chris10brink

Great! I'm looking forward to hearing about the results. If anyone else has scan-to-as-built comparisons, I'd love to hear about them.

I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with Chief models produced from Canvas scans. Have you found that the Chief models produced from Canvas scans are accurate enough to obtain as-built measurements? Are you using LiDAR-based scans (available with the newest iPhone)? If so, do you notice an improvement in accuracy? How could these Chief models be improved to better meet your needs?

In general, the graphics capabilities of mobile devices and web browsers are inferior to those available on a desktop machine. Thus, it sometimes takes some massaging of your Chief model to get a result that will work well in 3D Viewer. Running out of memory in the 3D Viewer on a mobile device or the web can typically be attributed to one or both of the following: 1) High surface counts 2) Large image files used as textures. Sometimes, leaving a few items out of an export can dramatically reduce the size of the export. If I'm having memory problems, I'll look for: 1) Symbols with lots of small, complicated surfaces. Things like 3D plants, chandeliers, intricate millwork, accessories with inlaid patterns, etc. often contain A LOT of surfaces and can be hidden or removed without sacrificing much visual appeal. Look for items with a lot of detailed, curved surfaces. You can put them on their own layer and turn the layer off for export. 2) High definition textures. I once came across a model that included an open magazine with a picture that took up half the page. The image for the picture had a resolution of 4096x4096, which is much bigger than the resolution of the iPad on which it was going to be displayed. A single image that size could take up more than 60 MB of memory in the renderer (even though the file itself might be smaller due to compression). For a small detail that is unlikely to ever take up a large portion of the screen, a much smaller image (say, 128x128) would suffice. In my case, I chose to delete the magazine before exporting.

The question mark material is a signal from the graphics engine that 3D Viewer is using that means the graphics engine isn't able to read the material correctly for some reason. I opened the image file associated with the texture (RocArt_off_white.bmp) in a graphics editing program and saved it off as a .png. In Chief, I modified the material to use the .png version of the texture instead of the .bmp version. Then, I exported the object to 3D Viewer again. The new model correctly displays the texture. We tend to see more problems with materials that reference .bmp files than .png files. If you run into a problem like this again, I'd recommend trying to replace any offending .bmp texture files with .png files. Nearly any simple graphics manipulation program should allow you to open the .bmp file and save it off as a .png. I have attached the updated .png version of the texture.

The ability to share plans across accounts is a feature we've been thinking about and hope to put in an upcoming version. For now, plans can only be synced using the same Chief account as Kirk mentioned.