Rich_Winsor

You know, it's funny how sometimes the most seemingly simple task can turn out to be an ordeal. I needed to model a short section of cinder block wall that is holding up a roof support beam in a carport (see first thumbnail) . Easy peasy, right? 21 blocks (14" long x 7 1/2" wide x 6" high) stacked in 3 columns. Well, after 45 minutes of futzing around with those confounded pattern and texture settings in the "Define Material" dbx I was still unable to get a wall that displayed properly with all the rendering techniques. Finally I just gave up and in about 15 minutes modeled the wall section out of Polyline Solids and converted it to a symbol. Not only does it display properly in all views but I can change the color of the grout if I choose to do so. Am I missing something? Is it possible to create this simple wall section using Chief's Wall tools?

Ray, It's part of the library core content. Check the path in the browser window in the thumbnail.

Don't know if this one will work for you but this 8 panel wide version is in the Library Browser.

Well shut my mouth wide open (whatever that means). Upon further review it appears as though the transfer speed for USB flash drives is indeed very much device dependent. While all my flash drives are USB 3.0 and they are all being plugged into an Intel USB 3.0 Root Hub there is quite a difference in performance from drive to drive. The drive that performed so poorly is an older one that has been beating around in my pocket so long that there are no identifiable markings on it any more. Windows says it is a Cruzer 8GB drive. I also tried the "save as" on an 8GB Transcend drive that took about 20 seconds and finally I did a "save as" to a spiffy SanDisk 64GB Extreme flash drive that lived up to its name by being almost instantaneous in completing the save (no more than 2 or 3 seconds). So I guess I should amend the tip to say that if you have a dog slow USB drive you can save yourself some time by using the Windows Explorer option.

If you have made the mistake of trying to use Chief to save a large plan file to a USB flash drive you already know what a time consuming process that can be. I don't know what the data transfer rate is for doing a "save as" from Chief's File drop down menu, but it is way slower than the transfer rate for using Windows Explorer to make the transfer. By way of a test I tried saving a 71.9MB plan file to my USB flash drive using Chief's save as function. The little teal whirligig sat there and spun for an agonizing 4 minutes and 50 seconds before the save was completed. By way of comparison transferring the same file from my desktop to the USB drive using Windows Explorer took only 29 seconds. So bottom line, it will save you a lot of time to save your file from Chief to some convenient location on your hard drive and then transfer the file to your USB flash drive using Windows Explorer. But then you probably already knew that.

Don't know about X2 but nowadays you have to hit the "Stop Ray Trace" icon. The escape key does not stop a Ray Trace.

As the killer in Dirty Harry says when he sees Clint's .44 Magnum; "My, that's a big one". I thought Jon was the unofficial leader in hard drive storage at 12 terabytes but 43+ Kad's sounds impressive. Not exactly sure where it fits into the list though.

I do much the same thing. When I start a plan I give it a name and assign it #1, for example Joe Blow's House-1. Then as I make any type of significant progress I immediately do a save as and assign it the next higher number in the sequence (i.e. Joe Blow's House-2). When the plan is done I do a final save as and just use the job name without a number ( Joe Blow's House). Now I have the plan and all the steps it took to arrive at the final version. If storage is an issue you can always go back and delete all the numbered iterations.

You might try downloading XVID. It's free. It was working fine for me with X6 but I haven't tried it since upgrading to X7. Doubt that there would be any problems.

Cool info Jon. I always wanted a dipstick calculator.

Curt, Try starting the video and then move to the bottom right hand corner of the screen. There you can click on the little "screen" icon and the video will display in full screen mode.

It sounds like you don't fully understand the concept of a "seamless texture". What you have to do in GIMP or PS or PSP is edit the edges of the texture so that when they are tiled they flow seamlessly from one tile to the next. Just cropping or resizing won't accomplish the effect you desire. Suggest you Google "Seamless Textures". You can find tutorials that explain the process for different image editors. Creating flawless seamless textures is somewhat of an art form. The attached thumbnail shows a seamless texture applied to a wall.

OK, I can recognize a tough crowd when I see one. How about this one?

I am instigating a new policy of chumming for good tips & techniques by dispensing positive Reputation Points. I think this area of the forum has the potential to be of the greatest service to Chief users. General Q & A is great for getting help on case specific problems and I enjoy seeing how I would attack some of the interesting problems that are posed there, but I find insights into other's methods of work and shortcut tips to be far more valuable in the long run. It's the old teach a person to fish versus giving a person a fish thing. Hopefully this policy will encourage others to share their tips & techniques. Here's a +1 for Wendy.

Have you ever wanted to populate your scene with some Chief vehicles that actually look like there is someone operating them? Here I made a simple indication of a driver by stacking a sphere on top of a horizontal cylinder. No great shakes but it looks a lot more believable than an empty car.

Yeah, I know. I just found it somewhat odd that the Round Garden Bed tool was incapable of producing a truly round garden bed.

Am I Missing something? Why can't I draw a perfectly circular Garden Bed with the "Round Garden Bed" tool?

Have you tried using Windows Movie Maker? I haven't actually tried it but I think it might have those capabilities. Just a thought.

While "you don't know what you don't know" is a catchy little phrase it doesn't necessarily apply in all cases. For example I think I have a fairly good understanding of what areas I am lacking in (as far as Chief is concerned) and could give you a laundry list of such items if needed. Ruby & Macros, Material Lists, Complex Terrains, etc. There are also over 1400 pages of documentation and countless videos detailing what I do and don't know. I think some of you guys are over analyzing what I think was a fairly innocuous question. Just because I haven't used or fully learned a feature doesn't mean that I don't know it exists. But if you don't want to put a number on it fine, so be it. I just thought that it would be interesting for other users to see what level of proficiency fellow users think they have achieved. The defense rests your Honor.

Johnny, that’s like asking Leonardo how he painted the Mona Lisa. Just kidding, I wish that I could tell you that it’s just a matter of a few mouse clicks but it’s basically a process of trial and error. Kind of like when you go to the eye doctor, you know, which looks better #1 or #2. I started out with default lights and settings and had nothing like the effect I wanted so I began adding light sources and playing with different colors and intensities of light. I found that things looked best when I set the lights to maximum custom intensity and then adjusted the look of the Ray Trace as needed using the Image Properties DBX. In my final view the porch lights are using an orange color and the interior user added lights are using a yellow color. I actually painted the interior walls bright yellow also to heighten the effect. I’ll tell you that one of the hardest things to do is to decide when you have done enough. There are so many variables that you can go on and on tweaking values and as you get close to your goal the law of diminishing returns kicks in. My final Ray Trace was 10 passes in 34 minutes with all lights on except for the default sun. I started out with High Quality Outdoor Sunset settings. No Focal Blur, no Ambient Occlusion and no Direct Sunlight. Hope some of this makes sense to you. Basically you just have to jump in and thrash about until you get things looking like you want them to.

Since I already had the model I figured I would have a play with capturing the atmosphere, vibe, ambiance if you will of the OP's image. Here is a 10 pass Ray Trace I like to call: "A Glowing in the Gloaming". Original image is here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/uploads/monthly_07_2015/post-1906-0-94583300-1438200417.jpg

Really like the man cave theater in Interior Rendering 5 but you gotta swap out the Reese's Pieces for m&m's.

I think we can all agree that Chief is a very complex software package with seemingly endless and permutations and combinations. The question is this: What percentage of Chief’s features have you mastered? Perhaps mastered is a little too strong. How about we go with what percentage of Chiefs features have you become reasonably proficient with? For example I will go first. I currently use 3 CAD programs: AutoCAD, SolidWorks & Chief Architect. I started with some cheepo 2D CAD programs and worked my way thru AutoCAD Lite until in 2000 I got the full blown version of AutoCAD. I used AutoCAD daily from 2000 – thru 2006 at which point we were looking for more 3D capabilities and started exploring SolidWorks. At my peak in 2006 I would say that I was capable of using 75% of AutoCAD’s potential. I tinkered with a bootleg version of SolidWorks for several years and finally had the wherewithal to purchase a legitimate seat in 2012. I have used it sparingly up to the present. In my opinion SolidWorks is exponentially more complex than Chief and I would say that I’m probably capable of using about 10 to 15% of its capabilitys. This brings us to Chief. I started with HD Pro from 12 thru 14 at which time I took Chief’s offer to upgrade to X5. Since I tend to learn mostly what I need to do the task at hand there are still segments of the program I have yet to explore or employ. I’m probably flattering myself by claiming a 50% proficiency level (it’s probably more like 40%). Anyhow, I think it would be interesting to hear to what degree ya’ll think you are using the programs capabilities.

Amen, the only time I ever see 4:30AM is at the end of an all nighter.

I thought Chief was picking up the tab for ya'll. Why those cheap so and so's. Do you mean that the "stipend" they offered to supply doesn't include round trip air fare to Oz?