Smn842

Although expensive, you can have multiple StreamDeck XLs and if you add another its trivial to copy the layouts across. I bought a second as backup in case of failure as its proved so important for my work (not Chief as just a DIYer here) but I decided I may as well use it and it works well. I've tried having one per hand, but settled on my non dominant hand having both and that works well for the various applications I use.

If looks docked sideways there which is odd. If you go to Preferences, Reset Options and select 'Reset Side Windows' does that fix it? Or failing that the same for toolbars although you'll lose any customisations to the toolbars. This issue may possibly be the result of Chief closing improperly which may be indicative of other issues with your PC, drivers (auto updates) or Chief install.

I've long used my own spreadsheet for this as its a simple calc, and I concur with you for 32" 2560x1440: I used the 125% and 150% columns to check if different monitors when scaled will have similar text size to anther. Thankfully I finally bit the bullet and bought all matching 4K monitors to end the issues of moving windows between differently scaled monitors.

We've already got a conversion now, but for reference and if anyone wants to change the background colour (or re-run for the next Chief release) there are a number of free / cheap batch image converters. I use the XnConvert tool which is part of XnView MP (https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/) or can be obtained separately, both have Windows, Mac and Linux versions. These are free for private use and very cheap for commercial use (sub 30 euros for the full XnView MP) and offer a lot of functionality. I just did a quick test and after a quick setup for the conversion it did all the Chief button images in a under 3 seconds.

The cost of the Stream Decks is basically the LCD behind the whole front panel for the buttons. The benefit of colourful icons that can change to different layouts and have multiple states (so show a toggled feature state or values etc) is what makes Stream Decks so much better for many use cases than additional traditional keypads/keyboards with custom caps/labels. I have two Stream Decks XLs that I use in a number of other applications with many hundreds of key actions configured. It does take time to setup (as per this thread) but its well worth it. In fact I use these these so much I invested the time to write a utility to extract icons from certain applications configurations, use existing shortcuts in those apps (or create unique custom shortcuts automatically) and then allow me simply to arrange any of these I want to use in that utility which then does all the heavy lifting of assigning/modifying keys and their icons without using the Stream Deck GUI.

I have had a lot of UPS devices over the years and currently have three of the CyberPower CP1500EPFCLCD for desktops and an equivalent rack mount model. An important point when choosing one is the cheaper models are simulated sine wave which doesn't work well with many modern Active PFC power supplies. I've observed this in person with a PC PSU making a very bad noise, also see here https://www.synnexcorp.com/us/powersolv/wp-content/uploads/sites/105/2021/03/CyberPower_Active-PFC-Whitepaper.pdf I've used an oscilloscope on the output of this CyberPower unit and its a good sine ware and the only APC devices with similar output and sine wave were way more expensive. Another important factor is battery replacement availability as they need changing every 3 to 4 years as capacity drops. The CyberPower batteries aren't available in the UK but they are standard parts so easy to source good quality alternatives but in the US the originals should be easy to purchase. Lastly some larger UPS devices have a loud fan when the battery tops up a couple of times a day and this is what stopped me getting a couple of larger units.

I wonder if creating process dumps (used for debugging) during these freezes would help CA find the cause, perhaps @Dermot can confirm? If they can, then these can be created in various ways, the simplest on Windows is from Task Manager, finding the Chief app and then expanding its entry as it has two processes, and then for each selecting 'Create dump file' for each. This creates a dump of the running application and memory that may be useful for debugging if CA has the matching debug map files from when they built the executables. The files created are large but compress well. I used to add an enhanced version of this into my applications by having a background thread that used it own memory management (to avoid corrupted memory state) and when triggered by a simple utility application shipped with the product it would create a full stack trace using a built in map file and capture other info into a file for sending in. It did this twice usually 10 seconds apart so I could compare if a thread was stuck in the same place which a single snapshot doesn't. As this was separate from the main GUI and other threads it would trigger even when GUI or service APIs were deadlocked or waiting on something making the application appear frozen. For GUI apps I also had this trigger if the UI thread became unresponsive for an extended period. Some modern Windows features such as ASLR (moves code around on each load) can make debugging harder but this information help me find obscure issues on some very complex systems without the need to provide special diagnostic versions to clients or having to enable logging that slowed down an application. Excuse the technical ramble, but as a developer I feel the pain of trying to find the cause of some issues!

Works fine here. Windows has some options that can affect behaviour (go to Settings and search on 'ease of access keyboard settings' and also a few others under the various 'keyboard' search results) but I don't think they'll do that and some beep when used so hard to miss. Do you have any background utilities that could be interfering with keypresses, such as field capitalisation, spelling/grammar checkers etc? Does this happen straight after a reboot?

I would like an easy way to review the file paths of all referenced content from plans and layouts to ensure there aren't any unexpected locations used as per my suggestion here: I take care with content locations but even so a few unexpected file locations have ended up referenced in plans due to some hurried changes. Using debugging tools show Chief can search a large number of locations for referenced content which is good to keep things working, but also makes it easier for missing file issues to crop up quite some time later.

Yes it's a rare system required for a couple of demanding tasks, however further tests show the same high VRAM use with Chief on another more regular PC with a couple of smaller monitors when using layouts with non RTRT PBR views (viewing and printing). I reported this to support a while back and they appear aware and suggest the logical approach of splitting up content over multiple layouts or PDFs. I suspect its probably an optimisation issue with how these are generated on RTX capable systems and potentially the driver, as using GPUs without ray tracing worked fine with the same content and much less VRAM on both the second system and my main one.

My main PC has 6 x 4K monitors (2 GPUs) which needs more VRAM generally but the Chief issue is with layouts and two of those containing a number of PBR views (RTRT disabled). During print to PDF the VRAM use rises and after saving the PDF file it rises again and for several of my layouts then generates a crash in Chief. This is the last capture before it exceeds 12GM VRAM on the applicable GPU: After X13 crashes and the PC recovers it drops back down to 1 to 2 GB. I can replicate this on three PCs and as some of my software related dev work is graphics related I've checked with applicable debug tools and they show the same use and related to Chief. I am not referring to the AMD game related VRAM issues that are hotly debated as they're quite clearly designed to favour AMDs higher VRAM GPUs over Nvidia's and as I am not a gamer that's not an issue for me. If not using an RTX card for Chief then the VRAM usage remains within lower limits so as per my earlier post it could be a driver or Chief related issue. I've been running background diagnostics on two PCs since upgrading them to use at least one 30 series card and both use more VRAM than non RTX cards on several graphics related applications. I've got a lot of work on at present so cannot dig deeper but it does appear VRAM is being (mis)used more in current RTX drivers/software and with larger and higher DPIs monitors becoming ever more prevalent I thought it worth a mention.

I agreed with @Kbird1 on the GPU, this shows the relative performance of some cards mentioned: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-RTX-3080-Ti-vs-GeForce-RTX-3080-vs-GeForce-RTX-3070-Ti-vs-GeForce-RTX-3060-vs-GeForce-RTX-2070/4409vs4282vs4413vs4345vs4001 If you try some of the other 30 series cards in that site you'll find in general the performance gains within the 30 series tails off past the 3070 and you pay a lot more for not much more performance, for example even the 3090Ti scores only 29456. In my case I run a lot of 4K monitors on the one system across two GPUs and wanted to ensure the VRAM wasn't a limitation so decided on the 3080 12GB (not the earlier 10GB variant and mid way between 3080 and 3080Ti in performance). This was the first card other than 3060 that has 12GB and not too much more above the best performance vs cost point. Interestingly one of the GPU issues I've encountered within Chief relates to exhausting VRAM on the GPU, so although this could be an issue with the GPU driver and/or Chief code, the extra VRAM means this happens less frequently than it would with the same monitors and less VRAM.

Although there do need to be improvements to delays when files are missing, I would like the option to keep track of what files (with full paths) are being referenced and not just what's missing to keep things well managed as I suggested here: I can see from using developer diagnostic tools that Chief goes through a lot of locations trying to find referenced files which is great, but it means even with good practices the odd unexpected location can creep in which in turn leads to more cases of missing files when upgrading Chief, new PC etc and then more of these slowdowns.

I always go for the highest DPI I can get for the size monitor I deem most suitable for my work and set text scaling as required for good UI size fonts as this gives the sharpest looking text and details and reduces eye strain. Text scaling on Windows has improved vastly over recent years and support for this font scaling in modern applications is now generally good and even for mixed font scaling across multiple monitors its getting a lot better. It's only older or poorly written applications which will have a fuzzy look when using Windows text scaling, everything else will benefit from more pixels per character/inch. As most 43" are only 4K resolution (102.5 DPI at 4K) I am currently using 3 x 32" 4K and 3 x 27" 4K (recently upgraded from lower res) which are 137.7 DPI and 163.2 DPI respectively. These are at 125% and 150% text scaling which gives near identical real world text size for the same font as 137.7 /125 * 150 = 165.24 and text on both is notable sharper than the 96 DPI monitors used to aim for. I work mostly in software development and appreciate Chief users may benefit from a 43"+ monitor, but sharper text and details is a benefit that's often overlooked. I recommend two or even three 32" 4/5K monitors to friends when asked about higher end setups (three is nice with one in the middle). I have tried 43" and larger but the lower DPI at the moment and large size make multiple monitor setups difficult and impacts off angle colours/brightness even with IPS screens, whereas arranging smaller monitors around you gives higher DPI and a more consistent focal length which is easier on my older eyes.

When using font scaling above 100% characters should be crisper not fuzzy as they're made of more pixels. However sadly some application don't correctly support scaling properly and hence Windows just scales all the existing GUI which gives it the fuzzy appearance. This can be overridden on a per application basis but if the application doesn't allow larger fonts to be used for its GUI then this reverts to the original small fonts issue. I currently run 4 x 32" 4K monitors at 125% scaling plus a couple of 27" 2560x1440 at 100%. This is so I can develop software and easily test for scaling issues. This give a worse case scenario of mixing scaling settings but since I started doing this a couple of years back I've noticed that many modern applications handle non 100% scaling fine and the best manage the mixed scaling (dragging between different monitors with different text scaling) as well. For my other PCs/laptops I always go for all high DPI monitors as the sharpness is so easy on the eye. I've tried 40 - 45" monitors but they were all 4K resolution so for me that size is one for when 8K is a viable option.

I think you need to check today's date

Most terrain parts are missing from Interiors so a toolbar is probably not needed and that could be the difference you are seeing generally. I use Premier so cannot confirm but you can verify with CA Support and also check the product comparison here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/compare.html

I've developed various software for desktop and web that has had the challenge of rendering rich text within fixed areas without cropping or wrapping at different points when rendered on devices with different screen DPIs, font metrics, browser vs desktop rendering and different OSes. It's true that problems often originate outside of the software presenting the issue, but there are many cases where this is true in software and applications need to work around the problems as I'm sure CA has done for other issues. There are various approaches depending on what is important for the application, such as retaining wrapping locations for multiline text, retaining box size (so shrinking text/spacing) in addition to preventing character cropping. It's a problem that can be solved although it can be harder than it appears depending on the level of low level access to the rendering system/library used. For the software I worked on in most cases text boxes were effectively resized by small amounts automatically to retain wrapping and avoid character cropping but without impacting the saved size unless edited (to avoid needless saves). It was also often useful to have an additional small margin inside the box that wasn't considered part of the calculated sizing after editing, but could be used during rendering as this would avoid overall text box size changes where users wanted them to be accurately positioned or aligned

I always limit Chief to 3 of those monitors all using the same GPU and that's what I've always stated to support but this is always ignored. I see I've been down voted for stating what has happened with my support cases and given I managed the development of complex GPU related software for global corporations and have offered virtual machine images to prove my case with GUI issues (not 3D rendering ) and got a response saying Chief doesn't work in virtual machines. I don't know what else I can do - there seems to be a blinker vision with some issues.

I have 6 monitors and the odd issue with X13 but disconnecting one of my two GPUs isn't an option as each only supports 4 monitors. Interestingly some of the issues aren't related to the dual GPUs (lifetime in software development often using GPU rendering) but support just see the multiple GPU config and that's end of case.

Many vendors used to host their videos where the video file was basically read by the browser and played. This allowed the easy save to disk options, but was wasteful if people didn't watch the whole video as part or all of the file was read, and this also added load which could be an issue if lots of users connected at the same time. Hence many videos are now hosted by third parties that specialise in video streaming as they have the resources to cope with variable loads and can more efficiently stream only the content that you actually watch which is the feature that often breaks the old save as functionality. Such services also have an interest in avoiding downloading to allow videos to be updated and in some cases adverts included dynamically. The last time I checked CA moved to using Vimeo, but the download issue with such services can be worked around by using one of a number of browser extensions that basically download all the stream and then recreate a full video file which can then be saved to disk.

From the reviews I've read about real time raytracing with these drivers for a GTX 1080 the performance was terribly poor even compared to the 20xx series which is quite a way behind the 30xx cards. So for some applications (and perhaps Chief?) I could understand companies not wanting to support use of the older cards as it could make features appear unusable and it adds another area of possible driver bugs to contend with.

I second the suggestion of getting glasses specifically for monitor distance. I would also be concerned of neck strain of that stand and the distance difference from top to bottom of the screen increasing eye strain (even people with great eyesight experience eye strain adjusting eye focus so frequently) I have zero ability to adjust focus (surgery not age related) and although I usually wear multifocal contact lenses I have glasses to wear over them to fix any residual astigmatism (affects sharpness and contrast) as well as adjust focal length to be perfect for the distance I work at. I similarly have glasses just for monitor distance to use when not wearing contact lenses. Both options give me sharp vision on my 6 x 32" 4K monitors (so large area and small text) something neither bi-focal glasses with the height issue and just two fixed focal lenses, or varifocal with distortion at the edges could do. I also found a significant drop in eye fatigue with this approach. I buy these various non full correction glasses online at sub $40 (often around $25) a pair as my optometrist said their systems weren't really geared up for anything other than my normal full correction/varifocal glasses and also extremely expensive.

This is another reason why 3D mice are so useful as you can just pan and zoom as required with the other hand. Another lesser known benefit is even when in modal dialog boxes the currently active 2D or 3D plan window can still be moved around using a 3D mouse which can be useful if you forget to check something that's not quite in view before opening the dialog.

Perhaps the pole should be 'how many would ray trace with Chief if it was way faster'? Even though I upgrade PC's regularly and try to get the best balance of overclocked core speed vs number of cores, ray trace has not appealed since we've had PBR. As I use a 3D mouse the rendering on the new PBR + Ray trace on X13 didn't look that good to me as I move a lot in 3D views. I am more interested in the consistent lighting model mentioned and hope that will fix the issues of materials looking so different in standard, pbr and ray trace modes as well as the bleed of colours from backdrops and other areas radically changing the internal views.