X17 Save As PDF Locking up??

[COMSTOCKL35]

Anyone else having issues with x17 locking up when using "Chief Architect Save as PDF"? 

 

Was running the beta just fine, since the upgrade on layouts that have multiple "standard" camera views on the layout I'm finding that the time to generate the pdf is drastically increased and or will completely lock up the program, leaving me the only option to force close the program. 

 

I've checked all the things i can think of that may be causing this, video card drivers, updates, power status/settings, exc.. 

 only way i was able to get my current project to process was to switch all my standard rendering views to vector view and even still the processing time was almost 4 mins, 

19 pages, and just about 19k KB once it finally did process. @600DPi, ANSI B, 

RTX 4070 Laptop 

 

Any thoughts on what could be causing this??

 

[JKEdmo]

I had serious lag issues, which I solved by repairing the program installation.  You might give it a go.

 

 

[COMSTOCKL35]

1 hour ago, JKEdmo said:

I had serious lag issues, which I solved by repairing the program installation.  You might give it a go.

 

 

Thank you, i will give this a try 

[VHampton]

You're running an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU — more than powerful enough — but Chief may still prioritize CPU or RAM in PDF generation. Make sure:

• Dedicated GPU is selected for Chief (not integrated).

• Try running in Performance Mode under NVIDIA Control Panel.

 

Fixes & Workarounds That Helped Others with new versions where the camera dpi is set to 600 by default:

• Drop DPI temporarily (e.g., try 300 or 400) to test speed impact — sometimes 600 DPI just chokes the export buffer.

• Switch camera views to vector (as you did) or even tech line drawing style to reduce GPU processing demands.
  
   

  Observations & Potential Causes:

• Standard rendering views (especially with shadows, ambient occlusion, or PBR lighting settings) can be memory-intensive during PDF output — even more so at 600 DPI.

• X17 may be struggling with raster-to-vector translation or texture memory buffering during PDF compilation.

• Since it worked fine in the beta, it's possible something changed in the PDF rendering pipeline in the final build (maybe a bug, or different optimization).

[Joe_Carrick]

In my experience PDFs of less than 200 are adequate.  

Even better if you can generate a PNG to use in lieu of a PDF the performance will be way better.  I would only use a PDF if there was a need for the editing capabilities of that format.