Rich_Winsor

Just to throw a cat amongst the pigeons, has anybody tried upgrading a machine with a dual boot configuration to Windows 10. i.e. upgrading from XP Pro/Win 7 Pro to XP Pro/Windows 10.

Just don't change your name to Caitlyn.

That's the way it goes Alex (r u alex?). I usually start out by seeing if I can reproduce the look of a picture. During that process I often take liberties I probably wouldn't do if I was modeling it for myself just to get the look I'm after. Of course then when more feedback is wanted I have to scramble to make the plan presentable. I didn't go as far a checking out how the model will frame because at this point I would just be guessing as to the composition of the walls. They look pretty thick in the photo. You might have to fake some porch ceiling framing but the rest should be straight forward. BTW, I don't know who you pi$$ed off to get that scarlet numeral -1, but I gave you a +1 to get you back to even. Everybody deserves a fresh start now and then. Edit: 10:40PM Just tried letting Chief do the framing. Auto build a foundation derived from the 1st floor and the have Chief auto frame everything else. Looks pretty good to me. That ceiling p-solid is only 1/8" thick so it didn't really affect the framing. Just delete the 3 p-solids.

Here you go. Plan is attached. As far as my plans go it's pretty clean. I used a couple of polyline solids to cap off the walls and form the porch ceiling so I could get the wall material to wrap around underneath. Roof becomes Walls.plan

Maybe I should change my sign in to Poppy Jasper.

Thanks fellas, interesting that this seems to be a problem especially for people named Richard. I guess I will need to have another play with this to see what is going on. It seems to me that if the gutter layer is locked you shouldn't be able to edit it, but if it is unlocked it should show up as an editable option in the "Roof Plane Specification" dbx. You should also have the "no molding on selected edge" option here too. It would make controlling gutter behavior a lot easier IMHO.

Yeah but if I do it that way the change doesn't "stick". For instance in "Full Perspective Overview" if I subsequently change the "Active Layer Set" to something else like "All On Set" and then change back to "Camera View Set" the material reverts back to whatever was defined during the initial roof build and ignores my changes.

Why can't we change the material for the default gutter molding once the roof has been built? When I first build the roof I have the opportunity to change the gutter material in the "Build Roof" dbx but once the roof has been built there is no longer an option to change the material in the "Roof Plane Specification" dbx. What's up with that? Very inconvenient.

Here is what I came up with. Pretty straight forward. Standard Gable roof. Used board & batten for wall material. The roof doesn't really become the walls. It just has a material that looks like roofing. Didn't take the time to get all the side wall window configurations but hopefully you get the idea.

I have to admit I am having some serious concerns about gathering so many of the elite Chief users together at one time. What will happen to the Chief knowledge base if there is some type of natural disaster or terrorist attack? What if Mt. Shasta blows and buries Idaho in 10 feet of volcanic ash? What if an asteroid hits Coeur d'Alene and turns it into a crater the size of a small state? What if a crazed Vectorworks user takes over the meeting and holds everybody hostage? What if this new forum has been a front all along set up by a disgruntled AutoCAD user to lure Chief's best and brightest into a trap? We can't be too careful. I think just to be safe Glenn Woodward should be kept in a safe room in a subterranean bunker far from Idaho until the meeting is over. Remember, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.

I hate having auto updates crammed down my throat too but this looks like it might be of some help. http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-releases-tool-to-hide-or-block-unwanted-windows-10-updates/

Is this what you are looking for? This was done by making both end walls Gable Walls. Use 2 manual roof planes with identical locked ridge heights and 2 different eave heights. In this case I used a 4 x 12 ridge beam and 4 x 6 rafters. Remove the room ceiling and change the roof sheathing material to tongue & groove.

OK, so here's the deal. I haven't really spent any time on the railing so far because I'm sure I can get the look I need. What I can't do is get the stairs tools to generate a slab step/tread like the ones in my picture. Forgive the use of a rogue 3D program but here is a 3D model of what one of the stair steps needs to look like. I have exaggerated the tread undercut for clarity. Can this look be achieved using Chief's stair tools or should I just stick to my first approach of stacking slabs together?

Where is Glenn? He took off on a walkabout and hasn't been heard from since. He would say "don't use the "Rotate Plan View" tool to rotate your plan.

Thought it had been unusually quiet around here. Hope everything is OK. You need to watch out for those hospital people. It's job security for them to find something wrong with you.

Not walls but roofs. Remember this one Bill? I was able to accomplish this with X6.

Michael, forgive the stupid question but does it matter what order you enter your waypoints in? Do you stake out the perimeter and then add salient points inside? Or perhaps start at one edge and work across the site? Or can you just click off dozens of random waypoints and the software sorts it all out? Just wondering if there is one approach that is preferable to the others?

Thanks for the input guys. Here is what I have come up with so far. All the cement is built up from slabs. I used wedges on the front of the stairs (see vector view) to make the undercut effect. I couldn't get any type of railing to generate the look I needed so I made a section of railing (see thumbnail) which worked fine on the flat portion of the porch but I couldn't make it follow down the stairs as in the actual construction. Basically I built the descending rail portions from scratch. I had a play with attaching the rounded portion of the hand rail on top by using a 3d molding polyline and it is doable but will take a lot of niggling to pull off. All in all it's looking pretty decent in Standard View which is all I really need for now. Vector View is a little messy in spots but can probably be cleaned up with a little more precision in the plan and some touch up work. At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately I didn't do this mockup to scale so I will have the delightful experience of doing it all over again using actual dims. I'll bet that when they built this stoop in 1930 they never imagined what a pain it would be to generate in Chief.

OK all of you stair gurus. I have been wrestling with this innocuous little pour all weekend. This is the door stoop of a local historical landmark I am rendering so I need the model to be as accurate as possible. It looks simple enough until you get to the details. The stairs are poured concrete with rails cobbled together with 4 x 4 newels, 1 x 4 balusters and 2 x 4 top and bottom rails. Note that the stairs not only are flared? splayed? outward from the top of the porch but the treads are also undercut to give the effect of having a tread overhang. Any ideas, thoughts, approaches as to how to model these would be greatly appreciated. So far I have got a pretty good facsimile by beating it out of the program with brute force but I was wondering if it is possible to make Chief do the work.

LOL! Having trouble shaking that image from my mind.

No symbols Mick. At this point they are just 3D molding polylines. No finicky stretch planes. No library bloat. Just shoot a Cross Section Elevation and use the cad tools to draw the path of the downspout. Convert the polyline to a 3D molding polyline and apply the trick molding profile. Use transform/replicate to fine tune the position. If something changes like the eave height or overhang just click on the 3D polyline and drag the appropriate handle. For drastic changes just convert it back to a plain polyline and edit/redraw the path and then convert it back to the 3D molding polyline. If you have a style you use a lot you could make it a symbol but the symbol isn't as adjustable as the 3D polyline molding. I found it was just as fast to draw the path I wanted as it was to work with a symbol. If you want to get the water farther away from the structure just grab the end of the downspout and pull it out.

If I'm not careful I'm gonna get a handle on this. With Glenn's help I've now got a fairly painless way to create hollow (looking) downspouts. Is it just me? I find little touches like this add a lot of realism and believability to a scene. Oh, and don't worry Larry. I bumped up your suggestion and with the clout I carry around here there should be an immediate response.

Glenn, Off the top of your head works for me. Actually I didn't understand how to implement your 1st suggestion, but your second suggestion could be a promising work around. Here is a proof of concept 1st attempt. For some reason the seam is off by 90°. I'm not sure why that happened or just how to fix it right now but it has the right "look".

Define easily. Maybe I should have been more "pacific". I was talking in the context of downpipes. Can we make them hollow? I haven't figured out a way to. I can create the 3D molding polyline and assign a molding profile to it (see attached) but I can't make it hollow like a pipe. I can create straight pieces of pipe by solid subtraction but I can't make them bend. Is there a way to make a molding profile that will produce a hollow structure when applied to the 3D molding polyline?

Well..... Here is one approach. This takes the roof plane you started in post #3 and goes about as far as you can with a roof plane with a pitch of 2 in 12 and maintaining your fascia height.