Rich_Winsor

I'm with Paul on this one. I was forced to go the

hardware lock route because I use the program

on desktop workstations in 2 locations. One has

a blazing fast (65+Mbps) internet connection and

the other has no internet access so the activate

deactivate dance is useless to me. I think you 

should allow installation on 2 rigs (as many other

software vendors do) and then if you want to do

the activate/deactivate thing for any installations

beyond the initial 2, fine and dandy.

The default sun angle is controlled in the "Adjust Lights" dbx.

Hind sight is always 20/20 but you should always get

your driver updates from the respective vendor's web

site and not from Window's Update or Device Manager.

Thanks to everyone for helping me get out of this very uncomfortable position. I feel great relief but still unsettled as I am not clear how all this came about or exactly what I may have done to cause this. There seems to be no information as to how this system works or what the intent is.

Maybe someone would clarify this for me .....

Jess,

If you want to learn more about reputation points,

which is what those little red and green boxes are,

check out this thread.

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/134-reputation-points/page-1?hl= reputation  points

Now you are back to square one.

How do ya’ll deal with remembering all the valuable tips presented here on the forum on an almost daily basis. I know personally I used to just take note of them as I was reading them and then hope I could remember them or at least go back and re-read them when I had a need for the info. Of course that approach proved to be unreliable at best and unworkable the rest of the time. Between my feeble memory and the sketchiness of the search features I seldom could navigate back to the content I was looking for. Then in a moment of enlightenment, I stumbled upon a simple “no brainer” solution. I may be the last one to figure this out but all I did was to create a folder I call “Chief Forum Tips” and now whenever I come across a tip I want to remember I simply capture it using the Windows Snipping Tool, give it a name that is germane to the content, and save it to my Forum Tips folder. Now I have all the info together in an easily searchable location. I can just peruse the folder using the Windows Explorer preview panel to view the tips or I can use the Windows Search feature and I only have to search one folder instead of my whole hard drive or all of the internet. Another advantage of this system is that I have the info in MY POSSESSION so that in the event that the info is no longer available on the forum (as in the Old Forum going away) I still can have easy access to it. Anyhoo, you’ve probably already figured this out for yourselves but sometimes it can’t hurt to state the obvious.

I just did a similar roof for an as built duplex plan.

In this case the ridge was a massive 4 x 16 beam

running the length of the structure and the rafters

are 4 x 6's on 48" centers. 2 x 6 tongue & groove

for the roof/ceiling.

That's what I'm using. Used Jing for a while and it's pretty good but limited space for vids. I use Snagit to send videos. Great presentation tool and a nice surprise for clients. Next step up seems to be a lot more expensive.

 

Files are big BTW.

Larry,

I noticed the change and was going to comment

on it. I could never get your Jing vids to display

the whole screen correctly. No longer the case

as now everything is displaying peachy keen.

Very nice indeed Kjell. Pray tell, how big  

a file size does a video like that generate?

I have a 6 1/2 minute walkthrough of a 2

acre site that I created solely with Chief

software and that file is almost 400 MB.

Nice joke. Thanks for the humor.

Thanks Doug. Speaking of bike riding, now that

you have warmed up with a cross country jaunt

are you ready to tackle the highest peaks in

Europe?

http://www.hauteroute.org/

OK, so who did it?  Come on, fess up......

OK (sheepishly raising hand), I'll cop to it.

With the overall tenor of the forum lately and

all the sniveling about Chief's perceived lack

of CAD tools I thought it would be fun to see

what people's reactions would be. I wish I

had thought of the SSA angle while I was

trying to flesh out my phony article with some

plausible sounding techno-babble. Could of

had some real fun there. I was originally going

to create an imaginary publication called

"AutoCAD Weakly"  but it was running

late so I just borrowed a page from the

CADALYST web site and edited it in PSP to

suit my purposes.

Hope y'all got a chuckle out of it.

Hi Laura, while I am no ray trace maven this topic

has been bandied about on the forums quite a bit.

If you use the search feature in the upper right hand

corner it will lead you to quite a few threads. Be sure

to change "this topic" to "forums". I entered " ray trace

settings" and got numerous results. This is one of

the better ones:

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2803-raytrace-questions/?hl=+ray +trace +settings

Wow! This is the first that I have heard of this.

What's new on this update?

We have prepared an interim update to correct two important issues in X7.  The update notes for 17.1.2.2 are attached.

So.... what you are saying is that everything is "peachy".

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

That is probably an option in prefs you have not set.

Don't know D. Scott. Preferences says that it

should be checking for updates daily.

What has been holding me back from updating

is that I am unsure of the procedure if one is

using the hardware lock. I'm using X6 with the

lock. If I upgrade to X7 will my X6 lock still work

or are they going to ding me for another $60 for

a X7 lock? Chief's product page shows different

locks for the last 4 versions (X4-X5-X6-X7).

Anybody know the procedure? Or do I need to

get on the horn to Coeur d'Alene?

Although it is possible to modify the graphics files that are installed with Chief, it is definitely not recommended. 

 

Replacing the installed files with different ones could cause missing file errors, slower loading times, increased memory usage, performance problems, and who knows what else.

 

If you start experiencing any problems after doing this, the first thing you should do is uninstall and reinstall the program to restore the original graphics files.

Dermot, while I can appreciate the cautionary note,

all I am doing is editing the existing files and assigning

different colors to the 400 (20 x 20) pixels that make up

the X6 graphic icon file. There is no change in the name

or path. I'm no expert so correct me if I'm wrong but I am

pretty sure the software doesn't care what color the pixels

are as long as there are the proper number of them and

they are located where the software expects them to be.

I did learn something that had never occurred to me before

in that the color of the pixels apparently does affect the

file size. For example a 20x20 pixel white square is 142

bytes while the same square in black has a file size of

131 bytes. Live and learn. Anyhoo, these files are so

minuscule that a few bytes more or less would have an

undetectable effect on system overhead.

Now Mick on the other hand.... well who knows what

he's up to? 

That's kind of odd. I have the exact opposite problem.

I haven't upgraded to X7 yet and was wondering why

I don't get the message saying that there is a newer

version of the software available and would I like to

download it now.

The Quadro 410 is overpriced and slow......

.....It is unclear to me what you get for your money with a Quadro.

I think this is another case where what you get is "hosed". 

BTW, I speak from experience here. I originally built my

workstation with a Quadro 4000 video card because at the

time it was one of the preferred cards for running SolidWorks.

After I started using Chief all everybody was talking about

were NVidia gaming cards. For a long time I pooh-poohed

the notion that the NVidia cards were that much better than

my Quadro until Doug posted the website with the benchmark

information. After I upgraded my card to the GTX 780 Ti I was

blown away by the improved performance in Chief. And the

real kicker is that I haven't noticed any appreciable difference

in how SolidWorks performs, granted I am only using a small

percentage of that software's capabilities.

Thanks Rich , look forward to the "Mona Lisa"   , might even change back to the X7 icons then

128 x 128

I like those Rich , would you mind posting the 3 you have shown here please ...and thanks

 

played in X7 tonight , no issues with my X6 icon Change that I found.

 

M.

Here you go Mick. Here are a handful of icons I created

for X6 to replace ones I found to be less than intuitive.

1) Mouse-Orbit Camera - I overlaid the sphere icon with

    CA's original mouse-orbit camera icon and added a

    little color to the background to make it more visible.

2) Save - I replaced the hackneyed 3 1/2" floppy icon

    with a simple "S".

3) Library Browser - I never could find those little books

    on a shelf so I replaced them with highly visible letters.

4) Record Walkthrough - What a brown circle had to do

    with recording walkthroughs I'll never know so I made

    what for me is a more intuitive icon.

5) Project Browser - Ditto the Library Browser above.

6) Straight Stairs - Just added some color to Chief's

    transparent background to make it easier to find.

I guess I really need to get on with upgrading to X7.

Compared to the 20 x 20 pixel format of X6, X7's 128

x 128 format will be like night and day. Heck with 128

x 128 I can make the Mona Lisa.

 

 

Rich how about a step by step guide to doing that.  I would love too!

 

When done with them all Rich , please post to the Symbols Library    Thx.

 

M.

JJ, I see that Mick has pretty much picked up

the ball and run with it but the process is easy.

Using the image editing software of your choice

navigate to the "buttons" (what Chief calls them)

folder. Most likely it will be:

C:\Program Files\Chief Architect\Chief Architect Premier\resources\buttons

and then open the Icon you want to change.

Creating icons is a mini art form in and of itself

(get it? mini art form  ). Talk about a minimalist

canvas, X6 gives you 20 x 20 pixels to work with.

Although I haven't downloaded it yet I guess that 

has been increased to 128 x 128 pixels for X7.

You can do anything you want from here. You can

copy and paste content or you can draw it from

scratch pixel by pixel. Once you have what you

want just save it to the "buttons" folder and the 

next time you open chief you will see your revised

icon. Be advised it's probably a good idea to save

the original to another location so that you can go

back to the default icons if you wish to later. Also

be advised that there are lots of icons in the buttons

folder and it might take some searching to find the

one you want. If you aren't sure if you have the

correct icon you can edit it and then check to see

if the icon you wanted to change has in fact changed.

Remember that you will have to close Chief and then 

restart it every time you change an icon for the changes

to take effect.

Here are a couple of other icons I have changed to

make them more recognizable (the Library Browser

and the Mouse Orbit Camera icons).

You guys do know that you can edit the icons to look

like whatever you want them to. They are just .PNG

files. You can edit them in Photoshop or PSP or even

in Paint.

Here I spiced up the background of the Stair Icon as an example.

I did this short video about the Joe Carrick phantom plant schedule turned into a plan note or key schedule. I love this thing.

http://screencast.com/t/jnlkuc4xlIfP

Don't want to hijack your thread Mr. P but I just

wanted to say that of all the different video formats

people are using to post videos to the forum, your

Snagit videos display more clearly and at a suitable

screen resolution for me than all the others. I can

always see all the screen on my monitor without

making any adjustments and there are no annoying

progress bars or the like blocking pertinent information

from being viewed. I can clearly see what icons and

menu items you are referencing whereas with some

of the other formats I often need to pause the video

to be able to see what tools are being used.

This has been an unsolicited Snagit testimonial.

Now back to your regular programing.