AvoyeDesign

I reported this to Chief tech support a while back and this was their response: Hi Kevin,I understand you are trying to have Chief Architect Premier X10 check for an updated PDF when opening a plan. Please let me know if that’s incorrect.Chief Architect will work from a “cached” copy of the plan for performance reasons. I was able to reproduce the issue as you described it.However, if you’re updating the PDF separately you will need to close out of the Chief Architect software completely and then open it again. It will then pull from the PDF file and not from a cached copy.Please let us know if you have any further questions.CameronChief Architect Technical Support

Out of curiousity I used the layer eyedropper on that surface and painted another object, and it was placed on the floor surfaces layer. I remember when this was added, back in the X3-X4 days. To me it seemed like a poorly implemented band-aid solution to a problem. It should really be a controllable assembly like floor and ceiling finish layers for a room, that is only available if part of the room has no room below. I rarely use balconies, but when I do I don't bother with it. I don't do a lot of renderings where showing texture there might be important, so I don't recall ever having to deal with materials and thicknesses and z fighting problems. I don't recall them much in cross sections either, and if needed I would just cad patch over it, and call out a detail to at 1 1/2" scale to get into the specifics. Still annoying that this area has been overlooked for so long.

I would suggest as good practice that you draw exterior decks with the exterior railing tool and interior decks with the interior railing tool. Chief sees both of these as different funcitons, and in the past I have seen problems arise similar to this. One example was someone used the exterior railing tool for interior railings and was not getting the right finish around the floor edge, even with the correct wall type. Chief was constantly trying to make that interior room a deck, and there was some buggy code that may have been reslolved since. But best be safe and use the tools as they are described. I'm a 10 year user and I still go insane with some of Chief's erratic problems, you are not alone.

I am assuming that this exterior room is specified as a balcony and not a deck? If so, then I think you are stuck with that. You could draw an invisible room on the floor below and specify ceiling layers, but that could be a pain.

You are probably right that there is something else going on. But the Ramdisk seems to take a huge chunk out of the problem right off the bat. For a write time of 1.5 seconds for a 200mb file, that adds up to a lot of time over the course of a day, and even that 600 MB/sec NVME drive is a bottleneck compared to the ramdisk (0.33 seconds vs. 0.001 seconds.) That Ramdisk takes less than 1% of the time the NVME drive takes. That is a MASSIVE time gain over a full day's work. Now that being said there are other processes than just the writing of the undo file, and by no means do I find the Ramdisk solution to reduce times to a millisecond. There is still a very slight delay, less than a second though, down from 2-3 seconds. But it is below the threshold of intolerable, which is probably just short of 1 second. I should also note that my files don't even come close to 200mb; my largest ever is 24mb, and I sitll get slowdowns up to 3 seconds per operation. Closing all 3D views improves it much, but the Ramdisk is smoothest and allows me to have 3D views open when I work.

Reead and write times seem to be very critical for me, as simply changing my temp folder location to the ramdisk has sped up almost all edits and operarions form 2-3 seconds to near instant. You are probably more qualified than I to speak to other bottlenecks and speculate about other ways to optimize this, but it seems that for the average user with enough ram, a ramdisk is a simple solution.

Both the ImDisk and the Radeon Ramdisk that I've tried have a feature that saves the drive as a disk image on shutdown and loads it again on startup. This is almost instant for all purposes, and saves you the time to set up the folders each time. Just as long as you don't open Chief while the drive is unmounted; if you do, Chief wil reset the temp folders to default. I wish I had found out about NVME drives when I researched the system that I built. I would have gone with a 960gb Pro Samsung M.2 instead of the EVO 500gb. I still could upgrade if I wanted, but after all the cash I spent on this system I think I'm good for now. This needs to be adressed, IMO. If Chief can recognize that nothing has changed, there should be no need to record an undo state. I noticed this behaviour many years ago. I was thinking the same thing earlier, and I would really love this. I don't see it as being super difficult to implement, as long as it is an option so that users with limited system resources could choose between caching undo states to disk or ram, and like you said, specify the maimum amount of ram that Chief could use for this. I upgraded my system from 16gb to 32gb of ram just for this purpose. I'm currently running a 3gb ram disk, which I've determined is enough for the file sizes I work with, but I could go up to 16gb and still have half of my ram dedicated for general use by the system. I've monitered my ram usage without a ramdrive running, and I don't think I've ever used more than 10gb. Also, forgive my ignorance of how software runs, but it seems to me that chief is simply making us wait for it to write each undo state before we can continue working. Whether it's 3 seconds for me, or 30 seconds for the OP's client, Chief seems to be saying "hold on, don't do anything until I write an exact copy of what you have here to disk in case you change your mind." And I've observed, much as the OP did, that the CPU runs virtually idle while Chief does this. Can Chief's processes not be designed to run undo save operations in the background while the user works uninterrupted? If the speed of writing to disk is slowing us down, why does the program make us wait for that? This doesn't make sense to me. Now, for a plan that requires 30 seconds to save an undo state, that could create quite a backlog, I would admit. I don't work with plan files nearly that large: My largest files are for a 4 plex and a very large custom home, and each were no more than 24mb each. Even at that file size, small in comparison to the OP's, Chief did seem to move like frozen molasses out of a glass ketchup bottle.

Hmm, I may be on to something here. It looks like ImDisc instructs the system to use its Temp folder.

I wonder if you decline the option in ImDisk to create a Temp folder, and manually create a Temp folder on the ramdisc just for Chief, would Win 10 updates work fine? I'm guessing that the temp folder option in ImDisc somehow tells Windows to use that location instead? I'm only shooting in the dark here, as I'm not super savvy on these sorts of things.

I just did a quick test over a minute of my most efficient work, with the ramdisc running, and I performed 14 draw/edit operations. If I had chief running without a ramdisc, it would have taken me at least another 30 seconds to perform all those tasks. That is a 33% time saving, over the course of an entire day that could be huge! I definitely reccomend this to anyone who wants to speed up their workflow.

I had installed Radeon RAMDisk a few months back and tried this, and it didn't make any noticable difference, so I completely discounted using RAM disc. On a whim I just tried ImDisk as you did, and got an improvement from 3 seconds to place a cabinet to almost instantaneous. Those 3 seconds add up. If I'm making 10 edits per minute, that is half a minute of waiting for chief to respond. And while I don't see myself working at a rate of 10 edits per minute on a regular basis, I would guess that this could easily account for a 20% speed improvement in my work (not to mention reduced frustration). Time is money... And the interesting part: that 3 second time loss was only apparent when I had a 3D view open. Without the view open it was almost as fast as with the ramdisc. Something is really odd about that, and I checked it with auto rebuild walls/floors/roofs disabled and it didn't matter. Chief really needs to optimize this better. Between this and a huge backlog of cad blocks, this program becomes a turtle in no time.

I'd like to see this in the suggestions forum, for a better and more efficient undo process.

Following.

I did the math the other day, and the pixel density on a 55" 4K TV would be higher than on my 32" 1080p monitor. I see no reason that using said TV with a 4K capable video card would not produce sharp text and clean, clear lines. That being said, probably best to bring your system to the dealer and demo the TV before you buy.

I am a Chief Architect user of ~10 years. I was involved in the beta test program for X3 and X4, and one or two other realeases, and I consider myself an advanced user of Chief Architect. As a designer for the last 10 years, I have also created and developed many tools to assist with workflow, time tracking, project management, quality assurance and project metrics. I am interested in offering my services to Chief Architect users as a trainer and consultant to help you improve your skills with Chief, your workflow and productivity. I am looking for clients who are frustrated with their level of understanding of the software and want to learn more effective ways of setting up and using Chief, and clients who want advice and direction on workflow and productivity in general. If you are interested in my help, please feel free to contact me through my email below or by PM on this forum.

Hi Chief Modify, I've had a quick look at your plan and have noticed a lot of areas that require attention, that I think come down to sloppiness with the program. I don't intend to come across as critical, it looks like you are new to chief and I think you've done a very good job with what you have so far. But I would suggest that you start by making sure that your plans are as tight and accurate as possible. Make sure that 2nd floor walls align above 1st floor walls. Check that roof edges are straight and meet the outside surface of a wall they but into, and don't cut through the wall or stand off of it. Chief does a lot of things really well, but it also relies on the user being accurate and precise. I do notice that the roof surface of the lower roof is below the floor surface of the second floor where it passes over the exterior wall. This may be causing the 2nd floor wall at the open below area to project above the roof. You can also use the "shelf ceiling" option for that 1st floor closet room to remove some of those attic walls.

It is hard to tell from just a picture. If you post the plan someone can have a look for you.

I haven't done 50 years of framing, but of the framing I have done, we bolted the sill plates to the foundation so that we can frame the floor on top of them. OK, so the sill plate is wood, which makes it framing. But we also infill frame between step down foundation walls and the floor. Is that framing part of the floor? I think chief handles the sill plate better when it is an attribute of the foundation wall. When you consider that the finish ceiling is usually above the sill plate, attached to the underside of the joists, it makes sense to me that chief handles it as part of the wall.

I have a spreadsheet for this, I've attached it here so you can get an idea how I work. It is a tedious process, but it is the best I can do. The spreadsheet I attached is a master sheet. Every time I do my assemblies for a project, I check to see that I have in this file assemblies that are the same or close enough to modify. If I need to create new ones, I do this and save it in the master sheet, so they are available next time I need them. Then I make a "Save as" copy of the sheet into my project folder and delete all the assemblies I don't need. I make changes and adjustments to the ones I need, then copy them into rich text objects in Chief. I started doing it this way in X4, and it worked great. Chief would preserve the row and column widths and I could stack components of my schedules in a predictable way to make nice clean schedules. I put a lot of work into making this system clean and organized. Unfortunatly, in X9 chief started compressing schedules so that there was no empty spaces, which means that if an entire row or column is empty it is compressed to a thin line, and even populated rows and columns were compressed to the largest body of text in a given cell. I end up doing all my schedules in X4 as I did before, and printing a layout to PDF. Then I import that PDF into the X10 layout. It takes time, but works for me. I've reported the spreadsheet compression issue to tech support, and they have passed it along to the development team. But if they actually add spreadsheets to Chief, I'll forgive them for this. If they make a tool to let us schedule out floor, wall and roof assemblies like this with user defined attributes I'd be over the moon. Assembly Worksheet.xls McNight Assemblies X4.layout McNight Assemblies X4.plan

I remember a while back some discussion around this font being a proprietary font that is subject to the licensing agreement that comes with Chief. This came up because users here were circulating the font to other users who did not have the newer version of Cheif that it was first packaged with. I could be wrong on this, but if not, they probably have a good reason to lock that font to Chief only for Mac users, perhaps something they can't do on PC.

I have had this problem as well. It is annoying, but it actually taught me the value of unblocking all text blocks when placed in the plan. To many blocks in the plan weighs it down significantly. I would prefer though if we could add text to library without blocking it.

I've never had an owner bring me their own design. They've given me sketches and ideas, but it takes a lot of work on my part for it to become a design, which makes it my design. I've never sold rights back to a client, but I absolutely will not use the same design anywhere near their property.

And to comment on your quote of my suggestion, repeat several times for the same cad block when you realize you missed something.

Some things I've learned over the years: Every time I take a design in a significant new direction, I create my own "archive" folder in the client's project folder and do a "save as" of the previous version. Then I carry on with the new design idea using the active file. If it doesn't pan out, I save it, close it, and move it to the archive folder and go back to the last iteration. It is easier to keep track of this then to go into chief's autosaves. For remodels and additions: I begin by creating a full as-built model in chief. I don't half ass this part either; I make sure it has everything that is of interest to the design and eventual drawings, including windows, doors and features that will appear on as-built elevations, even in areas that aren't going to change. I save this file with the description "as-built." I then do a save-as with this file and rename it with the descriotion "proposed." Now I am free to fly away with all the changes. It can take an hour or two to set all this up before I even start designing a remodel, not to mention the time on site, but it saves me headache in the long run. I always run separate "as built" and "proposed" files for every remodel. If needed, I will convert the "as built" plan to cad lines and import it into the "proposed" plan file to show demolished walls, etc. Organization: I have created a number of tools to help me work, and they all started as simple Excel spreadsheets that I've added to and have made more complex over the years. I use a project worksheet template that I copy and save-as for each new project. It has about 4 tabs of code and bylaw review information, a tab for notes, a tab for my timesheet, an analytics tab that tracks productivity, and the most powerful tab, the checklists. This tab has ~150 lines of items to check over as I do various drawings in a set. That sounds like a lot, but it is organized very efficiently for the work flow that I prefer, and follows in a logical order to prevent reduncancy and errors. It ensures that my drawings are consistant from project to project, and helps me to attack a project small pieces at a time, instead of being overwhelmed by it. I use another template spreadsheet for each project to manage assemblies. Before I copy and save-as, I add new assemblies that I need, so that they are available for the next project. After it is saved for a specific project, I remove those I don't need. Another tool I have is a project scheduler. It pulls data from all my active projects, right off their spreadsheets, and puts up a sort of dashboard of my workload. When projects are complete, I remove them from this tool and add them to a metrics spreadsheet. I track all my time for specific stages of a project, and sort projects by size. This allows me to see how efficient I am, and gives me a powerful data set to estimate future projects. After many years of using Chief, I find that I don't make significant mistakes or have to spend a lot of time fixing things. When I do, it is usually a very marginal amount of time for each project. So unless I find myself putting in an hour or more at one time fixing a mistake, I don't turn off the clock. I am human, and I bill for my time, mistakes or not. I spoke with a designer a few weeks back that was putting in twice the number of hours into the average project than me, and probably spent 35% or more on average fixing mistakes. He would only bill for the time he determined he was not fixing his mistakes, and would end up making on an hourly basis only about 65% of what I make. Something that took me a while to value, is to really pay attention to how much time you are wasting on errors, and find ways to fix them permanently. Learn better methods, adjust your habits, create workarounds, add things to library that you find yourself creating from scratch every time. Pay attention to where you waste time. Another thing that is very important is to manage your energy. The human brain has a limited time each day to be able to focus on work that is highly creative or requires a lot of problem solving. Once you surpass that capacity, productivity will take a sharp nose dive. This designer was working 8-12 hour days producing plans, was making much less than me, and was spending significant time fixing errors. I work no more than 3-5 hours per day in front of Chief. Then I allow for 1 client meeting, and about 30 minutes of business administration. It is a very short work day indeed, but I find I get more done than if I strap myself in for a gruelling 8+ hour day, and I'm prone to far fewer errors. Also important is to take regular breaks. Get up from your chair (i use a standing desk) stretch, go for a short walk, and only work in 30-45 minute segments. Well, that kinda went beyond the scope of Chief, but just figured I'd share some of what keeps me from going insane.

Not to mention a long and labourius process. I spent 3 hours yesterday on a plan, adding callout references and checking, double checking and triple checking all this work. I still found one error on the triple check. Another designer showed me this in Revit Lite the other day, and it is all automatic. I don't particularly care for using 3D glasses to naviage my designs if I need to spend hours on this type of work to ensure accuracy.