New Computer Advice? Chief Orthographic View Speed

[JennyB]

Hi,
I purchased a brand new Sager Laptop Computer to run Chief faster, below are the specs. It runs my big file fast; except for the orthographic full overview which takes one minute & six to twelve seconds to open. I ran task manage while creating a rendering for this drawing. Max CPU usage by Chief was 24%, but average 16%. Max RAM usage was almost 4 GB of an available 32 GB.

Here is a video of me opening it; so, you can see how slow.
http://youtu.be/59fWmB-6jrs

I emailed Chief Support and they recommended turning off patterns or using the perspective camera instead. My question is if I upgrade computers will it be capable of doing orthographic full overviews with patterns faster? OR is the Chief software limited in it's capabilities, and I should not waste my money.

The computer salesman recommend I return the computer and upgrade trying one of the two options:
If you switch to the desktop processor unit with the same GTX980M card, your cost would be $2,784.00 each which costs less than your current one; however, if you want to go for the super expensive Quadro K5100M card, your cost would be $4,234.00.

Please let me know if you think one of the options would run the full orthographic view faster, before I spend more money on upgrades. If so, which option should I select?

Below are the computer specs for the new computer I purchased:
NP9377U-1 17.3" FHD/MATT,w/BR READER 8F01SC031879 $2,918.00 $2,918.00
1 1 WIN7-S3 WINDOWS 7 PROFESSIONAL 64 BIT $0.00 $0.00
1 1 CG-ICD IC Diamond on CPU + GPU $0.00 $0.00
1 1 M-I74910 CORE i7 4910MQ 2.9 GHz 8MB $0.00 $0.00
1 1 V-9377-980M nV GeForce GTX 980M w/8GB $0.00 $0.00
1 1 R3-32G-4H 32GB DDR3 HYPERX (4 DIMMS) $0.00 $0.00
1 1 M14-550256A CRUCIAL M550 256G mSATA (OS) $0.00 $0.00
1 1 H13-1TB-S7 2.5" SATA 1TB(7200rpm) HDD $0.00 $0.00
1 1 WB-7260-AC INTEL WIRELESS-AC 7260 AC+BT $0.00 $0.00
1 1 LOGO-1 Complete Sager Branding

Thanks,

Jenny
CAD'signs
http://issuu.com/burgerja
www.linkedin.com/in/jennyburger/
 

[jcaffee]

Make sure you've created a custom profile in the NVidia Control Panel for Chief, and that you eliminate settings conflicts between CA and NVidia.

 

jon

[JennyB]

Thanks, Jon, I tried that.

[jcaffee]

Can you post screen shots of your CA Render and Video Card Status dbx and the CA profile settings in NVidia CP?

 

jon

[Ryan-M]

I would guess that you have an extremely high density pattern somewhere, in which case your GPU is not actually the bottleneck.  Is taking a standard overview significantly faster?

 

It's very unlikely that upgrading your GPU would improve performance here.

[Kbird1]

are you sure Chief is using the Nvidia Card and not the intergrated Intel 4600 which it uses normally to save battery power ? see the render panel in the Prefs.

 

The Quadro cards gain you nothing in Chief  , if going to desktop get a GTX 970.....  or a 770 to save $$$ perhaps with 3 or 4GB of Ram.

 

M.

[Doug_Park]

I think Ryan nailed it. I've seen cases like this before, sometimes in 2D, where a pattern is so dense that the result appears as solid. My guess is that you have a material definition somewhere with an exceptionally small pattern line spacing.

 

Another possibility is an inserted object with a dense pattern and an exceptionally high surface count. More than likely that item could be changed to have a less dense pattern or none.

 

A faster GPU is not going to help with the part that is slow as that is done entirely on the CPU.

 

What I would do is systematically look for the offending bit.

 

My first suggestion is to open the materials dialog and arrow through each material until you find one that has a very dense pattern. It will probably also take a bit longer to display as well. Then it should just be a matter of editing that material to have a less dense pattern.

 

If that doesn't work you could turn off layers systematically to narrow your search.

 

Another method is to delete half the model using Edit Area. Then do an overview. If it is fast you now know that it is in the half you deleted. You can continue doing this until you narrow it down. Just make sure that you don't save over your original plan while you are doing this.

[ragetoca]

You should post the plan or check with another plan to see if the problem persists

[keithhe]

You should post the plan or check with another plan to see if the problem persists

Jenny,

 

I agree with Raul, post the plan and someone here will figure this out in a few minutes, versus guessing at it.

[keithhe]

Jenny,

 

There are way smarter people on this forum then myself, and specifically I don't know why the orthographic is taking as long as it is yet. Takes me about the same, but not as fast a machine as yours, so your card is not the problem.

 

That being said, and I mean this all with due respect, but there are a lot of problems with this plan. My guess is a lot was manually forced to get the 3D to "look" right, perhaps by dragging walls up, down, etc. Lot's of roof issues, misalignments of walls, elevation platforms that are oddly thick, stairs through roofs, mystery walls (likely auto generated). In just one small snapshot, attached, I circled some of the obvious things I see. Just one spot, of entire building.

 

Not sure if this is supposed to be a new construction, or some type of as-built. Anyway, I'll dig a bit, but suspect the smart folks will come along and figure out the offending material, or perhaps other problems.

 

 

[keithhe]

Here's another small section snapshot.

 

And looking at the wall alignments with reference layers on, and they seem pretty far out.

 

 

 

 

[keithhe]

Jenny,

 

This is an unusual way to view a render, I know, but adds to my suspicion that a lot was manually forced here. What I circled tells me that likely walls were "grabbed" and pulled down to cover, for example, an alignment issue where things didn't look right. I'm not aware of any other way this could happen. Platform levels are all over the map. I know it can be frustrating, I too struggle at times with these issues, but anyone here will tell you that when you force the program by dragging things to make it look right in a 3D render, bad things will plague you for the remaining time on the project. Painting walls, depending on how and where can also have these issues.

 

Chief will do what it is supposed to do, in most all cases, provided we do what it expects. It will have the software equivalent of a nervous breakdown, when you override it's settings in these ways.  

 

It's an ambitious project, and much larger than anything I do typically, but the same rules apply. Platforms, and alignment are critical, basic steps, and once you force those in a 3D view, it can be very difficult to go back. I'd respectfully suggest starting over and working your way up from ground up. Don't even worry about windows, doors, or interior until you have the exterior built, correctly, including the roof. Then, deal with the rest. My bet is that would be far quicker than trying to undo the other issues.

 

I'll stay out of this until some of the smarter folks weigh in, but my 2 cents.....

 

 

[Gawdzira]

Your file crashed CA for me. I attempted to change the stone material. I am pretty sure that is your resource hog on this file.

[keithhe]

Alan is correct.

Here is an exterior wall properties DBX. Jenny, way too many layers here, and the order is wrong. Not crashing me yet, but have not tried changing anything yet.

[keithhe]

I dumped the extra layers in the walls ("STONE") and about half the time (30 seconds) for a full orthographic. Then I changed the very busy stone (actually on the exterior layer) to a stucco and it takes about 5 seconds. This solves that problem, but as mentioned earlier, there are a lot of other issues to be dealt with.

[rwriem]

Make sure you've created a custom profile in the NVidia Control Panel for Chief, and that you eliminate settings conflicts between CA and NVidia.

 

jon

jon,

 

I don't have a custom profile for Chief in my NVidia control panel.  Are there settings that need to be adjusted?  I'm not sure what it should look like.

[ragetoca]

Right Click on your desktop, click on the NVIDIA control panel, go to "manage 3D settings" under "3D settings" on the left side pane (See attached) - under program settings you need to add a profile for Chief Architect - as far as what the settings should be, I would let other suggest what it should be

 

Raul

[rwriem]

Thanks Raul.  I got to the NVidia panel, and added Chief...but don't have a clue what the settings should be?

 

Bob

[keithhe]

Here a thread on the subject last year. >> https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/321-nvidia-driver-settings/

Things to know: GPU for renders / CPU for the Ray Traces.

[DRAWZILLA]

You can start out using the defaults. When you click on each line, you will see a green logo thing, and that would be the recommended setting. Try those at first, then you can play around with it trying different settings. You can always go beck to the recommended settings if you need to.

[rwriem]

Thanks guys, I'll give it a shot.

[Doug_Park]

The extra stone wall layer is one issue.

I also changed the stone pattern to be 48" instead of 12" which cuts the number of lines required. This made the performance about 10-15 seconds to regenerate on my machine. I'm not sure if this works for you or not.

Also, if you turn off line weights you won't need to regenerate in 3D when you zoom in and out.

 

This plan uses more than 2GB of memory with all the lines so if you are running the 32 bit version of Chief it will crash when it runs out of memory. With my changes the memory required was less than 2GB.

 

It is a big plan and with the many pattern lines it will push the limits of any system. I don't think you could buy a system that would be fast enough given the way we currently generate lines. Once the 3D was up I was getting rotation and zooming in less than .2 seconds which is close to being reasonable.

[dshall]

The extra stone wall layer is one issue.

I also changed the stone pattern to be 48" instead of 12" which cuts the number of lines required. This made the performance about 10-15 seconds to regenerate on my machine. I'm not sure if this works for you or not.

Also, if you turn off line weights you won't need to regenerate in 3D when you zoom in and out.

 

This plan uses more than 2GB of memory with all the lines so if you are running the 32 bit version of Chief it will crash when it runs out of memory. With my changes the memory required was less than 2GB.

 

It is a big plan and with the many pattern lines it will push the limits of any system. I don't think you could buy a system that would be fast enough given the way we currently generate lines. Once the 3D was up I was getting rotation and zooming in less than .2 seconds which is close to being reasonable.

 

This plan is not very big.  About 5 MB with or without PATTERNS AND TEXTURES.

 

Doug says we should expect it to be slow because or the many patterns.  I do not consider a 5MB file as being large.  If that is a  large file and we should anticipate the slow 3d that this plan has,  we are in trouble.  

 

This may be a good plan to study to find out what is truly causing the slowness.  5MB file,  house near 0,0,0 join the real world....  I do not understand why it is so slow.  And if it being slow is the case,  we could probably look into sharing a bedroom.

[keithhe]

There are actually three stone wall layers per wall I see in DBX properties. Should just be 1. (see post 15) No question the lines in the stone though are an anchor, in this particular case. I'm not at all sure if CA is dealing with all those or not, or just what it sees on the outside? Smart folks have any ideas on this?? I found whacking the layers back to "normal" wall layers, or what would be normal to me, made it faster, but without a doubt changing all the stone to stucco really made a large difference in times.  

 

I don't see the file size as particularly big.  

[keithhe]

OK,

 

Answered part of my question.

 

Plan as is:                                                                          1:55 to do full Orthographic

 

Plan making walls correct (lose extra two wall layers)       1:05 "        "

 

Change stone to stucco                                                      0:16 seconds

 

No idea how to change the pattern lines as Doug mentioned.

 

This is relative to speed of your machine, but tells a lot about what influences the speed.