TheKitchenAbode

Your observation is valid. These differences are most likely due to how each operating system handles certain functions. Typically, when a software program such as CA is written the coders do not have to write every function/operation in it's entirety. Each operating system has it's own built-in routines and the software coder only needs to provide that routine with the required parameters, the operating system then takes over and executes the operation. For example, in Windows how an individual window is displayed, moved and controlled is handled primarily by Desktop Window Manager, not CA. MAC's have the same type of routines but their OS routines will be coded differently and may at times be more efficient, MAC's have always been known for their smoothness and fluidity, the same goes for their track pads and gestures.

Hi Rene, the feeling is mutual. My comments are directed primarily towards the average CA user. Your workflow is highly involved and definitely places an extreme demand on your hardware components. Your approach to squeezing out every bit of performance makes sense. You also use in your workflow other highly demanding software packages which place special demands on system resources and must also be taken into account. Your CA plans often include very complex custom symbols and very high resolution textures which as we know will really stress out CA compared to just using CA's standard library catalog symbols and textures. Special circumstance demand special treatment. Cheers

Technically speaking No. However, you are now looking at a system that is almost double the price, is this within your clients budget? Much of the discussion in this forum concerning hardware revolves around the issue as to how much benefit does CA derive when one configures a system using the highest end components over one that is configured using more mid level components. For example, that RTX 2080 super is a fantastic graphics card, but can CA take advantage of it's full potential. Personally, unless a user's workflow involves extensive use of CA's PBR(Physical Based Rendering) then there is likely little to gain over say an RTX 2070 which is considerable less costly. Do you really need that level of storage capability. CA's files are not very large, complex plan files are rarely more than 80 - 100MB, if you where to generate 1 plan a day for an entire year that would equate to about 40GB of storage. Get the fastest 512GB or 1TB MVNe drive as your primary boot and then if necessary use a less expensive SSD for archiving. System backing up should not really be done on the same system, use a cloud based service or a separate remote storage device. 4K displays are beautiful but it really is overkill on a 17" display. You will likely need to use scaling so menu's and icons are not too small, somewhat defeats the 4K resolution. Also generating 4K graphics is more demanding on the graphics card than say a 2K resolution display. 4K really only starts to shine on much larger sized monitors. Concerning dedicated video card memory. The only time CA uses significant amounts of this type of memory is when PBR'ing, all other window/camera view types consume relatively low dedicated graphics memory. Unused memory here is of no benefit so consider carefully as to whether there is a justifiable need to have more than 6GB. Getting the optimum CPU is a bit more complex as the right one is highly dependent upon how the software you are using is coded. Is it primarily single threaded, lightly threaded or fully multi-threaded. Highly multi-threaded software derives the most benefit with high core count CPU's, however single and lightly threaded software cannot take advantage of all of those cores, this type of coding benefits the most from a few very fast cores, maybe 4 - 6. In my assessments CA uses all of these types of coding however, the majority of operations fall into the single or lightly threaded arena. The only significant fully threaded function in CA is the RayTrace renderer, if this is not a desired part of your CA workflow then huge core count is not overly beneficial. How much system RAM do you really need. From my experience CA is not a Ram Hog, I have 16GB and have never come close to using this up no matter how complex of a plan. The only exception is if I have several complex PBR camera's open and my dedicated GPU memory is exceeded at which time the GPU will start swapping with system memory. As a PBR can consume 3-5 GB depending upon complexity it can eat into the available system memory fairly quickly so if this is important then maybe 32GB would needed. The other RAM size consideration is whether or not you desire, as others have suggested, using a RAM Disk. If that is the case then bump up from 16GB to 32GB to provide the additional space for this as a RAM Disk will reduce the availability of system memory from all other programs being used. Just keep in mind that anything held within a RAM Disk will be permanently lost if your system crashes or you inadvertently shut it down. Best to only have items in there that have no impact if you loose them. The potential benefit is highly dependent upon how you use and work in CA. For the vast majority of user's I'm not certain there is much to be derived. For example, a fairly large plan might be 82MB, a high performance MNVe drive can load this in about 1/10 of a second, though this might be 10 times faster if it was residing in a RAM Drive, would you really notice the difference. I have no desire to dispute the benefits some users claim to experience, just that in my use of CA I have not been able to as of yet quantify this. Please keep in mind that my comments relate to CA, you must also take into account the requirements of other software that is regularly used and try to find the best overall performance fit.

Mark - That would be a great alternative, higher resolution screen and all the upgrade options one would need, plus the pricing is very competitive.

Given that your client is relying on you to configure a system that will provide a good CA working experience I believe it put's the onus on you to advise the client on the potential limitations of this particular all in one. The big issue with this all in one is that you can't upgrade the video card or the low resolution monitor. These are critical components that have the potential to limit a users CA experience. Seems like an unacceptable trade off for the look/style of an all in one. These days there really is no need to have constant access to a desktop, it can just be placed on the floor out of the way. Also, there are great performing gamming desktops such as the Alienware Aurora line that are very slim, they can be configured to cover just about every situation and they are upgradable, a much better investment for the future. Another consideration is, that though we are discussing a CA system, we all use other software often in support of CA. This may be a third party rendering program, SketchUp for creating or adjusting models, Photoshop to create textures or adjust renderings plus standard programs like your browser, email and maybe Word or Excel. All of these will place additional demand on resources. Finally, one thing I have experienced with CA over the years is that as you learn CA you will most likely produce plans more complex than you may have originally anticipated. It's just so easy to add symbols and objects to make a basic plan/layout that will really impress a client. A rendering or walkthrough of an empty room is not very exciting nor is an exterior rendering without some landscaping. You need a system that can grow as you grow.

There are a number of shortcomings in this all in one system. - For a 27" screen the resolution should be higher, at least QHD 2560 X 1440. - The GTX 1650 graphics card is on the weak side, as Mark recommends above, an RTX 2070 8GB would be a great fit. - The primary storage drive needs to be an NVMe type, recommend minimum 512GB, - 16GB of memory should be more than enough but 32GB will do no harm. Dual Channel would be better 2X16GB. - For the CPU get the fastest base and boost frequency you can. 8 or 10 cores will be more than enough unless there is a high need to Raytrace. The big consideration with these all in ones is the ability to upgrade in the future, they are often very limited. Their potential performance can also be limited as cooling can become a problem, if things get too hot then the CPU and the GPU will throttle down and performance will suffer. The better all in ones are the iMacs or Microsoft's Surface Studio but they cost a ton of money. Should really consider a gamming desktop or gamming laptop.

Here's an example of some font comparisons.

Good Point. Fonts with significant space between each character are rarely used for the main text body. Not only do they consume more horizontal space but they are not the best for reading. Wider character spaced fonts are usually reserved for titles and headings. In typography if a wider spaced font is used because the typographer likes the character style the typographer will often adjust the spacing to tighten up the characters, publishing software and programs such as MS Word have this capability.

In an imperial plan you can change the format of all of your dimensions to metric and you can work and make entries in metric. Might be good enough.

Not that I know of. There does not seem to be a global switch for this. You need to start with a metric template. However, If you create a blank metric and try to copy the imperial plan contents over it does not convert things properly. The only way things will transfer properly is if you save the imperial item to your library and then retrieve it and place it into your metric plan.

There are no specific articles about CA, but there are articles about similar types of programs plus other graphics oriented software. The point I was attempting to demonstrate is that for many of these programs performance improvements based on generalities is not always reliable. In other words, my zooming and panning in plan view is laggy, therefore if I buy a graphics card that is 3 times more powerful than my current one then this lag will go away. I may end up disappointed as most of this type of lag is related to the CPU. Same as lag in 3D models when one makes a change to say the roof, the majority of lag is in the 3D model rebuild process that is also highly CPU dependent. Will a high core count CPU help in these situations, not much as the involved CPU processes are mainly single or only lightly threaded. For this you need as fast a base and boost frequency CPU you can get. I'm not stating that there is no potential benefit, just that it may not be as significant when basing this on generalities.

It will be interesting to see but I'm a bit dubious as to whether this will translate into improved CA performance unless CA can significantly change it's coding. Every time I have explored this GPU issue it always seems to come back to the CPU as being the primary bottleneck. This is not uncommon, many software packages are similar in that they are highly CPU dependent and as such the benefit between say a mid level GPU and a Top of the Line one is minimal at best. Unfortunately the way these cards are tested the results are not highly relatable to software such as CA. The best place I have been able to find testing that provides some insight into this are the test articles published by Puget Systems. If you take the time to read through them I believe it will become apparent that the benefit of high end GPU's is highly dependent on the type of software program one is using. They also have many other articles on all hardware aspects, CPU's, RAM and more.

In respect to CA, it's questionable as to whether you would notice any performance benefits from the upgrades you are proposing unless Raytracing is a significant part of your workflow, it's the one feature in CA that can take full advantage of all available CPU cores. That AMD 3990x is actually a bit slower in base and boost frequency than the Intel 9900X so single core and lightly threaded processes will be a bit slower, many processes in CA fall into this category. 32GB of ram is more than sufficient for CA. The speed of your ram should be as designated by the motherboard specs, using higher rated ram could cause instability issues. Moving up from a 2080 to a 2080ti might provide a bit of improvement but that would likely only be noticeable if you do complex PBR scenes, standard view types like plan and elevation are not very demanding. Chances are that any 3D view stuttering you are experiencing is CPU related, not your GPU. This is also applicable to plan view stuttering when panning or zooming. The best you can do here is to get the fastest base and boost frequency CPU you can afford, a high core count CPU will provide no benefit here. Please keep in mind that the above relates to CA only. You may be using other software on a regular basis that may derive a benefit from your proposed upgrades.

Just checked this out, never noticed it before. If you draw your polyline solid in a section view it shows on the floor you drew it but if you open the DBX up there is nowhere to define the height in respect to the floor etc.. If however you draw it in plan view you can open up the DBX and you have all of the normal options for these height adjustments. Seems like an odd behavior.

Strange just repeated it and all is good. Dropped fridge from library into plan. Opened the Symbol DBX, changed bounding box to be actual fridge width, no gap. Closed Symbol DBX. Opened Object DBX and changed width to exact new fridge width. Closed Object DBX. Then saved this one to my library as a symbol. Dropped it back into the plan and both the symbol bounding box width and the object width are the same. Next step is to open the symbol back up and adjust the bounding box to include the desired spacing. Now if you open up the Object DBX the width should now match the bounding box width. Keep in mind that after this if you change the fridges width through the Object DBX the bounding box size shown in the symbol DBX will not change, it will still show the former width.

Would be great but the way symbols are set up all is lost so everything is just individual faces. Consider using Architectural CAD blocks instead, they can be unblocked so you can alter every component. You don't really even need to unblock them, just click over the item within the box you wish to alter, press Tab to select it and then select open object and you can adjust things in it's DBX. Saves unblocking and reblocking especially if the plan is very complex as it can be difficult to reselect all of the unblocked items in order to reblock it.

Maybe I forgot to mention a step. It worked fine here. I just dropped my saved library one in my plan and the object DBX width and the symbol DBX bounding box width match. All I need to do now is open the symbol and change the bounding box to include the gap. Keep in mind that when you do this the fridges object width will now change to match the new bounding box width. All widths are according to the bounding box width, not the symbol within the bounding box.

I found the same issue when trying to get the bounding box set to be the exact size of the fridge. Something worth trying is to open up a new plan using a metric template, make sizing changes in metric. After you have everything correct save the symbol to the library and then go back to your imperial plan and drop it in. In metric there are no fractions so I find it resolves the issue where in imperial CA might limit you to 1/16" even though it's off by 1/32nd.

Just played with this and it seems that what you need to do is to drop say a 36" width fridge into your plan, Open the symbol and change the bounding box to be the exact size of the fridge, eliminate the built-in gapping. Then open up the object DBX and set the width to the actual size of the fridge, no gap. Now save the symbol to your library, bring that new symbol back into the plan, open up the symbol DBX and then change the bounding box width to include the gap you desire. It seems to be that the relationship between the actual symbol size and bounding box around it does not update without saving the symbol first, in other words it will always use the relationship when the symbol was first loaded. Not sure this makes sense but give it a try to see if it solves your issue.

I don't have any problem with the up-vote. Seems like a nice way to say thank you and for the the individual compiling up-votes their accumulated total demonstrates how helpful they have been. Down-votes are another issue and I have never given one. I would only consider such if someone was just outright disrespectful or intentionally disruptive. I don't believe anyone should be down-voted because they have an opinion that differs from another or even the majority. There are many ways of doing things in CA and though one particular way may seem to be the better down-voting the alternative way is not in my opinion appropriate. Just use the method you personally prefer and move on.

Given the fact that others who have downloaded the plan and CA support cannot replicate the issue is a strong indicator that the issue is related to your system. You now need to try and identify the root cause. Typically there are 3 hardware reasons for this type of behavior, your system is not using the dedicated graphics card, the graphics card memory is being exceeded or a driver needs to be updated. 1.) Not using the dedicated graphics card. This needs to be confirmed first. Do not rely on what CA shows in Preferences, this only shows the graphics card that CA sees at the time CA is opened. CA does not control the graphics card, this is determined by your operating system and the graphics card software. I'm not familiar with Macs but on Window PC's there are two separate places with settings that control the graphics card use/assignment. Within the Windows operating system there is the power plan settings, these must be set to maximum performance, then within the graphics software settings there is also a performance setting that also needs to be set to maximum, best to reboot after this is done. Not sure on a Mac but in Windows the best way to check is to open up the Task Manger and watch under the GPU column which GPU is being used while you are working with your program(s), the onboard graphics is identified as GPU(0) and the dedicated graphics will be GPU(1). If GPU(0) starts popping up then the dedicated graphics card is not being used or only used some of the time, you only want to see GPU(1) no matter what you do. 2.) Graphics memory is being exceeded. Your graphics card has 4gb of dedicated memory. In most cases this should be fine however running multiple high resolution monitors, having many active CA windows and using the PBR camera can result in exceeding the graphics card memory. When this happens the system will start swapping with any available system ram, if this is insufficient then it will start swapping to the disk. This swapping, especially with a disk will result in a noticeable slowdown. If you have the ability to monitor ram usage, both system and GPU you can see if this is happening. If it is then the only way to resolve it is to get a graphics card with more dedicated memory or make sure not to have so many active windows. 3.) Drives Make sure your graphics drivers are up-to-date. Even if they are there are times when a driver might become corrupt or there could be a conflict with some other driver that was recently updated. Other suspect drivers might be the ones related to your mouse. Even if these seem ok you can always reinstall them just to make sure. Keep in mind that the newest driver is not always the best driver, there are many times when updated drivers only contain additional driver information for new/other models of graphic cards and there is nothing in them that affects your model of graphic card. See if any of these suggestions help to identify the issue.

When using the material eye dropper you can choose to only change the object you click, change all objects on that floor or all objects in the plan. Just look for the options lower left of screen after you select the material you want to apply.

Here's a link to it. You can also check out other available programs in the SnapFiles site. They have a section for free and paid for software. This site is good and have used it for many years, the only thing to watch for is that some freeware will want to install some other software. SnapFiles usually notes this in the description so you can make sure to uncheck the option when installing. https://www.snapfiles.com/get/pdfxchangeviewer.html

You may wish to check out PDF-Viewer, it's free and has a wide range of markup tools. Have used it for several decades and it works well. It will also allow you to password the PDF doc so others can't alter your changes or you can convert the PDF doc into an image. Probably about as many tools as you will be able to get for free, they also have a paid for version that offers even more features.

I'm not able to assist specifically but my impression is that your struggles emanate from viewing CA from a more traditional CAD perspective. CA is not really a CAD program, yes you have what appears to be traditional CAD looking views such as plan and elevations but these are really just an alternative way to work and view the 3D model. CA does not function based on individual walls, everything is based upon rooms. In essence rooms are 3D containers that can be individually defined and arranged in an almost limitless number of combinations. Everything is controlled within a rooms DBX, the associated Roof, Floor, Ceiling and Foundation DBX's, and the default Levels and default Room specifications. The information contained within these tells CA how to generate the 3D model. This is why just about all users will advise you not to manually drag down walls, CA does not use the height of an individual wall, it only uses the room and default level information. Yes the wall looks visually lower but as far as CA is concerned the height is still as per the associated rooms height defined within the Rooms DBX. This room concept can take some time to fully understand and appreciate, but once you do then the true power of CA will become evident.