Nicinus

I use the terrain tool & elevation data in a separate plan. Multi-shaped garages, different slopes, floor drains in the middle of the garage......no problem.

My original patio was created as a terrain feature. I don't understand what you mean here, how would I do it in a separate plan?

Sure it is. I've done it before when I absolutely had to show a slope.

I can't get this to work. I can create the shape and control the extrude, but not the shape in plan view. Did you use boolean operations?

I'm doing a patio of about 50'x60' and my planned slope of about 3/8" per foot needs to be shown in elevation. Would a ramp be suitable in this case as well? I can't seem to figure out how to make a slope on a slab?

Remember when printing meant rolling the diazo exposure into a cardboard tube and splashing in a little ammonia - then waiting ten minutes?

Why did they do that?

Wow, hopefully I will in X7 be able to say 'Remember in X6 when you had no clue whether an elevation in your print set was up to date or not?' 

Do you guys manually compare all views for changes, or never start with Layout until you're sure all work is done?

About a month ago I was at a point where I needed to print some of my drawings for review, and generated about 10-15 sheets via Layout.

Now, a month later, I've continued to work on the design and made massive changes all over and are again at a point where I need to print. Needless to say my layout file is now out of date and needs to be updated. Two questions:

1) Besides elevations and cross sections, is there anything else that doesn't auto update? I've created a number of details but am not sure which ones I changed, do they need to be refreshed?

2) Most important question, is there a way to update everything needed at once? I have tons of interior elevations.

I must say I find it very troublesome that there doesn't seem to be a way to tell whether or not a view is up to date or not. Sometimes I find myself wondering whether I updated an elevation or not and then have to go back and compare or do it all over.

I love her stuff,  some really neat stuff.  I wonder if she is a one woman office or if she has a receptionist.  Personally,  I answer all phone calls.

I think I read somewhere that she has around 350 employees. So yes probably a receptionist as well. 

We only use Chief about 30% of the time now for our design build...... so your correct in the fact that in many ways the program no longer fits our needs.

 

Blessings,

 

Kevin

Out of curiousity, what are you using for the other 70%? Unless it is something I'm unfamiliar with like Bentley I would bet I could list some serious drawbacks with those tools as well, like Lew says.

I completely agree that Chief is not the tool for Zaha Hadid style architecture, but the same goes for Revit and many others. I do find it very good for conceptual design development though, far superior to Revit for example when it comes to quickly visualize traditional residential design.

I'm personally not asking for Rhino/Grasshopper style freeform modeling here, just some tlc on the 2D editing tools and on the layout side. Perhaps a little more intelligent call outs etc. One has to remember that neither Rhino, FormZ nor Sketchup are particular useful when it comes to construction docs. 

If Chief would look a little at what interests the average small firm architects and how they would like to control the final output I think we would be good. Given the latest ads, which all display more modern design than all their demo videos do, it may be in the works, who knows?

Chief 2DCAD is the ACAD fan's favorite whipping boy. Chief 2DCAD does not work like ACAD for a few things, but everything you need to do in Chief w/ 2DCAD CAN be done &, more often than not, just as efficiently as ACAD. it's just a "different" methodology or sometimes merely a different name/title for the same exact operation that sends the ACAD fan into convulsions.

Jim, I don't want to escalate the debate and with the risk of sounding arrogant, but the only reason for a statement like this is that you have to have a lack of experience with the alternatives. The way one edit polylines in Chief is very rudimentary and I can't see why we can't ask for improvements without being seen as, for lack of a better word, unpatriotic to Chief. This is not about Autocad, it is about the way splines and lines are edited in almost all other software products.

the only reason for 2d is for details. You don't really need to draw lines anymore

I don't find that entirely true though. Many 3D objects starts as a polyline and then get extruded or lofted.

The other issue is your statement on details. Don't you ever have to create details, or are you not personally creating the construction docs?

Others will undoubtedly chime in, and I'm honestly a relative new user, but having said that I think you will be very happy with Chief. I've used both Revit and Archicad and although they are both very fine programs, the way Chief is tailored towards the residential market is hard to beat. The historical user profile seems to be builders and building designers so there is ton of tools tailored for all sorts of practical construction intricacies. My hope is that they more directly start to address the one man architect firms, and pinpoint their needs more in the future, which to me seems like a natural market segment to grow into especially now that there is a Mac version. Many like you are looking for the next step from Autocad and if they find Revit to expensive or lacking in residential focus, Chief would in my mind be their best bet.

It is probably fair to say that the construction documentation and detailing process is lagging compared to some of the other areas of the program, and since the trend in the industry right now is to offer as photorealistic output as possible, that deficiency may continue for a while before they hopefully put more focus on the quality of printouts. That is not to say that it is bad, but you certainly don't have the amount of control of line weight and hatch patterns, sheet administration, etc as in Revit and Archicad. Well worth some workarounds in my mind though if your focus is residential. Super friendly and helpful forum as well to help you out.

I just can't get it to work, done it three times now with different emails.  :/

I have noticed that a lot of guys saying there is a slowdown are using Xeon processors, not saying that's it , just strange.

Maybe there is a correlation to more demanding use of the software?

I actually don't think it really depends on the high poly count as it is Chief that is starting to become bogged down by lots of objects it has to keep track of. Ofcourse more polygons makes it heavier, but I can have millions and millions of polys in 3ds Max whereas software like Chief and Revit comes to a crawl at a fraction of that.

I can for example easily orbit and spin around my full model in 3D perspective, but the slightest adjustment sometimes takes forever. I've found ít most effective to close all possible tabs and layers to keep updating to a minimum.

Does the "render" mean standard 3D camera view (openGL)?

I think so. Few forums confuse the terminology around this like ChiefTalk.    I was in another thread where people confuse realtime graphics with processed renderings, ray tracing, etc and I opted out.

Todd, start by doing some housekeeping.  I deleted your CAD, Import layer and the responsiveness improved significantly.

Does a hidden layer affect responsiveness?

Yes, 'Undo' sucks, and the bigger the plan the more it sucks... An SSD makes it suck a lot less.  

Would hate to know how it sucks without one then...

Todd, I downloaded it and it is pretty slow for me too. Funny enough the file I\m working on myself is just about 40MB too at about 6,000sqf.

I have two screens and usually a 3D perspective on one and then floor plan on the other. I've noticed that it slows things down the more tabs I have open in parallel, as Chief needs to update in several places so I make sure to always close everything that isn't needed. I also keep open and visible layers to a bare minimum. But it becomes slow at a certain point, yes.

The undo is a pain and seems to be a special solution in Chief, it actually seems as if it reloads the last version of the whole plan from disk somehow. Not a memory buffed differential undo apparently.

Does anybody know of a way to get the Library

Browser to display the plants by their Common

Names and not the Scientific Names? I really

don't want to become a Botany major just so 

I can locate a Walnut or Apricot tree. And of

course as we all know by now the search

feature is as useless as teats on a boar hog.

 

I do realize that you can cross reference the

names in the Plant Chooser but you have to

enter each category of plant individually and

there are dozens of categories.

Lol.

I would love to see a way to search on only 3D plants as I've basically stopped using the at least the flat trees, which I feel look really crummy.

"OtherCAD" is just a catch-all phrase for any other 2D drafting application.

Lol, I'm sometimes a bit thick...

Graeme, the file is in the first post. Rename it from .plan to .dwg.

So it works in Autocad, Draftsight and Othercad but not Chief and Accelicad. That's almost funny but to me it actually indicates a problem with Chief, as it seems more programs than not can open it.

What I can't figure out is what makes that text different from the other items that do import.

I just can't figure this out. I looked at the detail in Autocad and everything seems normal, but as soon as I import it into Chief some of the text is lost?

I imported that dwg into Chief & got the same thing you did. The text abv was there but not the rest.  I opened in OtherCAD & all the text was there. I assumed I needed to do something in OtherCAD before importing it into Chief.

Yes, there either seems to be a problem with Chief's import, or there is some option that strips away this text that I don't understand.

Well, now I can't remember of course but I searched for Myhand2 and then skimmed through a couple of them. There was some with My Archi font or similar as well. I'll give it another shot.

EDIT: this thread had several, one of the zip files included Myhand2 as well

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?47420-Hand-letter-looking-font&highlight=myhand2

That seems to vary though, the one example I have above with the lost text is from Nichiha and came in with 6-7 layers.

Would anyone mind loading that detail in the first post and see where the text went?