Rich_Winsor

Isn't this what it's really all about? This is after all a Chief message board. If someone decides to use a different software program to do post production work on their Chief images that's irrelevant to me. I'm working with Chief. And doesn't it also stand to reason that even if you do intend to drag your Chief content into another application for said post production work, it will still be beneficial to start with the best possible images that Chief is capable of producing?

Here is an example of using Material Regions to cut the grooves in the cement wall. The columns are stacked P-Solids with a skinny P-Solid in between to represent the grooves but all the grooves in the walls are Material Regions set to "cut finish layers of parent object".

That's an interesting one. Here's what I get when I open your plan and hit "H".

I believe "thanks a tun" would be an appropriate reply here.

Here you go Marina. I originally edited your plan in X9, but I see from the paths to the missing textures that you were using X8 instead. So here is your plan in X8. There are two saved camera views. You can open either camera and start a Ray Trace. In the Ray Trace Current View box click on the Edit button and you will go to the Ray Trace Options dbx where you can see all the settings that were used for the shot. You can also open the Camera dbx's and see all the camera settings there. Hope this helps and here is the second camera image. 4512_Fair_Oaks-X8.plan

I had a quick play with your plan. Kind of working with a minimalist canvas as materials are missing as Greg noted. The first thing you should do (and I know it sounds strange) is have Chief build a roof for you. It doesn't have to be the actual roof, but even though your rooms have ceilings, you will have problems with light bleeding at the tops of the walls if there is not also a roof over the room. I toned down the Intensity levels of all of your Spot Lights, but I kept the "white hot" highly emissive Reflective Material Class for the hanging globes as they seemed to Ray Trace ok. Don't know if the Armstrong flooring had a Bump Map but it didn't come along with the plan. To give the floor some life I changed the Material Class to Polished so the floor will show some reflections. Other than that I basically went with whatever you had in the plan.

Yeah, but when are you going to kiss Scott's wife. That's what we all want to know.

Hey Bret. Do you mean what the hey-ho is goin on? Here's what you are seeing. I basically created a herringbone pattern made up of dozens of Rectangular Polylines 4" x 40". Used Transform Replicate and Multiple Copy operations to fill out the pattern. Then converted the Polylines to Polyline Solids 1/4" thick. Put 4 walls around the P-Solids to form a room and Edited the Floor Finish to 0" to eliminate the room generated floor. Now you have a floor where every single 4" x 40'" piece can be individually changed to have a different material if so desired. I just grabbed the first wood that was in the Core Catalogs, Alder I think it was, and created 2 versions that had alternating grain directions (135° & -135°) and applied them to every other row to get the herringbone effect. A bit tedious, but you have total control over the Material for every piece in the floor.

I don't know if you can create a seamless texture for that herringbone pattern, but you could always draw it like you would build it with individual 4"x40" pieces.

It's one of those deals where you had to be there Lew. Scott was trying to achieve the same results we got with Elevation Points by essentially creating "point" sized Terrain Regions. For my own edification I was trying to quantify the results by doing a more controlled experiment.

Nice Woodworking shop Dermot. But you need to let go of those 9 volt Makita's. Surprised you can still find batteries for them that will hold a charge.

To follow up on the debate over using Elevation Points vs. Terrain Regions to input the terrain data, I had a play comparing the results of identical terrain data with one set input as Elevation Points and one set input as Terrain Regions. I created a simple 50' X 50' grid with 25 markers set on equal intervals and assigned elevation heights to them. See chart below: Then I created 2 plans. One using the data input as Elevation Points and the second inputting the data as 25 two inch by two inch square Terrain Regions. In the view below the top plan was created using the Elevation Points and the bottom plan used the Terrain Regions. I didn't know what to expect, but to my eye the Elevation Points generated a much smoother looking terrain. I realize this is a very simple test, but I may have to throw my lot in with Chopsaw on this one. I like the Elevation Point version best.

Is that guy still around? Thank God that I am out of touch.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but you can add a J-Molding around your doorway by 1st drawing the J-Molding to scale in Plan View and then adding it to your library as a Molding. Then draw a line around the door frame and convert it to a 3-D Molding Polyline and assign it the J-Molding you just created. You can fine tune the positioning with the Transform/Replicate Tool.

Looks like the wall in question is actually 2 walls butted together. I deleted the short section on the left and dragged the right section over to the corner to make it one wall section and the gap goes away.

If it will help I took the liberty to edit out the watermark and also the leaves in the bottom left corner.

Nice Dennis. It's been my experience that darker tones produce better polished results as your RT demonstrates.

I had a quick play with this. Very strange. I can confirm that it is in fact an inverted ridge cap, but I can't determine what is generating it. I deleted all the roof planes and everything on the Attic level and the inverted ridge cap remained. If you only need to render the view you can do as Griffin suggests and turn off the layer. You will lose all the ridge caps in the view but with the dark color you are using for the roof the lack of ridge caps is not readily apparent. However I found that restoring the ridge caps resulted in the inverted and unwanted cap returning.

I think most of the people around here are certifiable.

Look Here

I am truly blessed, my friend, to literally be living in the land of milk and honey. Milk Honey - yes all those little brown specks are bees We had 20" of rain in a six week span and we are experiencing a spring the likes of which hasn't been seen in this area in decades. Anywhere you point the camera you can get Chamber of Commerce vistas.

The catch 22 here is that to learn almost any of the clickable functions you need to also click on all the options to see just how they affect the model. My original premise was to include ALL the clicks required to open every option. In general terms I'm thinking we are talking 5 figures here, and if anybody thinks that I am actually going to attempt a count.....don't hold your breath.

OK, so I’ve been sitting on this question for over two years. Every time I asked my Magic Eight Ball if I should post it to the forum the reply was always “My sources say no”. I figured the darn thing was just stuck but today when I asked the reply was “Yes, definitely”, so here it is. How many mouse clicks would it take to fully explore every option of every feature in Chief? This is a question that goes right to the heart of every request for improved features for the software. We all want to perform the various tasks with the least number of clicks and are always looking for ways to streamline our workflow to eliminate unnecessary clicks. So in order to see what we are up against I want to know what kind of a number we are talking about here. Take a minute or two over your morning cup of Joe to mull it over and come up with a number. In the meantime I will start counting up the clicks up so we will know who came up with the best estimate. 1-Click on File drop down menu 2-Click on New Plan icon 3-Click on New Layout icon 4-Click on Open Plan icon 5-Click on Open Layout icon 6-Click on Open Recent Files icon 7-Click on Templates icon 8-Click on New Plan From Template submenu icon 9-Click on New Layout From Plan submenu icon 10-Click on Save as Template submenu icon 11-Click on Manage Auto Archives icon 12-Click on Startup Options icon 13-.................................... 14-...................... 15-........

Well, I just grabbed the wall and dragged it over to cover the hole and everything seems to look pretty good to me. Didn't look for other issues. 2017-02-As_Built_Plans.plan

Amen to that Curt. Maybe for an industrial strength kiosk in a mall but not for my PC. What if I'm eating fried chicken and Cheetos?