Chief crashes are often associated with memory issues. Back in the days when most computesr only had a half gig of ram, crashes were a common occurrence in camera mode. That's when I came across a problem solver.
The undo/redo feature in the "preferences" is often set to 10 or more. Narrow it down to one or two...or try turning it off altogther. The program won't be sending your comptuer into overdrive while trying to record snap shots of the ten previous mouse moves.
In fact, turning off the undo feature will result in a noticeable increase of speed on very large plan files.
Not saying that this is the solution to your crashes, but it may be a way to mitigate the problem.