kn8hansen Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 I'm at my wits-end trying to figure out what I need to do to get things to work smoothly in Layout. I just picked up a decent workstation thinking that 2 processors, 8 cores, and 16 threads along with a Quadro 4000 2GB video card would solve all of my problems. I was wrong. Can someone open the attached Layout file on their computer and tell me if it's sluggish for you when trying to zoom/pan around the layout (not the plan - that works fine)? It was much worse when I had 3 different kitchen layouts and 3 different master bath layouts but after getting the plan down to an as-built and a remodel, it's still sluggish when zooming/panning around the layout. Maybe I'm approaching the whole remodel strategy wrong? How does everyone handle indecisive homeowners that want 3,4,5 even 6 different options for floor plans? I just marquee select the entire level and drag a copy to the side and start working on the next floor plan. It's easier for me to keep things organized this way rather than do a "Save as" and link 6 different .plan files to Layout. Thanks to anyone who has the time to help me out! Nate 1314 West Minnehaha Pkwy.layout 1314 West Minnehaha Pkwy.plan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Not sure, but I think it's the quadro card that is the problem. Chief has always said that a good gaming card is preferred. I'll download your plans and test it with my gaming card. Edit, not slow on my system, and I am very weak in the CPU department as compared to you.. Do you have an NVidia card handy to try it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 27, 2015 Author Share Posted September 27, 2015 Thanks Perry! So you're able to zoom and pan on the Layout page without any stuttering or sluggishness? This particular Layout file was slow on my laptop with an ATI card and now is still slow on my new workstation with the Quadro card. Maybe I'll try to find a different Nvidia card and try that. The 780GTX from your signature looks like it's around $400 on Amazon which is more than half of what I paid for the workstation! If it works, though, it's totally worth it! Thanks again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jscussel Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 I tried it and definitely see a lag while zooming in and out on each layout page. If I delete the existing & remodel plan views and your wall definitions on the layout page, the lag goes away. Still looking. Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Lagging here too. Opening the plan directly is fine BUT clicking a view in layout opens plan with nothing showing,can't figure it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Still not sure but I should mention that we have less trouble on the Dell listed here (with lesser quadro than you have) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gawdzira Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Your layout pages are dogs for me too. I sent your plan to layout and duplicated similar to your layout pages and I have no problem. See image for my send to layout settings. I would just delete your layout boxes and try again as something went wrong. Did you do any scaling of the layout box? Rotate the layout boxes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jscussel Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Clicking a view in layout opens the plan ok here. But, looks like two different plans are opening. Depends on which view I click on. One is "Floor Plan" and the other is " Floor Plan - 2". Different things on different pages of layout. Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jscussel Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 When I click a view in layout and hit "Relink File", "hahaPkwy.plan" comes up. Tried to relink to correct file, keeps coming back "hahaPkwy.plan". Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 Thanks for all of the input! I've been messing with it all afternoon and haven't gotten anywhere. Here's what I've done to diagnose this: 1. Created new blank .plan file 2. Copy/pasted the problem floor plan into the new .plan file (lining up the floors to stack properly) 3. Created new blank .layout file (no title block - blank page) 4. Sent To Layout verifying the settings that match Alan's suggested settings 5. After the first Send To Layout box it started slowing down. After the 6th one, we're back to sluggish. I'm guessing there's something about the .plan file that's bogging down Layout. I'm wondering if there might be a problem with the way I've drawn the plan? I've gone through about 8 different versions of this floor plan with the client (using my copy/paste-in-place method mentioned above). Maybe something gets left over when I do my copy/paste and then delete it later? After I delete a version I always turn on the "All on" layer set to make sure there's no artifacts left over but who knows? I've drawn some much larger plans with Chief Architect and never have any problems with those (I don't usually have to copy/paste on the new construction ones). Layout only seems to bog down when I do these Remodels with multiple versions of the floor plan drawn in the .plan file. Since others with nicer graphics cards have also said that it's sluggish, i think that rules out the video card. I'm assuming that 2-quad core processors is enough. That would rule out CPU. My system resources are all free (ie. <2% CPU, 80% avail RAM, <2% disk usage...). I'm running an SSD hard drive so that should be OK. Anyway, sorry for the long-winded response but it sounds like I might just have to live with it. Thanks again for all of the responses! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 Jon- Not sure where you're going wrong here? There's only ever been 2 files for this particular project - the .plan file and the .layout file. I essentially have two houses drawn in one .plan file - the existing and the remodel. Once the existing is drawn, I just copy/paste-in-place and drag the existing floor plan to the right and start the remodel on that floor plan. When I send to layout, I just crop one or the other out and label the layout boxes based on what's shown. Thanks for trying, though! Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 you should send plan etc to CA's tech support Lew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 Thanks Lew. I'll do that and post back with my results! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gawdzira Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 One thing to do is to change the room type for you 2nd floor deck to a balcony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 I opened the file in my old computer and it wasn't too bad - no redraw zooming and fairly smooth and instant page change. It was a 6-core intel 3930k with an Radeon 5870 HD. My new system was ultra-smooth - 5820k and Titan Nvidia. Is your system 8 cores a piece or 4x2? Multi-core machines, combined with multi-core motherboards is the largest performance boost i've seen in any 3D modeling. We have 4-core systems that are supposedly fast but nothing compared to our 6+ core systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 Changing the deck did not help. I opened a fairly large layout file, added some to it, was all fine until I sent a view from your plan. I think the problem may be in the plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 Johnny, I think you may be right. I checked out the PassMark scores for my dual processor setup and it falls short of both of your single processors! 10,632 ==> Dual W5590 Xeon processors (4 cores each) 12,089 ==> Single Intel 3930K (6 core) 12,993 ==> Single Intel 5820K (6 core) I guess I fooled myself when I thought that 2 processors was better than one! I may just have to sell the workstation and steal the specs from your new rig and build one myself! Thanks for taking the time to help me out! I opened a support ticket with Tech Support so we'll see what they say about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 The typical way of drawing a remodel, for me, is to draw the existing first, then save as new remodel. I keep them as separate plans and send each to the layout. Never have any problems doing that. Funny thing though, I didn't extensively test the layout and I didn't see any problems, but my setup is different than most. Could be a setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 I took the Riverstone sample plan (88mb) and layout (15mb) zoom and pan are fluid and fine. Add one plan view from the Minnehaha file and that is jerky in both. Not sure this is hardware. Fixing the balcony, changing the grid snap size, moved model to origin, all did nothing. Also checked for duplicates (my assistant gets those a lot using copy and paste in place), none. I do remodels the way Perry except recently started to also save a copy of the as built as a template. Find it easier send multiple versions to the layout that way without having one already sent change it's reference if both are open when doing a save as. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 I think it may have something to do with your macros. I opened up your plan on my laptop and the layout was pretty slow for me as well. I turned off room labels though and it sped right up. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Dan_Park Posted September 28, 2015 Solution Share Posted September 28, 2015 It does appear to be the room label text is causing the lag. By just editing the room labels: I notice improved speed by un-checking CAD Style Font sizing. Also improved speed by unchecking auto width and auto height. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe_Carrick Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 It does appear to be the room label text is causing the lag. By just editing the room labels: I notice improved speed by un-checking CAD Style Font sizing. Also improved speed by unchecking auto width and auto height. Dan, That's not nice. I'm sure that a lot of users have those items checked since those are the OOB defaults for Rich Text. It also answers the question of why 6" Rich Text appears to be 9" tall, etc. When I uncheck those my 6" Rich Text becomes 6". I'm going to need to make a lot of changes to my Plans to eliminate those settings - but I will have to increase the size of all Rich Text by about 50% - or just live with text that's smaller than I want. IAE, the performance hit in Layout is not something I want to live with, so I will just have to bite the bullet and do a lot of editing of Templates and Current Plans unless CA can come up with a tool to convert all Rich Text in a Plan to "uncheck" those and edit the specified sizes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn8hansen Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 Thank you very much Michael and Dan! That was indeed the problem! I had no idea that it took so much effort for the software to recalculate the room label macros. In the future, I'll just create static labels and turn the macro labels layer on if I need to re-check dimensions and square footage. Not the most elegant solution but definitely worth being able to navigate around layout without the jerkiness and sluggishness! I will also update my support ticket with Tech Support so they're in the know. Thanks again to all that contributed! Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Thank you very much Michael and Dan! That was indeed the problem! I had no idea that it took so much effort for the software to recalculate the room label macros. In the future, I'll just create static labels and turn the macro labels layer on if I need to re-check dimensions and square footage. Not the most elegant solution but definitely worth being able to navigate around layout without the jerkiness and sluggishness! I will also update my support ticket with Tech Support so they're in the know. Thanks again to all that contributed! Nate To be clear, it was me that suggested it might have something to do with macros. According to Dan, its not the macros, its other text settings. Anyway, just wanted to clarify so you didn't abandon your macros too quickly...it looks like those might not be the main issue with your labels. It may just be the other settings Dan mentioned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbaehmer Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Dan, That's not nice. I'm sure that a lot of users have those items checked since those are the OOB defaults for Rich Text. It also answers the question of why 6" Rich Text appears to be 9" tall, etc. When I uncheck those my 6" Rich Text becomes 6". I'm going to need to make a lot of changes to my Plans to eliminate those settings - but I will have to increase the size of all Rich Text by about 50% - or just live with text that's smaller than I want. IAE, the performance hit in Layout is not something I want to live with, so I will just have to bite the bullet and do a lot of editing of Templates and Current Plans unless CA can come up with a tool to convert all Rich Text in a Plan to "uncheck" those and edit the specified size. I will need to do this also as my templates also. Not fun. At least though we know and it can be fixed. Wonder why it was checked as an OOB setting? Even though it is bitter sweet...thanks Dan for finding that out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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