Doug_Park

Very good points Joe. I was actually thinking about posting something similar, but had not thought it through as well as you have done.

That is a bug. The screen DPI is not supposed to affect the size as you described. If you can get the steps required to reproduce this to support we should be able to fix the problem.

Keep asking for expansion of our internal API. I am a big proponent of adding at least enough functionality to iterate through objects and have the ability to set the exposed properties of them. The API already has the power to set items and is exposed via select same / load same. The only bit that is missing is the ability to access items via some sort of iteration. The possibilities with an expanded API are vast. And I agree with Lew, we should make it easy to do the common things without macros.

Chief leverages defaults for a lot of things. Consider that in Chief, with the defaults set correctly 4 points in space are all that is necessary to build a 4 wall house complete with roof and foundation. A half dozen more points and you have windows and doors. If your defaults are set up correctly for the model you want to build the amount of data input required for a simple model is less than what it would take to draw the lines in 2D for a typical single wall with doors and windows in it. Of course this requires planning ahead. Also for changing lots of stuff don't forget about group select and also the filtering options that you get when a tool is selected. For example if you have the text tool selected and you marquee select all you pick up is text objects. At that point you can modify many properties of everything you have selected at once. But for text, use text styles, it's easier and plan wide.

The biggest issue I've seen with AutoCAD users adapting to Chief has mostly to do with changing how one thinks about designing. First, you are drawing 3D things, not lines. This seems obvious and is probably something that you already understand, but until you actually get a feel for what you are doing it can lead you to want things that you are familiar with. One good way of helping this sink in a bit is to keep a 3D over view open while you are drawing in a plan just to see how things are progressing. Second, editing is different. We generally do the click drag release thing instead of click release, drag, click release. So it takes a bit to get used to. However, if you use the alternate input for drawing lines and walls (Right click drag release, drag, click release, drag, click release) you get into a mode that may seem a bit more comfortable. Third there are lots of things features in Chief that are called by different names than similar tools in AutoCAD. This is due to a very independent development evolution. We seem to be seeing more and more AutoCAD users coming our way. It may make some sense for us to work on at least a getting started for AutoCAD users. Perhaps others who have been through this can add some advice to this thread.

Several things to try. 1) Empty your temporary files folder. 2) Check the disk for errors. 3) Defragment the drive. 4) Check for malware or malware checkers that might be slowing things down. 5) Disk space usage could be a factor as well. It isn't necessarily hardware, but if it isn't there is something different about the setting on that system.

I'm not an advocate of any particular software in this area. Only that something seems necessary to me. But that is probably due to my background where I've seen the benefits of this over and over. In any case a manual method can work, but requires discipline. The software also requires some discipline, but if others are using it they tend to help build the discipline. But at least one person in the office needs to be continually pushing for whatever process you have to be followed.

Rounding isn't the answer. Getting the model accurate is the answer.

First, There is not a bug in Chief. Second, you can't create a 45 degree triangle where the sides are exactly to 1 inch. The Pythagorean theorem tells us how to calculate this very simply. Let's take a simple example of a triangle 20' on two sides and then calculate the length of the hypotenuse (long side). The length is sqrt(20*20 + 20*20) which comes out to approximately 28' 3 7/16". Actually it is slightly under that number, but our tape measures don't give us that much accuracy. Chief provides 2 methods of rounding. Historically Chief provided only the traditional method of rounding that states that a value of .5 or greater rounds up and everything else rounds down. But, we had a lot of customers who ended up with dimension runs that didn't add up because while the length of a particular dimension was properly rounded the precision of the model made it so that things appeared wrong. The customers that had this problem were the ones that insisted on not building a model that was accurate. So we added a new method of rounding to a grid that basically shifted what we measure to the nearest grid value. This works great for many cases and reduced the number of complaints, but you can still create a model that won't round to the dimensions you want if you are sloppy enough. Bottom line, always draw your model such that things are positioned exactly to the rounding that you prefer. When your dimensions aren't doing what you want you need to look at the model because it is where the problem is. In some cases you may need to use some fractions to get things to work.

Chief doesn't allow you to violate physics with the dimensioning tools. We do however allow you to fudge a bit by providing a non traditional grid based rounding system rather than the more problematic traditional mathematical rounding. Both are options. I'm thinking that I should change the rounding options to 8 lb hammer, 4 lb hammer, 24 ounce hammer, and fist.

The rental option uses the same software security as Chief. Which means it has more or less the same limitations. The software runs entirely on your machine with a periodic check with our server for DRM. The checks are done when you launch and if you don't have an internet connection you will be in a grace period that will eventually end and you will no longer be able to launch the program. The right to continue using the program is managed by our database so if you don't pay, it will eventually catch up to you.

Most source control systems work great on remote systems. They are used all the time to collaborate on projects where the people are in many different countries. In fact one of the more well known ones calle Perforce was set up so that you could work remotely at dail up speeds. I used to use it all the time when doing development when I was working remotely when all I had was a dial up connection. Of course this is all old school stuff, but it is also very reliable.

We could put anti aliasing in for 2D views but it is very slow on Windows. A better option is to go with a higher dpi display.

I just checked X6 and it seems to work right there. It is possible this was broken in X5 but I'm not sure. You have to use the corner edit handle to do this.

Git and subversion are the two free ones. Both are well respected although Git seems to be more popular.

We use software source control systems to manage our source code, library content, sample plans, web content and other things. Two of the most respected source control systems are free and are perfect for managing Chief files. They do require some effort to learn, but the rewards are worth the effort.

The biggest issue with sharing projects on a network is preventing multiple people from working on the same files at the same time. I would use one of the many software tools out there to manage your files. Search for "Version Control", "Revision Management", "Configuration Management", "Product Data Management". There are many software tools out there for managing files in a multiple person office. If it were me I would be using software like this to make sure that the versions of your Chief plans are correctly managed. This software will often also prevent multiple users from editing files at the same time. While Chief has a file locking mechanism to help with this, it is up to each individual to ensure that it is turned on. A manual process can work as well. For example have a separate external drive for each project and then changes to that project are only done on that drive. If someone else needs to make a change they track down the project drive borrow it for awhile to make the changes and then return it. Kind of cumbersome, but it could work, if your people have good discipline.

Shift click will group select objects in 3D views. Marquee select in 3D views is computationally expensive because of how 3D objects are picked so we haven't implemented it there.

Which OS X? Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Yosemite? It may make a difference. Does the problem occur when you don't have an external monitor attached? I assume by dual monitors that you are using the laptop screen and an external monitor. Or is your setup different?

What Mac OS version are you using? Are you doing this on a Retina Display? Are you using Metric or Imperial units? I'm not sure of the cause is for the scaling to be large. It is possible that on a Retina display we have the wrong scale for some reason.

Leveraging the GPU is definitely something we have on our radar. For now the best reccomendation I have is to buy a high end video card. You get the benefit of the card for OpenGL now. And if we step up to using the GPU in the future for accelerating things like ray tracing or other operations you should see substantial performance benefits. It really doesn't make any sense to buy a Tesla card now for Chief. By the time we do support this technology there may be faster options. And the current options would more than likely be cheaper.

I brought this up on my MacBook Air. 1.7GHz i5 with HD 4000 graphics. I couldn't find anything that seemed particularly slow. Even with shadows turned on the 3D views were pretty much realtime to zoom and rotate. Editing in 3D seemed fairly snappy as well. I do have 8 GB of memory, but the system was using less than 2GB. Chief was using about 300MB. If you see this again bring up your Activity Monitor and see if there is anything chewing a lot of memory or CPU cycles.

I assume you are running on the Mac Mini listed in your signature. Based on your description it sounds like your system has run low on memory. Which may be due to Chief or some other application. Mac applications are notorious for leaking memory. A reboot of the computer would likely correct the problem. Chief can use a lot of memory for certain operations. Keep an eye on the memory usage and close windows in Chief that you don't need. The HD Graphics on your system are not the snappiest around, but should not be as slow as you describe especially for the fairly simple model that you posted. However, if your system starts to use virtual memory the swapping of memory to/from disk can easily result in the slowness you report.

We don't currently leverage the GPU except for OpenGL views. For ray tracing only the CPU cores are utilized.

It looks like the Windows Task bar is covering the bottom of your window. Maybe hitting the maximize button will correct the problem.