Savontb82

Yes, lighting is usually one of the last things I do, but there are always a lot of them. I use the automatic light set with limit of 20 until I'm ready to capture images; then I turn more on as needed to get good pictures. I don't use a lot of imported symbols, but I do use a lot of different textures and objects. I'll take your advice and reduce my sample size to 10. I don't necessarily wait for the samples to max out before moving forward anyway. I haven't done any hard drive cleaning yet, but it's only been a couple of weeks since I bought the laptop. I did a lot of cleanup on my old computer before transferring over my files. Thanks for the article! I will take a look at it now.

Thank you both for your responses. It's hard to describe slow, as it gets progressively slower as I work on a plan. Usually, when I first open a plan, everything will be fast and smooth. Then, it starts taking several seconds for a dialog box to open up, then maybe 15-20 seconds. If I move or resize an object, it may process for 20 seconds before it shows the change in camera view. It will gradually get worse, until I just shut it down for a while and reopen it later. I am realizing that maybe my files are getting too big, because I was going to attach one that I'm having problems with, but it exceeds the max attachment size of 14 MB. The plan file is 93.7 MB. I also usually save my files to OneDrive. I read in another thread that CA works better on files stored locally, so I started saving them to my hard drive, but that doesn't seem to speed anything up. I'm not sure about the video card driver; I will have to check that. I just assumed everything got covered in the updates when I setup the computer a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I do include web results in my searches, so I can uncheck that. I almost always have a PBR camera window open. I usually set the sample cap at 50 when I'm working, then I'll turn it up to around 2000 when I'm ready to capture images.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm hoping someone has the technical knowledge to help me out. I recently purchased a new computer so I can speed up the design process and use PBR ray tracing. My old computer was a 6 year old desktop with decent specs but no dedicated GPU. The design process was painstaking, as the program ran very slowly, frequently froze and occasionally crashed altogether. PBR was impossible, and even standard renders didn't look as good as I wanted. I decided to replace it with a new laptop to address these issues and allow for mobility. I researched the CA recommended (not minimum) system requirements and ordered a laptop with specs customized to meet them. I've included software and system info for the new computer below my signature. The problem is, I'm starting to see some problems with running CA on the new computer too. I only have a couple of weeks left to return if needed. I'm trying to determine if the issues are related to the computer itself, or user error, or maybe my expectations were just unrealistic to begin with. While the software definitely runs smoother and faster on the new laptop, there have been a few occasions where it has slowed down almost to the level I saw on my last computer. Granted, I'm now usually toggling between floor plan view and camera view (sometimes multiple cameras) with PBR. I know my file sizes get pretty large, because I usually furnish and decorate as I go, plus lighting, landscaping and backdrops. Today, there was an internal rendering error (unfortunately, I didn't capture the specific error code) that caused it to freeze, and I had to shut down and reopen. Now I'm scared, because this is what I was trying to eliminate by upgrading. Not sure if any of this is directly related to the GPU. I did read conflicting opinions on whether the RTX 4000 series is any better than the 3000 series for ray tracing, but I expected that either would be sufficient. Also, I've noticed that when I type a search term into the library browser, it often takes a while to process the search. Sometimes, the progress bar will show 0% or even 100% but the search results never come up. I usually have to repeat the same search 3 or 4 times to get results to show. I did not have this problem at all on the old computer. I did update all of the catalogs when I downloaded CA on the laptop. Can anyone help me determine what the problem(s) might be? Thanks, Avon Bright Chief Architect X15 HP Envy 16t-h100 Windows 11 Intel Core i7-13700H, 2400 MHz, 14 cores NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 GPU (8 GB) 32 GB RAM 1 TB SSD