Lag, Hangup, Pausing while Deleting Objects or Undo

[Joe_Carrick]

2 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

Also when I first tested your plan file in X9 I did not notice that Mark had turned off auto wall framing and then I did that and retested and really did not notice any significant difference.

If there are still "Wall Details" in the plan, they will "Auto Re-Frame" even if that's turned off.  Those Wall Details over-ride that setting; which - if you think about it - is quite logical.

[Kbird1]

Thanks Joe , good Tip , that would not of occurred to me...

 

M.

 

[Kbird1]

2 hours ago, Kahnceptions said:

Ok I will definitely get the 500GB SSD then. Thank you!

 

Macrium Reflect Free will Clone the HD to SSD when you get it and also allow you to Schedule daily/weekly etc  backup Images  to the OLD 2TB HD for Backup. It works well and is free , I usua it regualarly especially if I know Win10 is about togt a Major update incase it goes sideways. just make sure you make the Rescue CD and update it each new version ( I used a CDRW for this) as if you don't have the disk the back up Images will be useless to you.

 

And yes , as Chopsaw said, consider an M2 Drive , if getting a new MB or Computer, they are about 3-4 times faster than a Sata SSD. (2000 vs 500-550mb/sec) 

 

M.

[Chopsaw]

1 hour ago, Joe_Carrick said:

If there are still "Wall Details" in the plan, they will "Auto Re-Frame" even if that's turned off.  Those Wall Details over-ride that setting; which - if you think about it - is quite logical.

 

Joe,  Maybe you can help me out as I am not seeing the logic.  If there is no way to turn off Auto Wall Framing without deleting the details then how are we to custom frame a wall.  My understanding is that there is two ways to turn off Wall framing from rebuilding.  By deselecting it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX or by selecting each wall individually and selecting "Retain Wall Framing" in the Wall Specification>Structure DBX which will preserve a custom or non framed condition.

 

 

Possibly the reason I did not see a noticeable difference was that I was working in 3D camera view and wall framing happened to be off.

[Jarr3tt88]

Do you have a link to the M2 Mother board? I would be getting the AMD FX 9590 CPU most likely, AM3+ chip

[Kbird1]

5 minutes ago, Jarr3tt88 said:

Do you have a link to the M2 Mother board? I would be getting the AMD FX 9590 CPU most likely, AM3+ chip

 

M2 is not "The Motherboard"  but a type of Port on most newer MB's these days , in addition to the Standard 6GB SATA3 ports, it is actually m.2. but I am not that familiar with AMD Chips anymore , though have heard the new AMD Ryzen Chips are good value for money , so a board for them with M2 (m.2)  would be something like this one from ASUS. but all Makers have them.

 

https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-STRIX-B350-F-GAMING/

 

There is also a U.2 Port some of which are switchable from M.2 to U.2 , just make sure whatever drive you get is "bootable" if going with m.2 on the Board chosen, some have had issues with Booting windows off there new m.2 Drives.

 

there is a bit more about m.2 here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2

 

M.

 

 

 

 

[Chopsaw]

PC Part Picker is a good way to make sure computer components are compatible: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960.html

[Joe_Carrick]

13 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

Joe,  Maybe you can help me out as I am not seeing the logic.  If there is no way to turn off Auto Wall Framing without deleting the details then how are we to custom frame a wall.  My understanding is that there is two ways to turn off Wall framing from rebuilding.  By deselecting it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX or by selecting each wall individually and selecting "Retain Wall Framing" in the Wall Specification>Structure DBX which will preserve a custom or non framed condition.

Note that there are no "Wall Details" until wall framing has been built.  Once a wall has been framed, the "Wall Details" are live and will automatically re-build even if you deselect it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX. 

 

I suppose CA could change that but the logic to it is simple.  If there are existing "Wall Details" that represent the framed condition of a wall then changes to the model need to change those Details.  Otherwise those could easily be out of sync with the model.  Any editing of a wall (move, insert or remove openings - move a wall - change floor heights - change ceiling heights - etc) means that all wall framing in the model needs to be updated.  There could be connected walls that also have to be changed.  

In theory it would be possible for the software to recognize where connection exist and only change what needs to be changed - but that could be a very complicated programming job requiring a lot of changes to the database.

 

if you select each wall and select "Retain Wall Framing" they will not re-build.  That could speed up the edits and undo's but it would also eliminate the accuracy of the framing.

 

The best practice is to wait until the Plan is complete without framing.  Then build the framing and make any changes to that as needed.  Sometimes that's not practical, but that's how I try to do it - at least for walls. 

 

Actually, there are similar issues with all sorts of inter-dependencies within a plan.  If a wall is moved even a fraction of an inch, Cabinets, Electrical Outlets, Switches, Doors, Windows, Niches, etc have to be moved as well.  Even Room properties and their labels may need to be modified, not to mention dimensions.

 

It doesn't matter if changes are made in 2D or 3D Views and it doesn't matter if any element of the Plan is not displayed.  Changes to the model involve the entire model, not just a part of it.  Everything has to be updated unless it has specifically been "Retained" and then you run a severe risk that the ConDocs will not be correct.

 

Computers are much faster than hand drafting - and we get spoiled.  Just think of what you had to do 20 years ago.  You made a change and you had to erase something and redraw it.  You might have needed to change several drawings and a lot of text, dimensions, etc.  The fact that it takes a few seconds to make such changes is much better than minutes or even hours.  

 

 

[Chopsaw]

21 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Once a wall has been framed, the "Wall Details" are live and will

automatically re-build even if you deselect it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX. 

 

Joe,  I am sorry but I agree with almost everything you have said but I am still using X9 and am going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement as I just can't figure out how to make the software function the way you are describing.

 

You are correct in saying that wall framing should be left until the end for several reasons but I hope even in X10 they allow us to continue to be able to turn that off and make manual corrections until they figure out how to make the software frame to code.

[Joe_Carrick]

4 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

Joe,  I am sorry but I agree with almost everything you have said but I am still using X9 and am going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement as I just can't figure out how to make the software function the way you are describing.

 

I am still using X9.  I don't think XX will be available even for Alpha or Beta testing until after the UGM. 

What part of my statement doesn't agree with your observations.  I would be happy to test your scenario and see where I have missed. 

 

IAE, the "Edit/Undo" times are dependent on what potential changes have to be made to the entire model, not just a single element.  If Chief somehow knew what the limits of the change was, it would be possible to update just those things and be much faster.  Currently I don't think that would be very easy for CA to do. 

 

I won't try to explain how Chief processes Edits and Undo (I leave that to Dermot or someone else at CA) but the basics are that the model state(s) are saved and are available to reload.  The size of the model, type and amount of ram, access speed, CPU speed, and possibly disk read/write speed for the swap file can all effect these operations.  It's not just one thing.

[Chopsaw]

16 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Once a wall has been framed, the "Wall Details" are live and will automatically re-build even if you deselect it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX. 

 

My observations suggest that your statement quoted above is incorrect and with "Build Wall Framing" deselected in the Build Framing>Wall DBX the only way to get a wall to reframe is manually. 

 

This below is how it seems to work for me as shown in previous video and illustration.

 

On 7/13/2017 at 8:16 PM, Chopsaw said:

 My understanding is that there is two ways to turn off Wall framing from rebuilding.  By deselecting it in the Build Framing> Wall DBX or by selecting each wall individually and selecting "Retain Wall Framing" in the Wall Specification>Structure DBX which will preserve a custom or non framed condition.

 

Either of these could also be used to preserve an auto framed condition from future changes that might cause an unwanted rebuild.   However it seems that you have reason to disagree with this ?

 

Once this is sorted out then maybe we can theorize on the speed of deletes and redo's.

[Kahnceptions]

The speed of delete or undo is seeming to get slower with the file getting larger. There must be another way to keep the speed instantaneous like with smaller files. Personally I don't think 16MB file sizes are that large or complex to cause these pauses.

[TheKitchenAbode]

8 minutes ago, Kahnceptions said:

The speed of delete or undo is seeming to get slower with the file getting larger. There must be another way to keep the speed instantaneous like with smaller files. Personally I don't think 16MB file sizes are that large or complex to cause these pauses.

 

I believe the issue is that when these commands are issued that it forces a rebuild of the entire model and it is this process that results in a lag as the model becomes larger in size/complexity. From some experimentation the model rebuild is dependent upon the layer set display options, displayed layers are included in the rebuild while non displayed layers are ignored. The more layers displayed the greater the number of elements to rebuild. The only solution I can think of at this time would be for CA to develop a smarter way of doing this, maybe something were it only needs to rebuild the layer that changed and then only apply this to the existing model.

[Kahnceptions]

Perhaps a workaround could be a layer set for editing? There's so many workarounds for this program.

 

My file has been lagging again still

[Chopsaw]

Yes that is always helpful to have working layer sets that are set up with just what you need for each type of view.

 

I am assuming that you have looked at all the options discussed here : https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00521/troubleshooting-slowness-in-chief-architect-plans.html

 

We really have not heard back as to how your time lags compare to the testing that Mark and I did with your plan file.  This will help determine if your old hard drive really is the weak link or not.

 

The other thing I was wondering about is your Maximum undo setting in Preferences> General.  I think this can slow things down just by being set too high.

[glennw]

I really don't recommend it, but you could try turning off some of the auto functions like Auto Rebuild Walls/Floors/Ceilings and see what if it makes a difference. 

[TheKitchenAbode]

11 hours ago, Kahnceptions said:

Perhaps a workaround could be a layer set for editing? There's so many workarounds for this program.

 

My file has been lagging again still

 

These are not workarounds, they are program functions that allow you to control specific aspects related to what CA has to process and when. Programs such as CA, Excel, Photoshop, etc. are all susceptible to the fact that as one continues to add more data into the program and the program has to process this data it will eventually reach a point where the time to process this data will become noticeable. In Excel for example you have the ability to define the recalc operation so it is not doing this every time you enter a value, on large spread sheets this would be a huge problem and would result in a real lag. CA is no different, when processing lag starts to creep in you need to adopt methods to minimize this. The ability to control display layers and turn on or off auto rebuild functions are how you do this. That's not a workaround.

[TomBiggs]

DOH!   You have to clear the terrain, because if you don't the program tries to render it even in views where you dont' see it.  This ends up seriously killing the speed as you try to make changes to your plan.

 

My version of Chief is X12, and I too noticed a delay/lag and then I found this thread.  I'm a little late to the discussion, but obviously Chief Architect has not successfully fixed this problem.   It's provided other improvements since x9 and for those, Thanks!  The workarounds people are mentioning are about cutting functionality of the program in order to have a pleasant drafting experience.  At some point, I think we need to just go ahead and troubleshoot why the program does not appear to be able to handle the functionality when all the bells and whistles are running at the same time.   This seems like an Engineering problem that users should not have to deal with....but are.       One strategy the competitor, ArchiCAD touts, is how they manage memory is by a streaming approach, where you don't see everything at the same time.     In my case, I was having an issue with lag, when on a very simple Interior Plan view.  The model file has the terrain modeled for a decently sloping site, and moved vertically so that it reflects real-world contours.  I discovered that the rendering of the terrain was taking up so much processing and software memory, that this caused the process associated with computing moving the wall object to be placed second.  Thus, as you would imagine,  I clicked the Clear Terrain button, the problem was solved.   Why do you have this button anyway?   Maybe it should just be an internal process.   Why do I care about rendering the terrain object when I'm in an interior plan view anyways?  Answer: I don't.  

 

My wish list to make the program much better (because illogical and stupid delays in the program, requiring "workarounds"  really suck)

1. Better memory management, prioritizing processing for only items you can see in a view.   Perhaps also try streaming parts of the view if possible for views that do have complex geometries to render.
2. Introduce phasing so we don't have to overlay in an entirely separate as-built model. 
3. Make drawing tags smart so that the number of detail if updated on a sheet, gets updated wherever the tag occurs in plan or other details.

 

I'm running X12 on the following:

OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Home

System Manufacturer    Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model    Gaming B8
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Adapter Type    GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, NVIDIA compatible
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    16.0 GB

[glennw]

2 hours ago, TomBiggs said:

Thus, as you would imagine,  I clicked the Clear Terrain button, the problem was solved.   Why do you have this button anyway?

 

Seems like you answered your own question.

I must say that I have done some very complicated sites in the past and have never once had to use Clear Terrain.

[Chopsaw]

17 minutes ago, glennw said:

I must say that I have done some very complicated sites in the past and have never once had to use Clear Terrain.

 

Neither have I but if it actually did what it says it should in the manual it might be quite handy but very confusing the way it works now.

 

Clear Terrain
To remove the generated terrain contours, select Terrain> Clear Terrain. When the terrain is cleared, contours do not display in 3D and contour lines do not display in plan view.
Clear Terrain  does not remove the terrain perimeter, elevation data, or terrain features from the model. Rather it deletes all program-generated 2D contour lines and 3D contours.
The Terrain Perimeter has a variety of editable properties, including many that affect the appearance of the terrain in 2D and 3D views. See Terrain Specification Dialog.

 

 

What exactly are "3D Contours" ?

[glennw]

18 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

What exactly are "3D Contours" ?

 

I think they are referring to the actual shaping of the site - ie, contouring the site.

[Chopsaw]

1 minute ago, glennw said:

21 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

What exactly are "3D Contours" ?

 

I think they are referring to the actual shaping of the site - ie, contouring the site.

 

Yup that is what I thought as well.  Does that clear for you and flatten the 3D terrain when you use the "Clear Terrain" function ?

[glennw]

Chopsaw,

You need to turn off Auto Rebuild Terrain as well or the terrain keeps generating.

Thinks like Terrain Features maintain their shape when Clear terrain is used.

 

[Chopsaw]

46 minutes ago, glennw said:

Chopsaw,

You need to turn off Auto Rebuild Terrain as well or the terrain keeps generating.

Things like Terrain Features maintain their shape when Clear terrain is used.

 

Wow is that ever confusing. Having one tool that is completely dependent on another unmentioned setting. And then having a behavior indicator stuck to your cross hairs just to raise your stress level another notch.  I wonder if it would do the same thing and be just as effective to turn off the Terrain Perimeter layer in 3D and the Contours in 2D ?   Am I understanding this correctly ? 

[TomBiggs]

50 minutes ago, glennw said:

 

Seems like you answered your own question.

I must say that I have done some very complicated sites in the past and have never once had to use Clear Terrain.

This is a strange anomaly.   II'm looking at your computer specs, and they seem on par with what I have with exception of the 5k display, and the video card which is less memory than mine.   Maybe running on a Mac the program works better.  I picked up on this from another Mac user, who seemed to have a more fluid time dong things that were lagging on my rig. 

 

X12

OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Home

System Manufacturer    Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model    Gaming B8
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Adapter Type    GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, NVIDIA compatible
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    16.0 GB