Joe_Carrick

You should post in the HomeTalk Forum.

Hi Dermot, Your #2 is the same as my suggestion primary suggestion. I also advocate minimizing the number of walls and rooms by just doing the typical/unique rooms and then using CAD to replicate the typical rooms. This can be done by creating the room polylines, blocking them and replicating the block. It could also be cone by using "CAD Detail from View". Either method would provide a Plan View representation without actually having very many walls or rooms. Scott was also concerned about room count. This could be accommodated by using a "Plan Note Schedule" with "Group Similar Objects" checked and placing the note symbol in each room. Those can be blocked with the room polylines and when replicated the totals of all rooms would appear in the "Plan Notes Schedule - Qty Column".

There's another alternative. Change the Layout Box Label to something else that you like or just nothing.

You should probably start another thread and post the plan.

That makes sense and it also answers the question of how a 30 story building isn't a big deal. Scott's problem is the number of walls on a floor. Even one of his buildings has a lot of walls because the rooms are so small. Multiply that by 6 or 7 and it's just more than the GPU can handle in a Plan View.

Lot's of ways to do that without having all the units defined in 3D. Delete all the buildings except the 2 on the left and see what the difference is in performance. Then make a CAD Block of the typical interior units and delete all the extra interior walls and replace them with that Block replicated. Now what is the performance? It's been this way with CAD as long as I can remember. The more data has to be processed by the GPU the slower it's going to be. Probably because of the "families" they use - which are similar to Chief's Architectural Blocks. You might also need to check the hardware specs for those Revit demos.

Scott & Perry, I don't think it's the software. Scott's model has about 250000 surfaces (180000 with out the doors) and that's a multiple of what is normally being processed by the GPU. Revit or any other CAD program would have the same problem. Revit might be a bit faster but it might even be slower. The only way it would be faster is if it allows walls and other architectural objects to be blocked.

BTW, the title of this thread is Why is plan so slow? That's what I have tried to explain. I understand that you want to include all the detail of every cubical of every building but IMO that's unrealistic and silly. You are pushing the limits of the hardware and MAYBE the software by including so many surfaces in your model. Don't blame Chief for what the GPU can't do.

I honestly have only done 1 storage building - but I've done many hospitals, office buildings, etc. All of them logically use the process I've outlined. I didn't say you should draw each 5'x5' storage cubical as CAD Lines. But why would you want or need to show each cubical at all? IAE, the slowness is probably not Chief itself but rather the GPU getting bogged down by an excessive number of surfaces. I'm not sure how much CA is using instancing when you make copies and I doubt that they do so at all for anything except Symbols and the contents of Blocks. Each wall, door, etc is a unique object that can be easily edited as an individual unit. It's position makes that mandatory. OTOH, a Block or Symbol can just have xyz coordinates and orientation along with a "pointer" to the underlying object. That's what instancing is all about. I doubt that Revit would be much faster with all of your project in a single Model.

This points out the difference between someone who normally is doing single family homes where every room is unique - and someone doing a project where most of the rooms are exact duplicates. The work-flow is totally different. Repeated elements only need to be shown once. Generally at a 1/4" scale with dimensions and annotations. Only the additional elements that are unique need to also be shown in detail.

Scott, You could get a count of the doors by just providing multiple Door Schedules. But do you really need to do that? Let the contractor and subs figure that out. You provide the typical unit plans with schedules for each of those and a note indicating how may units there are. As far as your comment about 30 story buildings.... Just consider that each interior wall in the model is comprised of 18 surfaces (basically 3 cubes) and you have thousands of walls. If I was doing a 30 Story building I would only model the exterior walls, stairways and elevators on floors 3-29.

You need a custom macro.

But by using Symbols as I suggested - the overview is almost instantaneous. BTW, I would have done the basic plan using CAD Lines or Boxes and then just added the Exterior Walls and Doors. That gets the Building Shell which can be used as the overall Floor Plan and provides for the typical units to be done. There is absolutely no reason to provide the detail for each and every unit.

Perry, A Full Overview is easy. You just need two Building Shells - converted to Symbols - and then placed in another Plan (Site Plan) along with the Terrain, Roads, etc.

Scott, This is just too many walls, doors, ceiling planes, etc for Chief to handle. I would just show the perimeter walls and a couple of rooms (typical layout) then use simple CAD Rectangles to indicate the repeated nature of the project. This is a typical process for documenting plans for hotels, hospitals, dormitories, etc. You are only going to need to show the dimensions etc for a couple of typical units. I would probably split this into 2 building Plans - one for the narrow building and one for the wider building. Then I would show the end units and one of the interior units with a note that the interior unit is to be duplicated 'x' times. KISS !!!! And for the Site Plan I would place Symbols of those 2 buildings.

Sherry, My Property Line dimensions show on the left-above the lines with the bearings right-below. But this is only true for lines that are 90 degrees or less.

All the predefined "macros" that Chief provides in the Global and Object Properties selections are what CA calls "Name-Value Pairs". The output of these are "fixed content text", not "interpreted by Ruby". Consequently the data can not be manipulated or changed - except by CA. We do not have any ability to modify the text that's displayed or use any numerical info for calculations. Perhaps the easiest solution in the case of the Room & Living Area Displays would be for CA to just drop the units. Then we could just add what we want to the end of the Labels.

I'm 100% with Michael on this.

Hi Kjell, I agree. AFAIK, only the USA and (maybe Canada) use the Imperial System. Everyone else uses the Metric System and "m²" is the standard for area. You should post this as a request in the Suggestions Forum. I'm not sure exactly where in Chief SQ M gets displayed. Its probably just in the Room Area displays. If you know of any other locations - include them in your suggestion.

I do this in macros that I provide in my "Macro a Month Club" subscription. You can of course simply enter in a text box m and then insert the Global Special Character > Superscript (2) to get m² Create a macro named %m2% result = "m²" then just add %m2% wherever you want those characters in a text box or label. Of course, this won't replace SQ M that Chief puts in anything automatically.

Yep, that's what is created when you select "Use Callout for Label" in the Schedule dbx.

Scott, You are getting the Schedule Number - but not the Callout. Basically you've included the Schedule Number in the Label, suppressed the Callout --- the Label is what you're displaying. It would be nice if we could display the "Callout" and also display the "Label" at the same time.

Steve, Google Ruby for a variety of information. I personally just use http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.2 There is the "Little Book of Ruby" which is pretty basic. Start with this and Chief's Ruby "Tutorial". Then migrate to the above link which has the complete documentation.

In the Schedule dbx, Label Tab, uncheck "Use Callout for Label"

Currently it's not possible to show both the Schedule Callout and the Label in the Plan simultaneously. However, the %schedule_number% macro can be included in the Label. If the Callout is turned off, the Label will then show that text. It would be nice if both the Callout and the Label Text could b displayed at the same time (perhaps separate layers) but currently that's not possible.