Switching between design options extremly slow

[Joostm]

Hi,

We are doing a relatively big project using design options as modules.

I guess we have between 50-100 design options, and I am getting desperate about how slow it is to switch between them,

Takes about 15-20s each time I change or activate a different design option.

It might not seem like much, but when you constantly need to change between them, it means hours of wasted time.

Does someone else have a similar problem ?

Thanks

Operating system used: Windows 10

[danielk]

Hi,

We also work with many design options. Depending on how big each option was, it always took several seconds, but as the model got bigger and the more options were introduced, not just switching between options, but the model in general got really slow to load.

After checking the obvious things that usually slow things down (embedded library and the like), I have been advised, that the more duplicated elements you have between options, the slower the model gets. So, if you just have many options with many elements on them, that might not be so bad, but if you duplicate an entire floor and then make some minor adjustments, all the elements left unchanged (practically just duplicates of the elements from the other option) will slow things down drastically.

In theory, if you moved your options to the side, so they wouldn't overlap with other options anymore, that might improve things. In practice we just delete any options we don't need anymore, and try to keep duplicates to a minimum.

Your case might be different, maybe you just simply have a big model, and simply loading in all those elements and then calculating the intersections might just take a long time (or something else), but maybe this is something worth looking at.

Good Luck!

[Botonis]

When the design phase processes and decisions are made, obviously

several design scenarios are excluded.This is when we save as a new file and we also delete those obsolete DO.

The file becomes light again and the previous DO are also kept as archives in case they are needed in the future.

[Joostm]

thanks for all the answers.

Ultimately, it seems that design options are only good for tiny projects or very simple options.

We have seen that if you have a medium/big project size with a few design options (entire floorplans) the file becomes impossible to work with.

[danielk]

To be fair, that sounds like most new features in Archicad. 😕

Like Curtain Walls and Railings are also super-cool and very useful, but if you run a large project, having just a few of them freezes the entire file. This feels similar.

Anyhow, what you are describing sounds like the problem we had as well. Just as a test, maybe it would be worth moving the design options to the side, just to see whether it is the slow-down caused by duplicates that I mentioned, or simply the large number of elements.

Anyhow, good luck!

Let us know what you decided to do, now I feel invested. 😄

(like, are you just not going to use Design Options, and just duplicate the project file for trying different options?)

[Joostm]

ahah well we are just going back to do what we did before design options.

make the variants in the same file just next to each other or sometimes we just duplicate all the layers used for each option.

Neither is ideal, but still faster than the design options in both loading and layout placement.

[James B]

@Joostm 

Are you able to send me a file for us to review? (please send me a DM)

With what @danielk mentioned, we have been investigating this further already.

Thanks.