filling up a lot of physical size (e.g. larger TV's) with their ample pixels. So, consider both the size of the 4K TV and the output of your video card. For instance, a newer 15" MacBook Pro with their "Retina" display natively outputs at 2880 x 1800 which, although not filling the entirety of the 4K capabilities, looks fan-freaking-tastic on a 4K TV. And, while the Retina display provides beautiful clarity on a 15" screen, there's no way I could work at that resolution and still see anything I'm working on, which means that that same resolution on a large external screen would be a joy ... you know ... if I could scoot back far enough to feel like I wasn't working at an iMAX theater.