Rich_Winsor

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.

It would be nice if Chief would augment their 3D modeling capabilities to include drawing 3D lines and being able to extrude shapes along those paths. In SolidWorks for example you simply draw a 3D line along the path you want. Then you create a sketch plane at the end of the 3D line perpendicular to the line. In this sketch plane you can create whatever cross section that you want the feature to have. Once you have your sketch you extrude it over the length of your 3D line and voila, you have your 3D feature.

Not sure about everything you are asking for but as far as the siding showing on the wrong side of the wall all you have to do is use the "Reverse Layers" tool and it will put the siding back on the outside and the sheetrock back on the inside.

Don't know what happened but the link worked this time. Thanks Joey.

Link didn't work for me?

That's the one I was talking about. I thought I had saved it but my User Catalog is such a hopeless mess I couldn't locate it. I saved it again and now I have 2 identical symbols called Gutter Downspout so I guess I found the original one. I couldn't use it at the time because I needed the rectangular cross section and I couldn't figure out how to put a 90° bend in the bottom.

Don't get me started on this issue again. I think this is one of the most neglected aspects of the software. Efficiently removing water from the roof planes and away from the structure should be of primary importance to any good design and the placement of these features also play a significant role in the aesthetics of the building façade. I have always wondered why this area is almost completely ignored. I haven't checked recently but when I was looking into this a couple of years ago I couldn't find a single example on the CA website that featured downspouts in the renderings. Now that I have gotten that off of my chest, the answer is that no, there are no automatic features and there is darned little available other than in the the library Mick listed. I think (Glenn?) may have posted an example also. You can cobble the parts together manually but the process is laborious. Here is an example I did back in my HD days using the library items Mick referenced.

Yusuf, you better return the Mona Lisa before they realize it is gone.

Why does the simple act of changing from Standard to Vector view change the color of my roof planes? Edit: Sorry, brain fart here. It's been a while since I worked on this plan. Forgot that I had fooled around with different shingle colors using the adjust materials definition tool.

Oh ye of little faith. Where there's a will there's a way.

Thanks fellas, I don't care what everybody says about you, you guys rock. It's so much easier to play the dumb a$$ and ask for help than to do the research to find the answers.

What keeps the water from falling out of the lake?

I know that Einstein proved we can bend light but I sure can't. Any ideas, suggestions, approaches to achieving these kinds of effects? BTW, I have the dove covered. that was the easy part.

This was in this month's CA newsletter.

Here's my take on this. Is not an "as built" set of drawings as defined in the AIA standard exactly the same as a set of "measured" (exitsting) drawings? Since in most cases owners don't supply us with "as built" drawings of their houses (drawings of exactly how the house was built or last remodeled) we often have to go and measure the structure and prepare such drawings as a starting place. We are making "measured" (existing) drawings in lieu of having a set of "as built" drawings to work from. But would not both sets of plans be the same?

Well then, it's only a matter of scale.

Hi Ann, take a look at this plan. It was easier to draw a new building than to rework yours. In this plan both roofs have a 1 in 12 pitch. If that doesn't work for you just select the roof planes and change the pitch in the Roof Plane Specification DBX. The reason your back wall is misbehaving is because your roof planes don't extend far enough to reach outside of the walls. Hope this will get you on the right track. garage1a-rev.plan