designergy

Hello, We are a small builder residential and light industrial builder in and around Edmonton Alberta. We are working on a small office and 3 bay shop for a repeat client that is going to put us above the 500m2 threshold requiring an Architect's involvment. In the past we always have had an engineer do a code review and the structural components of our plans but the Architect will be a new one for us. Does anyone have any expirence/recommendations for an architect to work with in the area? Ideally we would still like to do all of the drafting as we have in the past with the engineer we use. Thank you in advance for your suggestions and advice : )

We are looking for an engineer to do plan/code reviews on commercial and residential designs in Northern Alberta, Canada. Does anyone have any recommendations? The one we have been working with has been great but their response times are becoming less and less dependable. Likely in the same situation as the rest of us just trying to keep up. Thank you for your input in advance!

You are all wonderful people!

Hello, I have been working through chief talk threads to create a macro for defining area in acres for a prelim subdivision concept before sending to our engineering side. I have attached below a screenshot of the macro I am using, how it appears in the label box (added the word "acres" behind it and how it shows up on my polyline. Does anyone know what I need to add to the macro to remove the default "SQ FT" that is likely coming from the area portion of the macro? I only fumble my way through macros using threads on chief talk so you might have to explain it to me like I am a Golden Retriever...or just a text of the fix would be very appreciated as well : )

That I don't know but I think I remember hearing that Photoshop was ported over to the new iPads with M1 chips by Adobe. I am hearing more and more rumours of software that was built for the Mac being ported for these new M1 iPads so it at least finally seems "possible"...not sure on probable.

Hello, Now that X14 is coded to work on the Apple M1 Architecture natively without Rosetta 2, I am wondering if there has been any discussion about it running on an iPad Pro? My understanding was Apple was moving all of their processors to an ARM based architecture with the intention to enable all software coded for one of their devices to run on all their other devices without having to get into costly recoding. This would be so helpful to our design workflow and for our crews to have access to read-only plan files out of the office. Even just brainstorming out new ideas would be significantly easier from anywhere with an iPad.

Hello : ) Looking for a bit of feedback how everyone has their wall layers setup. I noticed chief had the OSB as an exterior layer and not flush with the foundation. We always flush our rim board up with our foundation and then the exterior of the 2x6 wall sheathing frames flush to the exterior of the rim board. This allows us to have everything in line when we transition from a wood wall down to an ICF raised foundation. When I set my walls up like this in Chief it makes for some pretty interesting wall measurements on the interior. Does everyone just round the interior wall numbers up to the nearest 1/2"? Thanks for your feedback in advance

It runs significantly better for me than my intel BUT...printing to PDF still takes a bit of time and I have been able to slow it down on larger files now. I am 100% happy I upgraded as I am not constantly thinking about the speed of my computer now when I am drafting but I will probably always think that a computer could be "just a bit faster" at the end of the day ol

X13 just looks flat. Not sure how else to describe it. I am too far into using X13 to switch back but I have stopped using the renderings because of it. Its feels like stepping back to Windows Vista...there, I said it lol.

Keep in mind that it may have handled the file better because I was missing some of your textures. I have not heard the fans run once yet but I have not spent a ton of time in 3D. The combination of my intel MBP and eGPU would actually raise the temperature in my office so this is a nice change lol. I agree on the renderings. X12 did appear to look better.

Screenshots were no problem. I didn't tweak them at all so this was just the factory settings. Took a second or two to do the physically based. The 3D was a bit choppy in physically based on the exterior but pretty smooth on the interior. Standard view 3D was smooth on both interior and exterior. 3D was a bit choppy for the first few seconds and then seemed to smooth out. Interior was smoother than exterior. Bit of a load time to switch to physical in 3D. Here is the link to the video. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l71ppla40wwk3yd/AAAmm7rgQJyUXkd36VAx2ZBsa?dl=0. I will keep it up for a few days. I hope this helps

Didn't do much for 3D today still. Was mainly on screen-shares with clients and staff. On the intel MBP, I would experience a significant drop in performance while screen-sharing. Chief would stutter and take some time to render. Occasionally it would crash while going into 3D from a floor plan. Today I could not discern a difference while in screen-share. It worked just as flawlessly while connected. Verified print to PDF works as well. It actually seemed a little slower at that process but not by much. That might just be me thinking that though...I didn't test speeds as I am just not that guy. I should note I have the MBP set in high power mode. I also read that the RAM is discrete on these chips and there is no bottleneck with data transmission between the GPU, CPU and RAM. That might be why the Screenshare experience is better. I am posting this all here because this community has given me so much info over the years and I really haven't had much to give back...this is my tiny contribution. I hope it is of interest to a few of you out there : )

Thank you for the catch! I do not post much and forgot to update : )

I hate to say this but it makes X13 feel like X12 for me LOL. I noticed a significant drop in performance when I moved to X13 and that seems to be gone now.

X13 on both

I just setup up my new M1 Max MacBook Pro. Wow. This thing is fast. Here is my initial thoughts... Past Setup I am upgrading from a top of the line i9 MBP from last year and there is absolutely no comparison. I was running 3 x 27" Apple thunderbolt screens with apple thunderbolt to USBC dongles. One display was plugged directly into the right side of the MBP. One display was plugged into the thunderbolt port on the second display and then that display was plugged into a Blackmagic Pro eGPU (Vega 56) with the same thunderbolt to USBC dongle. The eGPU was then plugged also into the right side of the MBP. It worked pretty well but would freeze and stutter a bit on larger plans. The fans were insanely noisy on both the MBP and especially the eGPU. I do a ton of screen sharing with our clients all over Western Canada and that is when it was at its worst...Thats my next test. New Setup MBP M1 Max with 64 GB of RAM and 2TB SSD Drive. Each screen is now using its own dongle to plug into their own USBC port on the MBP. No eGPU. This thing is silent and doesn't stutter at all in 3D. I don't do any Ray Tracing so I can't give any feedback there but will try to add my thoughts here as I use this setup more over the next week or two. I will keep my i9 MBP for a month or two as my luck with new rigs usually runs out in short order and I end up back with my prior rig LOL Cheers : )

I have 3 Apple displays connected to my MBP and a Black Magic Pro eGPU. I have no problem saving in Monterey. Are you using the Apple brand thunderbolt to usbc connectors? My setup seems to be picky about only Apple ones for some reason. Doesn’t make sense to me. I have two monitors connected to each other and then into my eGPU which connects to my MBP (only right side). One screen connects to the right side with a thunderbolt to usbc dongle and then power is connected to the left side. Works well except the eGPU can’t be plugged in during a restart or the system crashes. I have to plug it in after start up.

I hadn't thought of saving them in the library as I usually just create one and then copy and paste. Thank you!

Hello, This is more of a curiosity than an issue. I am trying to learn where layers such as "Rooms,Interior Area" receive their instructions from with the goal of creating an independent layer for the Ceiling Height macro as its own layer. This would allow me to have the ceiling heights generated automatically by room and have that layer just switched on in certain plan views. If I just add it in to the text of the Room Label in default settings, I do not get layer control of just the ceiling height (that I am aware of). I understand how to manually add a ceiling height text box macro in each room (which does allow me layer control). I just had the thought that one might be able to create an independent layer that looks at each room in the same manner as how I think I understand the "Rooms, Interior Area" and "Rooms, Interior Dimensions" layers behave so this is automatically done. Thanks in advance : )

Thank you everyone! The template must have been saved rotated from a past plan. I haven't posted here before and cant believe how quick everyone was with help! I will setup my signature and always post a plan files in the future. Cheers

That was my first thought. When I do the rotation, nothing changes. I saved the plan after rotation, closed out of chief, reopened and still no change. Its very strange. When I do get it to rotate -90 it actually flips 180. I should note its just the text that should be (rotated 90 clockwise) in the top post to be correct.

Hello, I am sure this is a simple duh moment but I started a new plan and all of my text is now sideways. I have searched and all found is info on plan rotation (which I did not do....unless accidently). I must have changed a setting by accident and cannot find a way to change it back for the life of me. Would someone please be able to help me hang my head in shame for not seeing the obvious issue? Just starting the plan so I can quickly get going again but I have spent too much time looking for a post on this now to give up. lol