Griffin

I'm guessing that if the product manager wanted to get input from the forum here on any features there were still debating about (for X9 or X10), there would be a pretty good response rate. Looking briefly at the Suggestions section, he no doubt has his work cut out for him and the team.

Great Larry, I'm glad to hear that something like that was formed to help guide the program. Still, is there were a broad survey and a majority of users that felt strongly about a particular feature, that larger voice might be even more influential. At least we would feel that our input was being measured. Back in my DataCAD days we ranked all our feature requests based on the user productivity impact and degree of difficulty for the developers. Both measures were subjective, but that process was helpful and communicated to the users and third-party developers. The sales folks got a voice too for Wow features that nobody really wanted but were great for demos - that input was kept to a minimum (and I hope it is for CA too).

Maybe for the next cycle CA could do some survey work with their user base to help set development priorities. I don't know how their process works so maybe they already have something like this in the works I'm not aware of.

I don't think any of us want to pay more for our CAD, but it's about the investment needed to improve productivity. I can spend an hour on a complex stairway now and still not get it right. Spending 5 minutes on a stair that looks perfect is a better value proposition. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with not having a third-party development program, but it does put a burden on those of us who feel that there are some missing capabilities that impact our time. This is especially bothersome since we do not get much of a development roadmap from CA. I'm not complaining, but it's a fair discussion here to give some feedback on development priorities. I'll probably not use all the new cabinetry features which are really cool, and I'll certainly think about that next time I'm trying to get 10 suspended ceilings properly centered or struggling with the lack of origins on hatch patterns (right now).

A few things come to mind: HVAC duct layout, plumbing riser diagrams, suspended ceiling tools, and commercial door/lock/hardware configuration come to mind as third-party type enhancements.

A demonstration of the Cadimage ArchiCAD Polystair features starts at 39 minutes in the link below. ...Worth a look if you are interested in a simple stair construction process. It is impressive that the program is open to this type of third-party enhancement. This 2-minute stair example that would have taken 30 seconds without the narritive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yutTWSmYR6I

Yes, the video is a bit underwhelming, but I'm hoping there is more meat-on-the-bone for this x9 release that will see soon. I agree with Joey on the stair tool, it is so close to being great. It is clear that lots of work has gone into the kitchen cabinet features, and these tools are already impressive for demos. HOWEVER, 90% of my clients go to a kitchen designer that uses 20/20 or some other dedicated program for their custom kitchen, and so of late I'm just drawing basic polylines for blocking out cabinets in plan and elevation.

Very cool. Please keep us posted! The White House is 55,000 square feet, so you are getting close.

That works, thanks! I've been looking under the object dialogue window where it does this control not populate for symbols.

Thanks Alaska, I don't see options for Front of Group for symbols...what am I missing?

Is it possible to control the Front/Back location of a symbol to cover part of a symbol below? For example, a chair symbol under a table symbol. Any clever ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you David and Chief. I think the railings are only going to show with Color, but if I make a CAD detail from the Color version I get something useful.

Any suggestions for getting my stair rails to display in elevation? Rails are set to Black with a Weight of 10, All ON.

OK, I 'm pulling my gray hair out trying to get a simple commercial steel door jamb to display correctly in a masonry wall. When I set the exterior casing to zero width (workaround), the jamb displays, but the door is offset to the wall width, and the threshold is narrowed to the the jamb opening dimension. While I'm asking, is there a way to show a proper door configuration with a rebated jamb in CA?

Agree with Ben and Drawzilla about the time required. At 40-50 sheets per day you are looking at about an hour/day to assemble and staple the sets. I moved from HP to Canon last year and will never look back. Fast, reliable, much better quality and far better ink handling. If you need a 36" model I'd recommend this with an output of 2 D-size sheets per minute. Canon imagePROGRAF iPF750 (or the iPF771)

The GTX1080 is the fastest card you can get for under $700. I'm quite sure that the Quadro series would be slower, perhaps quite a bit slower since they are designed and driver-optimized for true workstation software applications. I'm running a quad core i7 6700K at 4.8GHZ and still find the ray tracing speeds very unsatisfactory. Perhaps one day CA will move to a GPU based ray tracing engine such as Octane which is amazingly fast on a good board.

CA has a far more intuitive interface than Softplan for sure. Took me 50-60 hours to get my first basic set of drawings printed and I'm half of that now after a few months. Some folks here can do the same work in a day. In addition, I initially spent half my time watching videos and reading help screens to get the next steps figured out. The videos are great, and there is lots of excellent help available on this Board. Jump in, the waters fine!

I use StruCalc for more complex conditions and the excellent but free Forte software from Weyerhauser for simple wood members and LVLs. I typically include the report PDFs on the drawing sheets as well. http://www.woodbywy.com/software/forte-software/

All the page ordering controls are in the upper left corner of the screen when in Layout mode. They seem backward to me, but everything you need is right here. See image.

I guess I can convert the schedule to text and add it manually too..

I can add wainscoting from the library, but it does not seem to have a Room Finish Schedule entry. It does not appear under any to the currently defined columns (wall covering, chair rail, etc.) Do I need to export my schedule to Excel, add this manually, and then bring it back in as a PDF - what am I missing???

Hi Joey, thx. The Floor Materials Region seems to have the same properties as the polyline unless I'm missing something, which means that I can't put it under a library item. I can move the symbols to CAD and them bring them back in as lines, but then I need to have the some phantom symbols off the Layout page to get the schedules to work correctly. I was hoping for a more elegant approach!

Someone more clever than I might be able to figure this out: ...Trying to show two tile patterns in a bathroom using a 4x8" tile with a 2x2" tile border starting with two room polylines. When I get all the tile lines registered and then make a CAD block of the two polylines, the tile registrations shifts an inch or so so it looks like that approach will not work. If I just use one polyline, the bath fixtures are covered up as these does not seem to be a way to bring library items to the front. When I try a transparent fill for tile in the room dialogue, it still covers the polylines below.

I hope someone has figured this out: What is the best way to show a three-way switch in a stairway where the light in on a different level?

Spent a couple of hours on this - only to be resolved by deleting that particular layer set and creating a new one. There might be a bug in Layout somewhere as I could not find the single offending layer that masked the plan. I was able to move the masking anomaly around the page by using different layer configurations, but the problem remained.