PACNWX6

Thanks Rod! I'll check out blue beam tomorrow. Very interesting thread on bim. I have learned a few things today Kc

Hello Rod, I know this is an old thread but is that 3d pdf program called 3dA Systems? I have been looking into this and it seems to be useful. Can I use one of the 3d exports straight from Chief (3ds, dad, dwg) for this program? It looks like it only works with Revit. Will the adobe acrobat pro 11 be able to create 3d pdf's from chief? Thanks in advance! Kc

I run into this issue a lot. Today as well actually. I noticed sometimes walls on the upper or lower floors have an effect if the roof planes through from a 1st floor to 2nd floor roof. Check those walls and turn on the auto returns and see if that works. As for manually doing them. Usually the join roof plane tool will connect everything if the baselines and runs are even. Kc

I just posted this on the forum "make parallel tool trick- and Lumion tip". I also have a little tip about Lumion on there if anyone is interested. Take care! Kc

Hello everyone! Just a quick trick I learned from a few gentlemen on this forum. I was having trouble getting my site plans to square up with my houses in a quick and easy manner. Example- get a cad file from the surveyor. The property lines are all skewed. Lets say the front line is 90.121 degrees for example but you want it at 90 degrees and square to the house. Well if you group select the entire poly line and try to rotate it to be square with the front of the house, it won't be able to snap to 90 degrees for that one line. Sure you can take one line and make parallel to the front of the house but the rest of the property lines would stay the same. Well Glennw and Richard Morrison both had some great input so I wanted to share it for others as this will save a ton of time! - one option is group select the lines, then use the transform replicate button to rotate it to a specified degree. -2nd is to grab one of the lines in that group then double click the "make parallel" button and it opens up a dialog to either change all lines in the group or just that one line. Then you can make that line you selected (along with the group) parallel to anything that will allow it. This is the exact fix I was looking for and am very grateful for the tip so I wanted to share. Plus it may help with some other aspects as well. Hopefully this tip will help someone else! Now for Lumion: (figure I would pay if fwd haha) When I was looking at purchasing something like this the best option I found were lumion and lumen rt. I found a few discussion where the folks were saying chief doesn't work with Lumion. Well it does and its works great! Its easy to export and import to lumion. I even use mac for my CA and PC for lumion and there are no issues. All you have to do is go into "full perspective overview" camera. remove any layers you don't want to show up in you're model, then export as collide .dae It works perfect. So if you're on the fence about if lumion will work then Im here to tell you it will. I just did a large town house project with it. Only thing you want to do is figure out the best way to apply materials as there are many. I mostly keep my CA materials in place and just use a light map overlay with very low settings to brighten up the model materials in some cases. Im just starting to learn lumion but I will try and answer any questions you may have. Hopefully this will help! Cheers from Oregon, USA! Kc

Glenn, that is awesome! Just tried it and when the dialog box came up it was like magic haha! Even better! But both are helpful in many situations I'm sure. I really appreciate it guys! I will post this to the main forum to hopefully help a few other out. Have a great rest of you're day!

Richard you are the man! I just tried it out and it works perfect! I knew it was something that I was just missing. That will be so much easier. I have used that tool a lot for re sizing stuff but didnt even realize that it has a rotate option, I must be blind haha. Thank you very much for that! Mick I will definitely try that for the download. Yes I should post that question as you mention and put Richards response to it as well so if anyone else sees it, that may help them. Thanks guys, this forum is great! Going to have to check in more often. Have a great day! Kc

Still haven't seen the beta in my digital locker yet. Just renewed SSA a few weeks ago. Oh well, back to work I guess. Im to busy at the moment to transfer all my crap anyway haha. Crap meaning my defaults, templates etc of course. Off topic a bit, but would anyone else find it useful to be able to group select a polyline for example- and be able to take one side of that and make parallel to another object. Example of this would be a site plan (property line is a poly) that is not square. Lets say I get a cad file from the surveyor for a subdivision. Scale it up and grab a lot to use for my site plan. Turn on show angle etc and lets say the front is 90.12131 degrees and the sides are 180.112 degrees (so its skewed). Well If I want to square it up to the house with the front property line there is no way to group select the entire property line and make parallel. Sure you can grab the front line and make parallel on its own but then you have to chase the angles around the rest of the property lol! Dang, does anyone else feel my pain? Only way I have found around is to just manually square it up to 90 degrees by holding the cmd button and carefully rotating -.12131 degrees. You gotta zoom in quite a bit to get down that low lol. I typically design 2500-4500 s.f. customs for a few large builders here in the NW. Last year I did roughly 70+ site plans so doing that method gets real old fast. And yes I honestly did about 70 something customs last year, it was a good year! Not to mention now am working on a 32 unit Townhouse project with a lot of site plans needed all at once across 6 different designs. So having this feature would be really nice! BTW I'm new to the forum. Been a user for a while but usually just creep on what you guys are talking about without engaging haha! If anyone has an easier work around I would be most grateful if you would let me in on you're secret haha. Thanks in advance! Kc

Hey Lewis, Im having the same issue. Guess I will wait until the morning and check again. Cant wait to see the new features! Did they say they needed to reload it into your locker? Kc