TheKitchenAbode

I don't think it has anything to do with whether it's a Mac or Windows. I don't have it pinned down yet but it appears to be related to whether or not the DBX shows a render of an object in combination and for some unknown reason the graphics card/chip. Maybe someone can confirm this, if I go to defaults and say it's a window and change the symbol render technique to say a plan I find that when I open the symbol DBX the rendering technique did not change to the new default, it still renders as a vector. What I'm also experiencing is that when I run the same plan on two different systems, one with an integrated chip(HD620) and one with a discrete graphics card(GTX 745) the vector view performance is distinctly different. What's most interesting is that the HD620 is the one that runs the best. Also when I monitor my CPU & GPU usage it is completely different, the HD620 shows most of the load is on the GPU but on the GTX 745 it shows a very high load on the CPU. This only seems to occur when the view is line based such as vector views. Something just seems very odd about this.

Scott - When you have a 3D camera view open, how many surfaces does it report at the center bottom of the screen?

Thanks for the update. There is a bright side to all of this, you just saved a ton of money!!!

Yes, it happens to me quite often. If you have saved the camera I find that in most cases just closing it and opening it back up again brings it back to normal.

That was a very revealing exercise and it will be interesting to see how the newer IMAC Pro does. I think what is happening here is that the single thread performance is the most crucial issue concerning the slowness being experienced. This is primarily related to the base & boost frequency of the CPU and unfortunately the newer CPU's are not really that much better than your current one. They have done a great job in increasing core count but once you have 4 hyper-threaded cores it dose not provide much benefit unless you are running very specific software such as Ray Trace that are designed to take advantage of all those cores. The other issue relates to the law of diminishing returns in conjunction with exponential cost. With the current state of most of our systems we are faced with an extremely high cost to get a relatively small performance improvement. In the past, I used to be able to by a new system that was at least double the power of my older system for less than what I paid for my older system. Today, to get the equivalent doubling, if I can, I would likely have to spend about 3 times the price of my current system

Curious as to how much of an improvement in Ray Trace times you are getting by doing this. Seems to me that the purpose of having a high core count CPU is to permit a program such as Ray Trace to run in the background and at the same time allow one to carry on with their other work. Your CPU has 16 threads which should give you fast Ray Traces even when multi-tasking.

Don't be embarrassed, there are all kinds of things in CA that I'm completely oblivious about, even after 15 years of use. It's a very complex piece of software and the moment you think you've got it nailed down something inevitably comes up that tells you otherwise. It's a learning experience that never ends.

It's a notification that the terrain needs to be rebuilt. This displays if you have the auto-rebuild turned off and as such it must be manually rebuilt every time a change is detected.

I think this was changed. It seems that this needs to be checked on so that once you stop moving the camera it will smooth out the lines. If not checked the lines will be whatever level of smoothness they are while moving around. In the past there was a setting for line smoothness while moving and when idle. As you mentioned, this was to allow users with lesser video cards to reduce this or turn it off so moving around was faster, looks like that option is no longer.

I have everything turned off except "Show windows content when dragging" and "Smooth edges of screen fonts". Not perfect but it did make things a bit snappier.

If running Windows you can adjust the settings that affect certain transitional effects related to pop-up windows and other things. Some of these effects can slow things down a bit. Control Panel, System, Advanced Systems Settings, Performance Settings. You can customize this according to your liking. Might help.

I think for those working on very large and complex models it would be worth it to explore this, especially if they are experiencing unacceptable response times. Even a minor amount of lag can be extremely frustrating and time consuming when there are many adjustments to be made. Personally, having to constantly upgrade hardware is becoming a problem and for many of us moving up from what we currently have is a major expense. My current system is barely 2 years old, to get something that will perform significantly better would likely cost me 2 to 3 times the price. Good for Intel, not so good for me!

For those large models the only way I know of to speed things up is to use the Active Layer Display Options and turn-off all unnecessary elements. For example, in the Grandview sample plan with a 3D camera there are 1.2 million surfaces, If I'm working on the roof planes there is considerable lag and very frustrating . If I turn off everything but the roof planes, walls normal and walls attic there are now only 22,000 surfaces and changes are quick and responsive. No hardware upgrade required, and I'm not sure that with current consumer level hardware I would be able to attain this level of performance improvement no matter how much I was willing to spend.

In the camera DBX try, uncheck Bloom, make sure Edge Smoothing When Idle is checked and reduce the Ambient Occlusion to say 50%.

From what you describe I think my focus would be on the fastest single thread CPU and your graphics card. The I7 8700K is currently the king in single thread operations with a base frequency of 3.7 GHz but will boost to 4.7 GHZ. This CPU also has 6 hyper-threaded cores for 12 logical cores. Not sure if Apple offers this one in their line-up. That GTX 780M is likely being stressed out in 3D camera views. When you tested your new system did you see any 3D camera view performance improvement. If not it may be due to the 5K monitor, you could test this out by reducing it's resolution to match that of your older system and see if things improve.

If Ray Tracing is not very important then the 8 core would be a good choice. The thing is, does the system jump in price justify the performance gain? Would be helpful to know what are the issues with your current system, where do you find it slow or laggy? Is it when you are multi-tasking with other software, generating camera views, editing in 3D. Some of these issues may be more related to the GPU than the CPU. I've got that issue now with the new PBR camera, my CPU seems to be ok but my GPU maxes out big time making it almost impractical to edit materials when in this camera mode.

You will, but the degree of difference will vary. As you can see with the CPU options to the right, as the core count increases the base frequency of the CPU goes down. As such you will definitely see an improvement in overall multi-tasking smoothness and anything that supports multi-threaded operations and definitely Ray Trace times. However, for software that is predominately single threaded the lower base frequency could actually result in slower performance. My understanding is that CA is a mixed bag with single threaded operations, some multi-thread optimization and then Ray Trace which is fully optimized. It's difficult to say exactly which CPU would work best for you, it all depends on what issues you are having with your current system. I would only maybe consider the Xeon CPU if Ray Tracing was of upmost importance, that lower base frequency IMO is a big trade-off. The 10 core is likely the sweet-spot if it is the I9 7900X. The other consideration is the graphics card as the monitor is 5k, that's a lot of pixels to process and if you have other monitors then their pixels need to also be processed. The more pixels the higher the workload is on the GPU.

Yes, you have 4 physical cores but with hyper-threading it gives you 8 logical cores. The way things are going the more cores the better, more and more software is being optimized to take advantage of those extra cores and when it comes to Ray Tracing it's all about the cores. Also, when you have many active programs (multi-tasking) their workload can be distributed over those cores which will keep things working smoothly.

From what I can determine is that Scott's old system has an I7 4771 and the new system has an I7 7700K. They are both hyper-threaded 4 cores. Performance comparisons show the new processor to be about 33% faster on average. Personally, this is not enough improvement and for most the difference under normal use would be barely noticeable. Even though the new processor has a higher base and boost frequency this does not always translate directly to a noticeable speed improvement. All processor are constantly adjusting their frequency according to the workload. My 6700K when idle runs at about 1.7 GHz, when zooming in and out of a plan view it barely hits 3.3 GHz and when rotating a 3D camera it ramps up to about 4.1 GHz. As can be seen the higher frequency really only comes into play when there is a heavy load on the processor.

The only difference I'm noticing with X10 on my Spectre 360 is when I initially open a 3D camera view, takes maybe 5 secs to display the scene. Once displayed, things seem to be about the same, especially if I set the camera options to be like X9. When using the PBR with all the goodies turned on this can get a bit on the laggy side, especially if I have more than 8 active lights, but I have the same issue on my main desktop with a GTX 745. There is the ability in the Intel HD graphics chip settings to assign X10 for 3D, it seemed to help a bit.

I just experimented with the CAD convert to walls using a very simple DWG floor plan. I could get it to work reasonably well only if I deleted every thing in the 2D cad drawing that was not a wall. This was a very simple residential floor plan and given the time it took to delete all non wall related stuff I probably could have traced over the 2D DWG just as fast. Also, as there is no elevation data all floor and ceiling levels where the same as per my default settings. Seems to be a very basic function.

Just worked on one recently, the DWG convert to walls generated a huge number of error flags and missed many things. Was easier to just trace over the drawings than trying to correct all of the wall conversion errors. Even so, it was still very time consuming, especially if you have to get every little detail correct. To generate a 3D model from 2D CAD you also need a lot of elevation detail, this was an issue as the elevations only provided dimensioning of significant elements. Very time consuming and frustrating. From this experience I really think you would need to be using the same software as they are so you can work directly in and with their files.

I would advise the OP to exercise caution here. From what has been described so far about the project and based upon the OP's questions, it seems to me that this could be a very risky venture. Providing rendering/interior design services for a condominium development corporation is not the same as working with an individual home owner. When taking on a project with a development corporation being a nice person with good intentions won't cut it, they play for keeps. You need to have the skill and resources to meet your obligations, should you fail to do so they will come at you with all guns blazing.

I always build these using individual components and float the fridge into the opening. That way I can precisely control all of the gapping the fridge manufacturer requires for ventilation and the other issues mentioned by Mark. My typical cabinet portion is comprised of a left and right partition with an upper cabinet typically place at 72" above the floor for a slide in fridge and 84" for a built-in unit. It is extremely important to get the gapping correct, if the fridge fails they will walk from the warranty if the minimum ventilation gapping has not been meet, I don't need the client pointing their finger at me.

Typically the DPI setting has no effect if the window size is specified in pixels. It usually only comes into play when you specify the width & height in inches or cm, then the DPI setting is used to determine how many pixels need to be run. To eliminate the confusion with DPI CA should blank this out when one defines the Ray Trace window in pixels. I think there is something else going on in Amaliya's plan or settings that's creating the problem. Posting the actual plan would likely get this resolved very quickly.