scottharris

I had been getting an “internal rendering error” frequently on my 3070TI laptop. It was solved by 1) using the mid November 2022 NVIDIA “studio” driver*, and 2) what most likely was the issue: right click on the Chief Architect icon and “run as administrator”, close the program, relaunch it normally. *NVIDIA has a known bug that they are working on to resolve the issue with Chief Architect. It’s recommended, if you are seeing issues, that you use the mid-November (526.98) release until they get a fix.

If you are going to IBS/KBIS, be sure to stop by our booth. We have several presentations, a User Breakfast Wed AM, and Training following the show. Here's the schedule.

We have addressed this request in X15 (due out in Q1). There’s a setting for omitting the framing in the wall’s structure panel. In X14, manually editing the framing is the way to remove the joists. If you’re interested in beta testing X15, see this thread.

In placing the standalone vanity on the layout page, it’s a very similar process to the steps above for the bath materials (vanity plan is attached - no materials due to the size limits of chief talk). Here are the steps: 1) copy the vanity from your main plan into a new blank plan 2) take a 3D view 3) export the image from the camera 4) place the image on the layout 5) add text on the layout Hope this helps! Bath Vanity.plan

Wendy, The thumbnails for the large doors & windows on the bottom of this layout page are created using the tool ‘CAD Detail from View’. Here are the steps: 1) take an elevation view – say of the front of the house 2) use the tool ‘CAD Detail from View’ 3) in the CAD Detail that is created, delete all of the lines not related to the front door (using the front door as my example) 4) once the front door is isolated, I block all of its lines (this makes it easy to transfer and manage) 5) I then create a new detail and copy this ‘front door’ CAD block into this detail and place descriptive text below. I then delete the temporary detail above created with the ‘CAD Detail from View’ because its no longer needed, and I don’t want the clutter. (BTW, I have this detail in my template plan; it’s called ‘Door-Window Elevations’) you can see this in the Austin Sample plan 6) repeat steps 1-5 as needed for all the doors/windows 7) send the detail ‘Door-Window Elevations’ to your layout page Hope this helps!

Hi Wendy, To create the materials for the bath, I typically have an external ‘materials’ plan (attached). Here are the steps: 1) I use solids, take a 3D view, and then paint them the respective materials 2) save the camera (for future projects) 3) export the image from the camera 4) place the image on the layout 5) add text on the layout for the material names Hope this helps! bath-materials.zip

The End User License Agreement typically is updated with each new release. The latest change would have occurred with the X14 release last May.

Rob, I think the next group of beta testers should be within 2 weeks. Please be patient - we would like to get more eyes and feedback on the new features.

A new Procedural Grass tool is available to create a simulated 3D grass in Chief Architect X15. Unlike the grass on the terrain permitter that is an image-based texture, the 3D grass looks much more realistic. There are controls for density, height, width and curve ranges, color, and a mow height that will trim the grass using these parameters to achieve more natural-looking grass in your scenes. Chief Architect X15 is currently in beta. If you would like to get a look at it now, visit this link.

The State of Washington has required us to collect/pay its tax. Other states are also in the wings. It's a rather onerous project.

@mwarch, if you own a perpetual license, you can continue to pay for SSA prior to the expiry date.

There is a playlist of ray trace videos that can offer a lot of information and tips that can help chiefarchitect.com/videos/playlists/103/ray-trace.html

You can find a sample plan of that cover house “Italian Manor” on the Home Designer Samples page. As far as Spanish attributes, look for the stucco walls and tile roofing. If you download the sample plan, you can see how it’s put together.

You can move your auto dimensions to fit your style. If you want the auto tool to be configurable, send us a suggestion

Check your dimension defaults. Out of the box, they should work like the image below. If not, you can adjust these as you need per plan view. floor-plan.plan

Angela, your renderings look really good! Attached are the settings I typically use for both GPU and CPU exterior ray traces. For the interior, I now exclusively use GPU since it is done in seconds. For exterior, I’ll use a mix and mostly prefer the CPU with 30 passes. These attached examples I did in the beta version of X15 – the evening PBR shot has a generated sky model with stars/moon. If interested in looking at the beta, send an email to beta @ chiefrchitect.com. you might also look at our ray trace rendering video playlist.

Kate, sounds like you have good approaches – hiding your walls / turning walls invisible. In addition, one thing that I do is adjust the field of view in the floor camera setting so that I might help avoid clipping into a wall. Also in plan view, I move the camera so it’s as close as possible to the wall or other obstruction. It’s easy to move in plan view with your mouse and control key to override bumping. See the ‘bath 1’ example attached from the Austin sample plan. The second, is to use the perspective floor overview camera to see into the space. If you have more rooms than the bath it may take a bit of moving the camera to focus on your scene. See the ‘bath 2’ example.