HumbleChief

The terms might get a bit confusing here but I use the term 'Render' to denote the 3D rotational views that Chief Architect generates to view 3D models, and the term RayTrace to denote those 3D views that are set to be set to a photo image. I'm not saying that's the correct uses of those terms and I know they are interchanged a lot to talk about 2 different things. I use Chief for everything and the 'Rendering' that Chief does seems to be easily handled by the newer video cards. I think the 1080 is actually overkill for Chief and its 'Rendering' mode.. I don't RayTrace much anymore but Thea uses the graphics card to RayTrace and not the CPU as Chief does?

Great stuff Graham and really appreciate your time regarding this issue. I have concluded that Chief does a LOT of work in the background and that will probably not change as I feel it goes to the core of how Chief is programmed. I would like there to be a very efficient software engine under the hood but don't think that's gonna happen. I have also concluded that there are 3 factors that effect speed in Chief - CPU, CPU, and CPU. Today's modern GPU's are more than capable of handling Chief's 3D models but it needs a fast CPU to generate the data that the GPU will display and any slowing in the CPU stage will show up everywhere. Also as has been pointed out CPU core speed seems to be more important than number of cores for every day computing. I really think that's true. I have a bunch of cores but think they might only be good for RayTracing which I do very little of anymore. The plan I posted was indeed an older plan but I see similar lags in newer plans when the plans get large. I think my older system is just not that fast anymore. I'll test that this weekend when I get a couple of new Xeons but I am not that optimistic to be honest. If I were to build a system tomorrow I would look into extreme overclocking a 6700 or a 7700 with a couple M.2 drives (or whatever the fastest drives there are) set up in a RAID 0 configuration, a modest GPU like maybe a 1070, and 32 MB fast memory. Probably cost$2000 when all said and done. I'll post results when I install those new Xeons because I think this info helps everyone a ton when choosing a Chief system.

This would be nice but this has been tried a hundred times and it just doesn't work. Not that it couldn't if Chief took the time or cared to but every time this has been tried it just doesn't work.

Curious, beat it at what task? RayTracing? Drawing? How did you test? How can you test regular drawing? Not challenging your findings, and have no doubt about your conclusions just really want to know what you tested and how?

I think that clock speed and disk speed benefits Chief the most in every day use. An (extreme water cooled) overclocked 6700 or 7700 with the newest fastest solid state drives and fast memory is probably the best bet for every day speed, with, I think, the fastest drives making a huge difference in perceivable speed. A fast video card is nice but the fastest may even be overkill for every day use in Chief. Maybe more cores are better for RayTracing but how could we ever really know? Because Chief said? Heck does anyone even RayTrace anymore? I do on rare occasion but the 3D output is so good I don't bother much any more. I can overclock my Xeons with the motherboard I have but can only get to around 3.0 which is a marked difference from the stock 2.13 ghz but still not a fast clock speed by today's standards. I mentioned I'm getting a couple of new Xeons which run stock at 3.46 ghz so I should see some good speed improvements but I hope it doesn't sound like I am promoting dual Xeons or my system in any way. https://ark.intel.com/products/52576/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5690-12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI I was lucky enough to come across this system 6 or 7 years ago and it outperformed virtually everything else available at the time for a reasonable $2500 and still keeps up with some modern single chip i7's but I am stuck a bit. It seems the best I can do is get just a little bit better performance for the going rate of $2000 or so. I'm always shopping but can't find a compelling enough reason to upgrade yet. If these new Xeons don't show some drastic improvement I'll be on the upgrade train pretty quickly.

I installed my new 1080 and really noticed no difference in rendering over my older 780. I'll not purchase the best Graphics card again as I din't Chief benefits that much from a super fast processor. A 1070 or even a 1060 should be plenty for Chief.

If you figure something out PLEASE PLEASE post here Thanks

With larger plans I get a horrible lag - it seems to strike when the plan file gets to a certain size or complexity then molasses. Have not been able to track it down. Upgraded my video card the other day (Nvidia 1080) with no change. Upgrading my Xeon processors as well to see if that helps but I think I am missing something like a background process or something. Very frustrating as no seems to be able to track down the problem or a solution.

Tried 'C' and 'V' and 'X' and went right back Joe because of what you said. I'll cntrl C for the rest of my days.

Nice - gonna be hard to let go of cntrl 'X' though. Assigned paste to 'V' as well.

Still no short cut key for the 'delete' key? Would love to assign my 'X' key to delete.

Love that Joey - will use other keys as S is used and O is too far to reach but love the idea.

+1 Also just realized cntrl-P for print is a long, mostly 2 hand stretch - assigned it to 'Z'. In case anyone cares "A'" Opens dialog box; "Q" copies and pastes in place; "W" rotates 3D views: "S" saves (whoda' think that one up?) "Z" Prints. Will think something up for "X" but haven't really needed any more.

I use very few hot keys (Q, A, W, Z ) that I can simply reach with my left hand, without even looking, and will never set up a combination like ZO or PA that requires a reach across the keyboard. Happy for others who find this useful but not for me but even 2 key hot keys I find quite useless as they are too hard to remember and take to less effort than a simple mouse gesture like rolling the mouse wheel for most all zooming. But wait we can set up 3 key hot keys - oh the horror.

I have a 1080 arriving today. I have NEVER had too much CPU or GPU for Chief.

Very, very, few crashes in Chief but this plan seems to be troublesome.

Crashed again while RayTracing...

I was working on a Layout and 3 plan files. have no idea what command caused the crash. Complicated scenario. I have 2 license. One license was set up to send archive in to one location the other another location. I looked for the archives in the wrong location, found nothing, gave up, opened the old file saved it and that over wrote the actual auto archived file so that work was officially gone. So wish I was smarter. I change locations for the archives and that changed my hot key set up so the hot key issue is moot.

Lost my hot keys too.....

No idea, can't come even close to remembering.

Thanks Jared but this was an older file, I had been working about 1 1/2 hours and Chief crashed. According to my setting there should have been an auto archive saved at least every hour but nothing at all no Layout file, no plan file, absolutely nothing. There are files from yesterday and it looks like they should but today's work just gone.

...nothing in archives, nothing anywhere - gone. Not happy. Feeling sick - just a warning to others that just when you least expect it. And why no archive files? Nothing? With these settings. Why no archive files?

Yes it would require a beam but I almost never represent that condition in an as built plan for a remodel as I find no need to do so. I was mainly concerned about how to keep the wall from actually disappearing while removing the lower portion. Eric's method solves that minor dilemma. When building the model for a new condition and representing that wall and framing correctly? I don't think it's going to happen in Chief, at least not automatically.

...and if you look closely you will see the framing is wrong when dragging the roof 'through' the wall instead of right to it. I think Chief is behaving badly in this case.

Thanks Eric, I have NEVER moved a roof plane 'through' a wall before like you've shown. That will help a lot in the future. BUT the framing is wrong - see video below.