Anyone else constantly correcting floor and ceiling elevations?

[Michael_Gia]

I seem to be dealing with a new frustrating problem with X14.

 

As I work on a plan, even though I'm not messing around with floor and ceiling elevations, Chief seems to randomly set new floor and ceiling heights in random rooms in a plan.

 

It's been happening on the last 5 or 6 plans so it's not a one-off.

 

Besides the slow-as-molases performance, X14 is really starting to piss me off.

 

Am I the only one having these issues?

 

[robdyck]

Does this problem occur when working on a new plan from a template? Or are you using a 'save as' type of plan?

[robdyck]

If you can post the plan file I could examine a couple of possibilities more closely.

[Michael_Gia]

On 10/13/2022 at 11:37 AM, robdyck said:

If you can post the plan file I could examine a couple of possibilities more closely.

Hi, Robert, here is a plan that is behaving erratic.  

 

Room heights seem to randomly change from default floor or ceiling height, even when not messing with floor heights.  Like I'll copy a wall and a bath fixture from one floor to another and then I'll get a prompt warning of some change in floor or ceiling height and then I'll have to hunt down the offending room.

 

It's also extremely sluggish on my computer.  

Not that it's a screaming monster but I used to be able to handle models of this size with relative ease.

 

Can you let me know if it's sluggish on your system as well?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkpgj1xdifb1uxo/>CITY PLANS 18-Plex.plan?dl=0

 

[DavidJPotter]

On 10/13/2022 at 9:07 AM, Michael_Gia said:

Am I the only one having these issues?

Not me. The only times I see this phenomena is when I am working on a new or some-time users plan file where they did not first set all relevant floor and ceiling heights Default Settings before creating the plan file. Resetting or changing Default Settings after the fact causes some plan file psychoses until it settles out after just persisting and making all the room dialog boxes comply. This has been true since I started with Version 4 back in 1994.

 

DJP

[GaryOhmer]

not me either

[robdyck]

@Michael_Gia

This is a very nice looking project!

There are a few things you should / could do to improve performance.

1. The Terrace room type should be changed from Porch to Balcony. Read Help about these room types / functions.
2. After doing this, you'll need to select all gazebo rooftop 3d solids and open then close (without any change) to get them to rebuild at the correct elevation. Chief's rebuild tool, F12, only works for some objects and others need to be rebuilt by opening and closing the object's dialog box. Either Chief doesn't know about this or care about it or know how to correct it.
3. Remove unnecessary layers from walls / floor. Building Paper / foam underlayment etc., are usually not needed in the model. If you don't need them, remove them.
4. Wherever possible, don't replicate 3d objects on floors. For items like furniture, water heaters, cabinets even, I'd place CAD blocks instead of 3d objects. 3d objects would make sense to use for 1 suite of each type only. This will drastically reduce the surface count.
5. I'd suggest a Saved Plan View and Layer Set just for landscaping and exterior modelling. Turn off / lock layers that don't pertain to that type of work.
6. I'd suggest a Saved Plan View and Layer Set just for Interior Finishing. Turn off / lock layers that don't pertain to that type of work. This is where I'd deal with cabinets, interior fixtures,  room labels, furniture.
7. For Walls in plan views, turn on 'Main Layer Only', wherever possible. This is of course a personal preference, and if you want them to show in con docs, then I'd display them there, but not everywhere.
8. For plan views (except larger scale interior detail plans), turn off the Casing Layers. They won't be visible when printed anyhow.
9. For Exterior Walls, You could combine all exterior layers into 1 layer of the cumulative thickness. Same for interior layers. Chief doesn't handle all these layers well on a large house much less a multi-story apartment. 
10. For Section Views, you could turn off most or all interior finish items. Cabinet layouts and elevations, if needed, could be sent to layout using wall / room elevations with a separate layer set.

[Michael_Gia]

6 hours ago, robdyck said:

There are a few things you should / could do to improve performance.

Wow, thank you for the suggestions!

 

Regarding point #3 and #7, I thought about creating a 12" thick exterior wall with only 1 main layer and setting the interior and exterior layers to "0" thickness but with the brick texture for the exterior and paint colour for the interior.  This cleans up and simplifies the building quite a bit and has sped things up drastically.  

 

Do you recommend this?  

[robdyck]

Generally speaking that should work but just for the sake of simplification, my preference would be to have an exterior layer with the thickness of the cumulative exterior layers. This way, if you want to use a material region that is thinner, but cuts the exterior finish, it will still work properly.

[Chrisb222]

On 10/13/2022 at 10:07 AM, Michael_Gia said:

Besides the slow-as-molases performance, X14 is really starting to piss me off.

 

Michael, I am not having any issues like you describe, and wanted to let you know, as a fellow Mac user, this plan is not slow on my M1Max Studio at all. Most things I tried were instant, or only a 1 second delay.

 

Just thought you might like to know that. Good luck.

[HumbleChief]

Not sure this helps but here's a video with the relative speed of things on my (older) rig.

 

 

[SHCanada2]

On 10/13/2022 at 8:07 AM, Michael_Gia said:

Chief seems to randomly set new floor and ceiling heights in random rooms in a plan.

soooo, was there a cause to this? was it the porch balcony issue, or something else? I dont see anything else in Rob's list which would seem to be a contributor of the problem

[Michael_Gia]

1 hour ago, HumbleChief said:

Not sure this helps but here's a video with the relative speed of things on my (older) rig.

I’m able to move around in 3D much like you.  Thanks for the video, it’s the only way to compare performance between systems. 
The delay was mostly when I would click on an item, like a wall or cabinet and try to edit something in the dialogue box, there would be a 4 second delay for almost each item I was working on. 
 

After talking to tech support, the problem it seems, was with the location of my plan files.

The files were on Dropbox, so I moved them out of drop box and back on to my local drive and that took care of the sluggishness. 
 

This wasn’t a problem with X13. I’m still not sure if that’s really the issue here but I’ll see over time. For now this plan is workable, at least. 
 

As for the room elevation quirk, it was coming from the roof top terrace being designated as a porch as Robert had figured out. 
I don’t understand why, but that room definition affected room floor heights all over the place. Once I changed it to balcony I stopped getting those warning dialogue boxes regarding floor elevations. 

[Michael_Gia]

33 minutes ago, SHCanada2 said:

soooo, was there a cause to this?

The room elevation quirk, was coming from the roof top terrace being designated as a porch as Robert had figured out. 

I don’t understand why, but that room definition affected room floor heights all over the place. Once I changed it to balcony I stopped getting those warning dialogue boxes regarding floor elevations.  Very strange. 
 

Although, I originally had this terrace set as a undefined, since I wanted parapet walls with a cap and a railing on all 4 sides.  
I thought the best way to achieve that was with a “room”, then the floor could act as the flat roof, and the ceiling height would determine the height of my pony walls, which were a 24” parapet plus glass railing.  I don’t see why I need the “balcony” setting?

[HumbleChief]

Glad you got things worked out.

[DBCooper]

I thought Robert's list of things you can do to speed things up was really good, but it looks like he left out something important.  According to Chief's support article about trouble shooting slow plans:

 

Work on Files Locally

By far, the most common reason for slowness is working in an unsupported fashion, such as over a network server location, external hard drive, or USB flash drive.

 

Here is the link to the full article if anyone is interested:

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00521/troubleshooting-slowness-in-chief-architect-plans.html

 

 

[robdyck]

18 hours ago, SHCanada2 said:

I dont see anything else in Rob's list which would seem to be a contributor of the problem

Everything in the list contributes to performance. More complexity = slower performance. Unacceptable or unpredictable slowness is not something I can nor tried to diagnose.

2 hours ago, DBCooper said:

but it looks like he left out something important.  According to Chief's support article about trouble shooting slow plans:

 

Work on Files Locally

Ummm, how would I know where or how @Michael_Gia stores or accesses his plan files? This wasn't something I attempted to address.

I was not attempting or claiming to replace Technical Support, simply offering some advice to reduce the complexity of the model.

[basketballman]

On 10/13/2022 at 10:07 AM, Michael_Gia said:

I seem to be dealing with a new frustrating problem with X14.

 

As I work on a plan, even though I'm not messing around with floor and ceiling elevations, Chief seems to randomly set new floor and ceiling heights in random rooms in a plan.

 

It's been happening on the last 5 or 6 plans so it's not a one-off.

 

Besides the slow-as-molases performance, X14 is really starting to piss me off.

 

Am I the only one having these issues?

 

  Having same problem in X15 ...