topic Re: Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue in Documentation

Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue

Francois Swanepoel — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 20:57:49 GMT

Hi GS Team, I hope you can help us with this one?

Archicad 29 Dimension Tool is lagging severely, making it near impossible to get any dimensioning done and seriously delaying our work.

Any ideas what is causing it and how to fix or avoid it, please?
See this short video:

This is currently happening on Archicad 29 Build 5003, Windows 11 on 3 x computers in the office.

I ran Open & Repair on this file several times, it says it was repaired every time nut the file still has the issue in the dimension tool.

I'll appreciate any advice / assistance with resolving this issue.

Thanks

Operating system used: Windows 25H2

Re: Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue

Barry Kelly — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 01:32:53 GMT

I found a couple of old posts that mentions the same problem.

Here is one of them ... https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Documentation/Lag-while-dimensioning/m-p/357193

The partial solution there was to turn of certain layers, at least then they could dimension.

So you could try that, turn off everything except what you need to dimension.

Turn other layers back on to see if you can spot what causes the issue.

However that should not be necessary.

You say you specs are OK, but I hear the fans of your machine kick in when you dimension, which make me think your machine is having to work hard.

I am assuming you are using a laptop?

If so you will have a built in video card that Archicad will try to use but is possibly not powerful enough.

Go into your Windows Display settings then Graphics settings.

Set your Archicad program to use 'High Performance' settings.

I only have Archicad 26 and Windows 10 on this old laptop but you should see something similar to this.

You could also ensure your video drivers are up to date for both the built in and dedicated video cards.

Failing that I would contact support ... https://support.graphisoft.com

Barry.

Re: Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue

Francois Swanepoel — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:13:42 GMT

Thanks @Barry Kelly, I also found those old threads which none seemed to have been resolved (and slightly different I also thought).

Yes my Archicad app is set to use my dedicated Graphics card in both directly in the driver settings & the newer Windows settings.

Somehow the fans on this laptop has always been a bit noisy.

And yes the laptop seems to work hard when I switch on the Dimension Tool, which it was not doing before.

This plan view that I'm trying to dimension on is a simple Site Plan (with only the 3D mesh, Zones, a fence railing, some lines text & 2 fills).

I read further & found a clue in this reply (not searchable, the clue is in the GIF image) that a railing was identified as the cause. I tested it on my file and there we have it... hiding the layer my fence railing is on, immediately stopped the lagging of the dimension tool in my project file.

This is half of a solution at least, but brings up the next questions. We have threads about lagging dimensions going back 4+ years, some with workarounds.

What is the permanent solution?
What are we doing wrong (if any) that could be causing this issue?
How do we avoid these delays?
What seems to be the problem with the railing elements (I recall reading about "corrupted railings" somewhere in this search)?
How can we find / identify "corrupted" elements in our project files, to eliminate / fix them?

PS: We need to dimension fences (railings), so after seeing the result from hiding the railing's Layer, I got an idea to split this simple palisade railing and test if the dimensions are fine with the Layer visible. This fence railing was +/-75m long with 6 segments. I split the one single rail into 3 and indeed, dimensions are snappy with no lagging again.

Now that this issue is narrowed down, we at least know the cause in this case and hot to avoid it.

We still might have cases where splitting railings is not ideal for modeling (especially linked railings) & more difficult than necessary to manage (ie. settings, display options, properties, expressions, etc). I hope therefor this dimension issue could be solved sometime.

Re: Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:20:05 GMT

In any case, I will report to GS Support that complex Railings can cause these dimensioning lags. I am sure they will be interested to hear about this so the developers can look into it.

Re: Archicad 29 Dimension Lagging issue

Lili Nyiregyhazi — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:32:01 GMT

Dear Francois,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

This behaviour is connected to an already known problem, which is registered under DEF-9340. The causes are currently under investigation; therefore we would appreciate if you could contact us in a Technical Support ticket through support.graphisoft.com so we could collect the file and further test it.

I linked your report to the existing DEF ticket in our system to help raise its priority.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Kind regards,

Lili