TheKitchenAbode

Looks to me like a job for a 3D molding polyline.

That main top back roof plane is not shaped to flow around the gable roof planes. If I just reshape it then everything looks to be ok.

I meant the main back roof plane. If you delete it all is fine. If you redo the connections all is fine. The only thing I kind find about it is that it's facia height is different from the main front one. Just checking to see if this is the reason.

It's related to the main top front roof plane and the two gable roof planes . I redid their connections and everything seems to be fine.

It's one of the roof planes that's causing the issue. I deleted them all and deleted the attic walls, had CA auto Build roofs and everything is fine. Just trying to track down the roof plane that's causing the issue.

If you turn off the Auto Build in the 3D View Defaults you can drag the roof plane just fine. I still really thing it has something to do with the wall type definition and CA is struggling to figure out how to build things. When you get the little blue spinning thing that does not always mean CA has crashed, it is often an indicator that it is hung up in some continuous loop or is waiting for some cray long computation to return a result.

Just took a quick look. I have no problems with my camera views. There does seem to be a problem with your exterior walls, you have a custom definition "1-AAA-PRIMARY EXTERIOR WALL", you are using the main layer for your siding and have no defined exterior layer. The main layer is for the framing and the exterior layer is for you siding. Not sure that set-up would work well in CA if it has to build the wall framing.

From my understanding if nothing is checked CA will default to use the defined sun angle if one exist, If not it will use the generic sun. You do not have to actually delete the cad sun angle if you want the generic one, just open the sun DBX and check the generic one you want. I have not noticed any changes related to PBR between X10 and X11. I believe they did some tweaking but there are no new controls or features.

That would be something very interesting if you could hunt it down. Do you have CA also installed in a ramdisk on your other systems?

There is no doubt that for the specific type of work you are doing there is a significant benefit in your system configuration approach. My comments concerning hardware cost/performance benefits are based primarily upon CA only. From my exploration of this so far if I exclude CA Ray Tracing and extensively lit CA PBR's I'm just not really seeing CA being overly demanding. I'm running a plan right now that's 112mb with 2 million textures without any problems at all. The only thing that lags a bit is the undo/redo, takes 7 seconds. I set up a 3GB ram disk and set my CA undo file folder to it, can't tell the difference. It's being used as I can see the files being created in the ram disk. When I monitor my system during the undo process all of the time is CPU related as it rebuilds the model.

That's a perfect example of a specific application derived benefit from the dual Xeons. 5 years ago single CPU had at best 4 hyper threaded cores. The only way to get more cores was to go with dual Xeons. Today you can get say an AMD Threadripper with 16 hyper threaded cores for less than a $800.

Those Xeon processors are a tough one especially given the cost. IMO if CA is the main consideration then a single CPU is the better way to go. A $400 single CPU will run at a higher base frequency, higher turbo frequency and have as many cores as say a typical Xeon at 4 times the price. Though you can have two Xeons on the same board that unfortunately does not by default equate to double the performance as they are highly application dependent. Maybe a good analogy would be should I buy a diesel or a gas engine vehicle, both will get you from a to b in about the same time, you pay more for a diesel engine but it will likely last double or more the life of the gas engine, but this only matters if you are a very high mileage driver or plan to keep the vehicle for a very long time. If not then gas is your best bet.

That's the problem, we have no way other than generalities to quantify performance benefits. In the past I did try by posting a plan for users to run and report back their experiences, unfortunately only a few participated so there was insufficient data to work with. What was interesting though from the ones that did respond was that some systems that theoretically should have tromped all over lesser systems did not necessarily do so, but unfortunately due to the lack of data there was no real way to explain this or determine if this was the norm or just some one off exception to the rule.

The most likely reason others are not seeing a problem is that what you are experiencing is probably related specifically to either your plan or your system. If you could post the plan we could possibly confirm it one way or the other.

Also, that i7 9700K is a nice CPU for the money. Though it does not have hyperthreading those 8 real cores will run at max frequency, which I believe for many of CA's operations this could be better than CPU's that might have a few more cores but they quickly throttle back under high load.

Thanks Mick. I just noticed your link to the Aurora configuration, for the same money I would go with that one without any hesitation. The Dell Alienware systems are solid machines and as they are constantly offering deals you can get a lot of bang for your dollar. These systems always hold up competitively when under review and are typically right up there in the top grouping. Hey and depending upon how you expense things you can go for Dells lease to own program and have a system for $60/month.

if you are looking for possible upgrades I would really strongly consider the i9 9900K over the i7 8700k and an Nvidia RTX graphics card over the GTX 1080. Not sure those options are available in the Dell Precision line, if not you may wish to check out the Dell Alienware Aurora systems. The advantage if you go with the I9 9900K is that it is faster than the 8700K and it uses Intel's latest socket and chipset which means in the future you could drop in one of the higher threaded I9 processors. With the I7 8700K there are really no CPU upgrade options without changing the mother board. The newer Nvidia RTX cards are based on the latest graphics technology and as such they will eventually replace the GTX series so from a software perspective I'm not sure developers will be making any great efforts to improve GTX performance, they will focus on the RTX. From a cost perspective these upgrades would likely add about $700 to your system cost. If your budget is tight then the system you are considering is a very good choice and compared to your current rig you will see a very noticeable performance gain. What's difficult to discern is whether or not you would be able to see any significant performance gain between the system you are considering versus the technically upgraded one. This would be highly dependent upon your CA model complexity and what other software you use. Unfortunately there is no standardized CA test procedure to specifically evaluate CA's performance in respect to hardware, so it is not possible to provide a definitive answer to all of this. For example, technically the I9 9900k on average is about 20% faster than the I7 8700K, however most of this advantage only materializes if one is running heavily threaded operations where it can utilize those extra cores. CA is a mixed bag of single and multi-threaded operations so this potential gain is only going to be seen under certain circumstances/operations, added to this is the fact that there are many multi-threaded operations that can't take advantage of all the available cores, given this the I9 9900K is really only going to outperform the I7 8700K if the multi-threaded operation can take advantage of more than 12 cores. To date, other than Ray Tracing, I have not been able to see any CA operation that can max out more than a few cores simultaneously. I find similar results when monitoring my GTX 1060 graphics card, the only time it maxes out is when I through it a very complex PBR and even then it usually only takes 10 or 15 seconds to generate the scene. Under all other CA graphics operations it handles everything smooth and fast. So in conclusion, should you decide on the Dell Precision you can rest assured that it will provide a much improved experience over your existing system, offer lots of bang for your dollar and you are not likely going to gain much by throwing a bunch more money at it.

Light is interpreted differently in PBR versus Ray Tracing and as such a PBR is not likely going to be a good preview of what you will get if you send it to Ray Trace. The light bleed you are experiencing in the Ray Trace can be caused by a number of issues, the most impactful are to make sure you have a roof and foundation with a floor in your model. If it still persists try reducing the sun intensity. Environment lighting can also contribute to this when other lighting is not correct so you could also turn this off as a last resort.

I should also mention that when using the automatic setting that CA may only be using the interior lights that directly impact on the scene. In other words, though you may have 200 active lights but only 20 of them are in the scene then CA might be using just those. This would certainly speed things up as it would not be processing light effects in unrelated areas. When you set things to default then you are telling CA to use every active light regardless of whether or not they have any impact on the scene.

If your camera is in the interior and you use the automatic setting it only uses interior lights. If you use the default setting it will also include any exterior lights if you have any in your default lighting setup. With PBR'ing the more active lights the slower it gets, having shadows turned on and also reflections will slow it down.

I don't find the fact that some other program can't do it as an excuse for CA not to be able to do it. Competitor weaknesses should be viewed as an opportunity not your baseline. One should not need to utilize p-solids work arounds to compensate for very basic functionality, they should be reserved for one-off situations. I used cabinets as an example but these types of issue are prevalent throughout CA. I use CA for all of my work and will continue to do so, but I do find it disappointing that CA can't figure out a way to clean things up, with a little effort CA could be much more than it currently is.

I really wish to believe this to be true but there are many times when I question this, not from the standpoint of being residentially focused but being focused on being the best one can be. I've been using CA since X1 and it constantly baffles me as to why CA has failed to address so many basic functional issues. It seems to me that they get all excited about some new feature, get it maybe 80% or 90% of the way there and then drop the ball on the last 20%-10%. For some unknown reason they do not seem to realize that it's the last final finishing touches that elevates a program from being good to exceptional. Why in over 10 years can one still not specify the thickness of a basic cabinet box's material? Why can't the cabinets interior finish be defined? Why can't we define a cabinet frame profile for inset cabinets? Why is the soffit tool still no more than a simple box that can't be shaped to conform to anything other than something square? The list goes on and on. The concern is that so many of these annoyances are very basic and fundamental yet these never seem to be addressed. It's an ever more competitive world out there and just being good is not the best place to be.

Yes and No, depends upon what you mean by being opened on multiple computers. Cloud storage allows you to store your files in a common repository so other devices can access the files, it's not really any different than having a shared network drive. Any device connected to the cloud storage can access the file, when doing so a copy of the cloud stored file is downloaded to your computer, you work on it and then when finished your newer version will be uploaded to the cloud and replace the former one if the file name has not been changed, if the file name has been changed then former one remains and another new file is stored. What you can't do is work on the same file at the same time on two different devices, it does not make a single-user program multi-user. The most common cloud solutions are OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. Just follow their setup instructions, usually only takes a few minutes.