Rich_Winsor

Chief now has spiral ducting you can download in the 3D Library.

Sheesh! The things you learn. So it turns out

that there are four ways to exit Chief. You can

hit Alt+F4, You can hit the File drop down menu

and then hit Exit, you can hit the Chief Architect

Premier X6 icon in the upper left hand corner and

then hit Close or you can hit the X in the upper right

hand corner. No matter which method you select

you will get a reminder to save your work if you

have a plan open. So I guess the point is that

Chief recommends that you save your plan first

and then exit the program by whatever method

you choose as opposed to exiting the program

and then saving your work when prompted to do

so. I still don't see what the difference is.

And while I'm thinking about it why on earth is

Windows still using a 3 1/2" floppy disc as an

icon for saving your work? There is probably

a whole generation using computers now who

have never seen a 3 1/2" floppy disc. Here is

my suggestion for a new Save icon.

No, no, no, don't get your hopes up. Not me but the program.

I'm sure this is a no brainer for the majority of you but it came

as news to me. In a moment of weakness as I was reading the 

reference manual I came across the procedure for exiting the

program. I mean when faced with over a thousand pages of

reference material how many people take the time to read the

part about exiting the program? Well, I did and it turns out that

there is a preferred method to exit the program. There have

been many times that I have closed Chief with a plan still open.

No biggie right, the program simply asks you if you want to

save the current plan or not. It turns out that this is not the

preferred method. The manual doesn't say why but it does say:

"Select File> Exit to exit the program. If you have not saved any

open plans, you are reminded to do so. It is better to save your

work before exiting than to save on exit".

I can't for the life of me see how this would make any difference.

A little like closing the barn door after the horses are gone,

but check out this link to the Corsair website. You can test

your power supply with literally nothing more than a paper

clip. I had a rig that became increasingly unstable finally to

the point of being unbootable. While in it's death throws it

manifested numerous symptoms; memory error beep codes,

video driver error messages, a totally unresponsive mouse

and others I am probably forgetting. I troubleshot everything

from the video and mouse drivers to swapping out memory

chips to by passing the case power switch to testing the

power supply and lord know what else before I came to the

grim realization that the culprit was the motherboard itself.

This pissed me off to no end since it was a very pricy top

of the line MB and of course you have to tear your rig

completely down to replace it.

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/support/faqs/power-supplies

Drat! Someone's on to me.

So last Saturday night I sat down at the keyboard at

11:00 PM and worked on my site plan until 3:00AM

at which time I reset all my clocks back one hour and

went to bed. Does this mean that I only spent 3 hours

on the drawing?      

I like that the distributed paths/regions can (somewhat) randomize the angles and positions.  It would be even better if you randomize the sizes too.  I'm thinking something like putting in a min and max height and let the program set them for you.  This would have made what you were doing way easier.  You should make a suggestion for this.

I would love to have the capability to be able to

vary the sizes of distributed objects as well as the 

spacing and rotational angle, however I'm not sure

I have the total grasp of the concepts necessary

to make a feasible request. 

It's always interesting to me just what computer

programs think "random" is. One could make the

argument that any combination is possible. It

just depends on the size of the sample and the

time over which it is taken. It's the old "room full

of monkeys banging away at typewriters" that

would eventually write all the great works of

literature if given enough time deal.

Actually I have had this sick idea festering in the

back of my mind that I should vary the heights of

the trees to exactly correspond to the heights of

the actual trees. This of course would require me

to individually edit all 160 trees.  Aaarrrggghhh!

BTW, to update that room full of monkeys deal

maybe it would be more appropriate to speculate

that a room full of monkeys at the keyboard with

Chief could eventually design the Taj Mahal.

Rich:

 

nice "compound"

 

with all the fencing study your walk flows and ensure you have easy access to various areas

without having to "go the long way" just to get there

 

is there access for large trucks - say a tree cutter to get to most sections of the site ?

 

I have 2/3 acre and have a 12' wide double gate at the front for large vehicles

been here 2 years and so far had a cement mixer for an addition and a tree truck

also had my pre-built shed delivered and dropped on site

 

Lew

I am truly blessed Lew. With all the good and bad decisions

we end up making in life, somehow I managed to land on my

feet in making perhaps the biggest decision of all, where we

are going to live. 

Funny you should mention fencing and walk flows. After about

2 weeks on the property I made my first major investment and

bought myself a Honda Recon ATV. I haven't regretted it for

one moment since . The fences were all erected by the

dear little lady who previously owned the place. She was a

legend in the neighborhood on her tractor with her post hole

digger. The fences do help control the flow of wild critters

across the property.

Here is a rafter of the local gals out for their morning constitutional.

OK, here’s the poop. First off thanks for all

the suggestions. I had a play with this over

the weekend and this is what I came up with.

As suggested, there are several ways to go

about spacing out and rotating a row of trees.

But… but… but… there is no way I can find to

automagically vary the heights of the trees.

I’m a visually oriented guy and I start to glaze

over when I’m 700+ pages into the manual and

trying to sort out Absolute and Relative angles,

so I prepared a little demonstration with a

generic tree fitted with a dorsal fin to aide in

observing the changes in object orientation.

In the end I used a combination of approaches.

I broke the trees into 8 groups of 20 trees each

which also happens to be way they are laid out for

irrigation purposes. Then I created 8 Polyline

Distribution Paths using the Random Angle Object

Orientation and increasing the mean height of the

trees in each path to create a stair step effect.

I chose the Polyline Distribution Path over the

Transform/Replicate option because it offered

the Random Angle feature. Finally, (and Glenn

neglected to mention this  ), I exploded the

Distributed Objects which enables the selection

of individual trees again and manually adjusted

the heights of about 75% of them to get the

desired ascending – descending effect for the

whole line of trees.

I won’t bore you with how long this process took

but suffice it to say that if I was hiring Bryce

to do it I would be out hundreds of dollars.

Anyhoo, there they are. 160 trees with no 2 alike.

BTW, this is for a site plan I am working on for

my spread here. The area encompassed by the

fence is exactly 2 acres and contains all of the

structures on the property. I still have several

structures and dozens of trees to add to the

plan (file size is currently 18MB and climbing). 

Wasn't that back when dinosaurs roamed the earth? 

Where did you play? My meteoric career was cut tragically

short when I blew out my ACL in my sophomore year at

San Jose State.   

I don't know Cadman, when I placed both of those

symbols in a plan neither one looked to be 3D. I've

wasted all the time I'm going to trying to figure out

how get the Plant Chooser and the Library Browser

synced up. I have created a plan specifically for 3D

plants and I just drag the symbol in question into that

plan and see how it looks. Since I can rarely find the

specific type of plant (especially trees) I want I usually

end up picking out a symbol that resembles what I am

looking for and going with that.

Here's my approach. Let me preface these remarks by

saying that I run all my "A" programs on a dedicated

stand alone workstation. If you are on a network I

wouldn't necessarily advocate this approach.

First off I almost never install a new program while

connected to the internet (the rare exception being

some software updates downloaded from the internet). 

Obviously I always try to obtain a hard copy (CD DVD

etc.) of the software I buy and install. Once a program 

is installed I will then connect to the internet to activate

and update it as necessary. This approach precludes

having the installation programs running amok and

installing all kinds of unnecessary things.

The first thing I do after installing Windows is to

systematically disable Windows Update, Messenger

and Windows Firewall. I also run without any anti-

virus software whatsoever. IMHO, antivirus software

is by its nature a virus (a benign virus hopefully but a

virus none the less) that always runs in the background 

using up valuable resources and interfering with normal

computer operations. I don't use my workstation to surf

the internet. I have older "retired" rigs that I use for that.

I tend to upgrade at semi-regular intervals and when I

do I usually upgrade everything at the same time. For

example my previous rig was a Pentium4 running

Windows XP Pro, Internet Explorer 8, Office 2003,

Adobe Acrobat 9 etc. It was so stable and reliable that

I used it until much of the software had become "sunset"

and the advent of newer versions finally forced me to

upgrade. Now I'm up to Windows 7 Ultimate, Internet

Explorer 11, Office 2010 and Adobe Acrobat 10. When

I get a good combination of compatible programs I

rarely worry about updating them unless something

comes along that is really worthwhile. I don't mind

being a version or two behind what is considered to

be cutting edge as I find these programs are usually

more stable and have had any major problems resolved.

What does all of this mean? You tell me.   I find my

rigs to be fast, reliable and crash free. And in the event

that something should go terribly awry I am not above 

taking a night off and doing a fresh install of Windows

and all my programs. In fact I advocate this practice

from time to time to give your rig a new lease on life.

You could go to DJP's house.

Lisa, what Scott was so eloquently trying to say is

that if you enable "show shadows" in the Render/

Preview Options section of the Preferences menu

the shadows will always stay on (even when panning

and rotating). A very nice touch. 

BTW, I think the speed with which the shadows are

now rendered is more a function of an improvement

in version X6 than your fast Mac. They are fast for

everyone now.

I would be interested in knowing what kind of

speed increase you realize if you get around

to overclocking your CPU. I have never put

the overclocking capabilities of my rig to use

as for the most part the plans I work with

haven't been that complex and I haven't seen

the need.

Nice crisp RT's BTW, and your second image

reminds me that roundball season starts tonite.

..... I do not want to be the cheapest guy on the block.  So funny,  I used to be proud of the fact that I was the cheapest guy on the block.....  and it worked okay for me......

I mean how much does it cost to furnish the underside of a freeway overpass.

 

 

LOL! I don't remember which of the first astronauts it was.

Alan Shepard, I believe, who when asked what he was

thinking while sitting on top of a rocket about to be launched

into space replied that he was thinking that the rocket had

been built by the lowest bidder.

BTW, I think I'm beginning to see why your internet connection

is so slow. Time-Warner isn't going to upgrade service to that

overpass any time soon.

OK, does anybody have an easy peasy way to arrange

160 3D Italian Cypress trees evenly spaced along a 500

foot road so that they vary from 8 feet tall at one end to

30 feet tall at the other end and no two trees look alike?

Yeah, I didn't think so. 

Don't know why I didn't try this sooner but if

you don't enter anything in the "Name" field of

the Plant Chooser and instead just select a box

in the "Type" field (along with any appropriate

Sub-Type) and hit the Search Button you will get

a list of everything of that type in the Browser.

Unfortunately as Jon and Nic have noted you

can't tell which ones are 2D and which ones

are 3D.

I too would be interested in a site for good 

quality 3D tree symbols since the Library

and Bonus Catalog 3D offerings are limited

at best.  

It looks to me like you are trying to access the 3d feature

while you are still in plan view. If you open or create your

3d view those options will be available to you. Most of the

3D dropdown menu items are unavailable in plan view.

Does anybody know of a way to get the Library

Browser to display the plants by their Common

Names and not the Scientific Names? I really

don't want to become a Botany major just so 

I can locate a Walnut or Apricot tree. And of

course as we all know by now the search

feature is as useless as teats on a boar hog.

I do realize that you can cross reference the

names in the Plant Chooser but you have to

enter each category of plant individually and

there are dozens of categories.

I don't use the feature but I think this is what you are looking for.

Apple's share is still rather small

 

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/09/apples-domestic-mac-sales-surge-285-as-overall-pc-market-shrinks-75

 

Lew

Heaven knows I don't want to start a range war....

But I've read that the Mac division (as small as it is)

is one of Apple's biggest cash cows. Why? Because

the profit margin on those machines is very high.

Translation, Apple is gouging you guys.

A  couple more mystery layers:

 

-"0"  (I am sure there is a reason for this otherwise it would not be there.....  but I have not figured it out)

- DEFPOINTS  (I have never understood this layer)

Those two layers are two of the basic AutoCAD layers.

Whenever you open a new drawing (.dwg) file in ACAD

it automatically creates layer "0". Once you dimension

anything in the drawing ACAD creates the "Defpoints"

layer. These layers cannot be deleted in ACAD.

....I have a feeling I will never be able to get rid of my PC.  Why can't I get rid of the PC?

Resistance is futile. It's a Window's world.

BTW, what is Apple's market share these days?

I see Jintu got the transfer accomplished. Sorry, I got

sidetracked last night and by the time I checked back

you guys figured it out.

Mick, I haven't tried to download or install anything yet,

but after seeing Jintu's gorgeous sample I will definitely

be checking it out. I was hoping you guys would get the

process all smoothed out and then I will waltz in and

reap the benefits.