Michael_Gia

Wrong! This is the right link…

This is the best we’ve got. Tedious but can work for small jobs. Of course does not help if you’re trying to collaborate.

You should check out Rene's YouTube videos on TwinMotion. Do yourself a favour and download TwinMotion, it's free. I mean, actually free, not "internet free", really free. Did I mention that it's also free? In Chief, from a 3D overview camera, hit file, export to .dae (collada) Open TwinMotion and import model. Your model will instantly look better. It is a lot easier to create and export images, videos, walkthroughs, and online sharing with clients from TwinMotion. I use Chief for everything, as in cabinets and furniture. Then in TwinMotion, I add the grass, plants, trees and shrubs along with people and vehicles. I have a user library for these items in TwinMotion so it's a breeze. Very little tinkering with materials and lighting. For lighting I simply add a TwinMotion "skydome", it's one click and I get the overall light that I need for a given shot. No messing with lights and sunlight, although you can if you want. Really easy and enjoyable workflow in TwinMotion once you get past the somewhat peculiar interface, from a Chief point of view. If you watch Rene's videos you'll see that even updating your model from Changes in Chief is really no big deal. At first I used to curse Chief for not having a direct link to TwinMotion, but it really isn't all that neccessary.

I’m guessing this is because you are making changes in a layer set or default set that is shared with other saved plan views. Make sure you create unique default sets and layer sets for each saved plan view. I wish there was an option to make this automatic, so that when you create a new saved plan view it automatically attaches that name as a prefix for each default set, layer set and cad layer.

When I set the terrain at "0" it worked out as you wanted. -40 to -120 for the terrain offset from deck.

Believe it or not the problem might be coming from that little protrusion on the second floor. If those walls on the 2nd floor do not line up with walls on the 1st floor, then Chief can get a little screwy in unexpected places. This has been my experience, at least.

It is rounding up to 14.5 feet. If you want decimal feet then don’t use fractions in the settings. If you want feet plus inches then chose the proper “units” and then select “smallest fraction” All done in the Default settings that Chris showed in his comment above.

So, it appears to be an issue if your pixel density is not 220 ppi (retina) or a multiple of this, like 110ppi. So a 27” monitor at 1440p has a ppi of 108, close enough to 110 will not be a problem. Or a 5k 27” monitor at 218 ppi will also not be a problem. I have a 4K 27” monitor which is 163ppi, this is what’s causing the problems. Along with the fuzzy characters and blurry lines, the fact that my MacBook has to translate the 163 ppi to retina at 60Hz (60 times/second), I’m also seeing slower performance. I tried it out on 1440p 27” monitor and it works great, so I ordered a new monitor. I didn’t want to spend the money on a 5k 27” at this point in time. Hope this helps other Mac users out there, wandering in the desert….

That's absolutely stunning! Well done. That's the kind of styling I could never create, hence why I need a one-click, baked-in solution from software like Chief. Maybe it's too much to ask?

Not impressed. I guess it should go into the suggestion box in file 13.

You're right, bad example but you do know what I mean, right? I have the same cad blocks for trees where I mimic the drop shadow effect which is ok, but I wish we had a drop-shadow build in like VW. So, in answer to my question there is no way to get a gradient or image fill in 2D? No work-around?

Don't upgrade to MacOs Ventura if you use an external monitor. Resolution will get messed up. spent quite some time with Apple technical support. They are working on it. I got a somewhat half-assed remedy by rebooting using Opt+Cmd and holding "P" & "R". still sucks though. Fuzzy letters and lines. Like I needed anymore problems. I'm thinking of picking up a PC, even. Very bad.

You mean, after you've finalized the design with your client? Assuming you're not just drawing plans for the fun of it? At which point you probably already have a developed 3D model. Now is the time to go back in and set your defaults and preferences if they havent already been taken care of during the design process. So now you should have all of your floor levels, floor structure, roof structure/pitch/overhang, and ceiling structures, etc... Next I proceed just like I would build the house. Using Saved Plan Views with unique default sets, layer sets, dimension and text defaults specific for each Saved Plan View. 1) Site Plan View: set the building on the lot with the proper setbacks (basically page 1 of your construction documents/Layout) 2) Elevation Views: Front, Rear, Left and Right (although I hold off on these until I finish steps 3 and 4 (pages 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Layout) 3) Foundation Plan View: footings, columns, and bases for support walls on a Foundation Saved Plan View. (page 6 of layout) 4) Finished Floor Plan Views: Basement, Main Floor, 2nd Floor etc. (Single Saved Plan View that can be used for each floor) (Page 7, 8, 9 on Layout) 5) Roof Plan View 6) Electrical Plan View 7) Plumbing and ventilation 8) Section Views for Stairwells or any view that might shed light on changes in floor platforms or landings that are not obvious from the floor plans. 9) Schedule for Doors, Windows, Cabinets(maybe) or specialized mouldings. 10) Cad Details that can't be properly illustrated in floor plans, elevations or section views. 11) Wall/Floor composition page. 12) Basically follow the layout of one of the many sample plans on Chief's site. They are well done and include more than my little list. I purposely left out framing because I leave that up to the drawings provided by my floor and roof framing supplier. They have engineer approved assembly plans provided with the delivery of their floor system and roofing trusses. This isn't something you want to just wing with a Chief plan. It's fine for some decorative detail like a little roof over a doorway or some feature of a deck but not for anything structural. Leave that up to the pros. Aside from pretty framing diagrams to impress your grandma they are pretty useless in my opinion.

Hi, is there still no way to add gradient fills or an image to polyline fills so as to create images like this?... I'm sure I've seen something similar on Chief promotional ads? Or I might've been dreaming. I've been using 3D TopViews to get something similar and then try and overlay 2d trees but it's a lot of work and not easy to get stuff to line up on a Layout page.

To be sure, each saved plan view should have its own unique, layer set, default set, and cad layer and be sure to check “never save”. And by unique default set, I mean you should have unique dimensions, text and maybe even arrows with their own layers that are unique to that saved plan view. So, if my saved plan view is called “electrical 1/8” then everything up and down should have that name for all the various layers, dims and defaults to avoid cross contamination. I really wish this was simply automatic every time you create a new saved plan view. It should be unique in every way. I realize it would limit the power users who really know how to share layers and dimensions defaults across multiple plan views but for the rest of us it’s chaos sometimes.

I usually get downvoted when I mention this but here it goes. You might find it useful. Twinmotion is free. Export your 3D model there. There’s not much to learn or even do to your model and it will look instantly better. Then upload the file to their “3D Viewer”. It’s much quicker and easier to do. It’s a free cloud service they have that’s infinitely better than Chief’s embarrassing excuse of a 3D viewer. Do yourself a favour and take the 13.7 minutes it takes to learn this software and you can thank me later. Yes, I’ve been told I have a crappy condescending tone in my messages. I apologize, I can’t help it. Here’s how to download and a brief intro: Another pro tip is when you do finally import your first model into TwinMotion and you find yourself staring at a blank screen, just hit the “f” key and your model will suddenly pop into view.

That’s your problem. I have never had this kind of slowness in Chief before. There’s one more tip to add to Joe’s list. Make sure Chief and all your plan and layout files and anything else is on your local hard drive and not on cloud services. Also simplify your wall and floor structures. Less composites. Unfortunately even after all that, X14 is still maddeningly sluggish. Chief is just not the right tool for larger or more complex projects.

Beautiful home!

Sorry to be that guy and burst your bubble, but this is not an elegant solution. What you end up with is a cut scene where, in one frame the door is closed and then, like magic the door is suddenly open in an instant. You might as well fade out just before you enter and then fade in, once inside which I also don’t know how to do in Chief. A better approach, which handles both options, is to use Twinmotion for walk-throughs. It’s free and way easier than Chief to create a walk through.

The difficulty I always have with this, is when you turn the corner, and at the same time move up, as in OP’s image. I’m not sure if I’m making myself clear. In your image, you turned the corner but remained in the same plane.

The room elevation quirk, was coming from the roof top terrace being designated as a porch as Robert had figured out. I don’t understand why, but that room definition affected room floor heights all over the place. Once I changed it to balcony I stopped getting those warning dialogue boxes regarding floor elevations. Very strange. Although, I originally had this terrace set as a undefined, since I wanted parapet walls with a cap and a railing on all 4 sides. I thought the best way to achieve that was with a “room”, then the floor could act as the flat roof, and the ceiling height would determine the height of my pony walls, which were a 24” parapet plus glass railing. I don’t see why I need the “balcony” setting?

I’m able to move around in 3D much like you. Thanks for the video, it’s the only way to compare performance between systems. The delay was mostly when I would click on an item, like a wall or cabinet and try to edit something in the dialogue box, there would be a 4 second delay for almost each item I was working on. After talking to tech support, the problem it seems, was with the location of my plan files. The files were on Dropbox, so I moved them out of drop box and back on to my local drive and that took care of the sluggishness. This wasn’t a problem with X13. I’m still not sure if that’s really the issue here but I’ll see over time. For now this plan is workable, at least. As for the room elevation quirk, it was coming from the roof top terrace being designated as a porch as Robert had figured out. I don’t understand why, but that room definition affected room floor heights all over the place. Once I changed it to balcony I stopped getting those warning dialogue boxes regarding floor elevations.

Wow, thank you for the suggestions! Regarding point #3 and #7, I thought about creating a 12" thick exterior wall with only 1 main layer and setting the interior and exterior layers to "0" thickness but with the brick texture for the exterior and paint colour for the interior. This cleans up and simplifies the building quite a bit and has sped things up drastically. Do you recommend this?

No, you need to draw a separate polyline for each plane. A polyline is definitely more efficient than trying to assemble oddly shaped 3d solids. I just wish Chief did a better job with how plines are represented graphically in 2d plan view.

Not sure if you’ve figured this out yet… 1). Build a new floor at the roof level. This way your parapet wall heights are determined by the ceiling height of that “room”. 2). Draw a shed roof from the interior of those 3 parapet walls but extend the roof over the 4th wall by the distance for your eave. Over here we would build this roof using roof trusses with a slope of 1/4”: 12”.