NVidia Driver Problem - displaying material colors in Standard View

[David J. Potter]

I cannot tell you exactly what is "right" for your PC and its hardware.

I do not suffer this particular phenomena presently most likely because I do not have an exact duplicate of your PC for me to use.

The last time I did have a similar (similar not the same, exact unwanted behavior), I tried different things which did not work and then called Chief Architect Tech Support.

At that time (about six months ago, the problem I was having, I was having in Chief Premier X4 and no other Chief Architect Inc or Home Designer titles) they told me that the then current NVIDIA driver had "some issues" and if I were to "roll back" to the earlier driver it should help. It did and I am still using that older driver to this day and have not needed or wanted to update to the current driver (I have no way on knowing if the current "new" driver is better or worse than the one I have).

Over the years updating software video card drivers has been a "good thing" to do, only last year out of the 18 years I have been using NVIDIA video cards and Chief Inc software did I ever have any problems at all what so ever so I consider that a pretty good track record.

I cannot tell you what to do with total certainty what will fix your problem, I only share my own track of experience and hope that it at least adds some perspective to a wildly variable environment that a Windows PC and software designed to run within it poses.

DJP

[blaisdf]

Thank you, David Potter, for your quick reply.

I'm beginning to believe, as you suggest, that the problem is related to the driver for the GPU chip. I've been wrestling with this quirky display issue for several days now, thinking the problem was related to user error on my part. It's time to roll back the laptop's graphic driver one version level and see what happens.

blaisdf

[David J. Potter]

Let us know how it turns out!

DJP

[blaisdf]

I visited the NVidia website for the newest driver for the GeForce and found that they do have a new driver (v285.33) and I downloaded it but did not install it. Instead, I rolled back the current driver (v275.33) to an older version (v177.48 which I think originally shipped with).

The result can be seen in the images below. All display modes seem to show the same good result, albeit slightly changed to reflect the mode's characteristics.

The images I've attached are: the original structure with the Wall Specification dialog selecting a color for the north wall; a Dollhouse view in Vector View, followed by the Standard View of the Dollhouse, then a Watercolor View of same, and finally a Full Camera View taken from the inside of the structure, showing only the north wall in green.

Thank you for your help and suggestions.

[Beesley]

Hi, new user here! I'm having the same problems as Morogan - with white objects still displaying their default colors, even after applying new colors etc.
I'm using Win8, and my video card is an AMD Radeon 7470 series.... anyone out there with a similar set up? Thanks in advance. Have a SUPER day!

[David J. Potter]

None of us here are Computer Scientists or software Engineers. Others have found solutions as shown above. I have never had such a problem by always making sure I have sufficient hardware to support proper function. In years past I have had minor display problems which were solved by video card drivers, either updates or roll-backs. One problem I had back around 2006 I solved by replacing my video card (the problem I had then was the video card I had did not work well with older versions of Home Designer software but worked fine with then newer ones, I needed good support for both. That video card is now in my Son's PC and works fine for his purposes, it did not support mine.)
All possible solutions have been discussed here already; no one can say what will or will not work on your PC, you just do what you must to obtain the performance you require. In 18 years of my using this software, I have communicated to Chief Architect Inc Tech Support around four times. These instances were ones where I had already done everything I could think of with no joy and in each instance Tech Support offered workable solutions that did solve the problem.
This forum is not Tech Support, all of our help is based upon our own experiences as users. You would be better served to communicate with them for this sort of problem as it is their specialty and area of expertise.

DJP