raltd9245

I've got a 1000 watt power supply, does that qualify?

Sorry Bud you are powerful but not as the iiiustrious Mr. Hall of U-tube fame. But that's not to say you are great. Happy hollidays 

I agree. Bad business

To use the +/- for trailing dimension text - hold down the alt key and type 0177 on the numeric keypad.

Agreed

Are you referring to the "tilde"?

Problem being there are no Tilde under the bridge.

What happens when you lower the roof

We can only hope they have fixed this in X7.  We should be able to build a wall with two rows of 2x4 studs,  and both rows frame.  As it is now,  only one row of studs  (the main layer) will frame.

AND BE ABLE TO STAGGER THE STUDS

Me two

I'm familiar with most of these things but if you remember my original question was;

 

Looking for a few Ideas to draw a four-plex apartment unit. Are there any sample drawings within CA or anywhere else I can look at to get me started? Haven't drawn an apartment building yet and I need to get my thought process in that direction. Any help would be appreciated.

 

More for two story design layouts for the apartments themselves. I can do it on my own but it always helps to cheat a little by looking at some other drawings for ideas. This is mainly just preliminary to put some cost together for the owner. I have done a lot of work for him in the past and don't mind going thru the extra work but I wan to keep it simple. Not getting paid yet. 

 

Respectfully

FYI, most of us get paid for our ideas!!!!!!!

I just ran on my phone 9.38 Mbps Down 3.30 Mbps up will now try puter

15.78 Down and 3.45 up on my centurylink wireless. .46mc ping

Is that 5.3 mbps, if it is I'm getting 25 mbps on dsl. upload speed is always much slower.

I just ran on my phone 9.38 Mbps Down 3.30 Mbps up will now try puter

Oh Perry!!!!!! 

In commercial architecture we did 1/4" scale elevations with shelves dashed as standard. We also did 1 1/2" scale detailed sections through cabinets to show dims. It would be nice to have the option to show what Chief so carefully builds for us.

You will find out that Chief and Commercial are not at all compatible. Maybe someday.

Sorry if I sound grumpy. It's Monday after all.

 I thought my question was pretty plain.

I do not build floors until I need them. I understand why some of you do.

I don't & neither do a lot of other users.

So can we move past that?

All I was asking was a way to preset the cl'g hgt value so that when a new flr is built, I don't have to change anything.

IOW, no clicks at all.

I don't think there is, but I thought someone might know of a way.

It is nor you these guys like to pick on people. Are you old? DSH love to pick on old people, he picks on me all the time.

I finally did get it yo work after two more downloads and install and a "repair". Ive never had this happen before. Very quarky install.

Just wanting to let folks know what happened to me.  Don't know why but after downloading and installing the latest Chief X6 Update last night on both my laptop and PC all the links to software I had pinned on my Task Bar disappeared.  Also, some (not all) the Images I had brought forward from X3 vanished.  I lost the People and Animals the rest remained.  Have since got things back where they belong. Weird.

I am having problems. It took for ever to download and then would not install. Chief has some work to do

I'm pretty sure Leica doesn't know how to use room planner either, so they faked it.

Speaking of Room Planner what happened to the Android version Chief promised, as usual all talk not action

I would love to have the curtain wall ability for storefronts

What's New, On the CAD Side of Vectorworks 2015

by Ralph Grabowski, with Wes Gardner

Nemetschek Vectorworks last week launched the 2015 release of its Vectorworks line of software to the CAD media. To help upFront.eZine readers learn what is new for CAD users in this release, architectural industry specialist Wes Gardner spent an hour showing me his "top ten" favorite features.

One of the strengths of Vectorworks, he told me, is the integration of the landscape and architectural components. "We can place a building on a site, and the site is also intelligent. Since most buildings have a site associated with them, this is an advantage, as competitors tend to only have a mesh representing the site," explained Mr Gardner.

Vectorworks 2015 is finally 64-bit, which does not mean more raw speed necessarily, but means that it now handles larger project sizes -- which can be seen as an increase in speed through efficiency. But Vectorworks is also "slower" through its new view-transition animations. These are a slower transition from one 3D view to another (instead of snapping suddenly) so that users can keep track of where they are in 3D space.

New Curtain Wall Tool

New is the dedicated curtain wall tool, which designs glass walls framed by steel members, such as for store fronts. (Curtain walls are not load bearing walls.) Curtain walls were possible before with the Surface Array command, but not as native wall objects, and so now the Curtain Wall tool itself creates frames and panels that fit to the undersides to any form, even curved ones.

The primary advantage is editabilty through direct modeling: users can delete and add frames, change panels, add doors by splitting frames, and so on. (See Figure 1.) Doors in curtain walls resize automatically as frames are moved around. The layout of the frames and panels is specified by wall styles.

Figure 1: Inserting a door (outlined in red) in a curtain wall.

While you can move frames individually in a curtain wall, Vectorworks can redistribute them evenly.

A Panel settings dialog box lets users define panel styles in detail; custom styles can be exported to be shared with other drawings, or marked as a favorite to be placed on a server. Vectorworks ships with a dozen predefined styles; wall styles used in the drawing are shown in the Resource Browser.

More Wall Functions

Placing details is now semi-automatic through the use of "named elevations." It used to be that a level had to be associated with a layer, but now Vectorworks 2015 has layer-less levels that are associated with horizontal planes in space -- like named elevations. So a stone facing can be assigned to level "Ledge," which defined as is 1-5/8" above the base (0"). The Stories organization now shows the levels bound to layers and to elevations.

Pressing the K key closes rectangular wall outlines automatically after drawing three walls; no need any longer to try to align the fourth corner with the starting point. Holding down the Option key cuts out notches (corners) from rectangular floor plans. And the new Trim tool edits wall joins correctly. These enhancements are useful for quickly tracing over existing floor plans, said Mr Gardner.

Surface hatching (or "3D hatching") now allows users to align the hatching to the building coursing (such as bricks and blocks), to be meaningful instead just of a pretty picture. (See Figure 2.) A drawback, however, is that users need to purchase RenderWorks to get this function.

Figure 2: Aligning a hatch pattern to the wall's brick texture.

Deforming Direct Modeling and SketchUp Textures

The Twist tool is renamed as the Deform tool, because it now also deforms 3D objects: twist, spread, bulge, taper, slant. Mr Gardner managed to make a group of regular columns look like batch of French fries -- useful for sculpture design!

Vectorworks had already imported SketchUp models (by simply dragging the files into Vectorworks), including from 3D Warehouse, that repository with millions of 3D models. But now it also imports the textures attached to SKD models. The SketchUp textures are added to the Vectorworks library automatically. Also new is that SketchUp models are smoothed automatically.

Drawing Embellishment

While Vectorworks could fade gradients to other colors, it could not fade them to nothing. Now it can. This is shown in Figure 3 by the pools of light, and the shadows from the roofs. This means that there is one fewer reason to use PhotoShop.

Figure 3: Gradients fading to no color

When exporting drawings to output formats, such as PDF or DWG, users can now tweak the settings, such as increasing the resolution for PDFs or changing the format to older releases of DWG. These settings are saved for reuse through the Publish command.

IFC output can be optimized for COBie in facilities management. The STL output in Vectorworks is renamed from Stereolithography, because "nobody" knew that stereolithography was the same thing for outputting to 3D printers.

The software ships during the second half of September, first as downloads to subscribers. For more information about the new release, see the dedicated Web site at http://www.vectorworks2015.net as of September 16.

ravenscroft architects, ltd. is back living in AZ

Scott you are right on. The Company is as frustrating as any other.

Wait!? So you mean to tell me that some random person (that I've never met or even heard of) from some foreign country far far away, didn't leave me his 6 million dollar fortune after his death, that i can get in no time if I just pay the banks fee's of $8,000.00?! I'm devastated! All kidding aside my family was out over $36,000.00 due to the fact that they targeted my spouse's mother-in-law's mom who was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. We don't know what they said to her to get her information but they got her banking info and began pulling large amounts of money out of the account. We were never able to recover that money. I believe CA should monitor the first few posts of new users. 

That is why it is so funny that some guys on here thought is was a joke when I posted. DON'T EVER EVER OPEN SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM PERIOD.

I'm still getting SPAM, whats up with this.

Joe may be slow but he is a better golfer and Me thinks you are envious. But you are much better at producing videos.

No need to apologize.

JC, I've been doing a few decks lately. Using area drains, trying to limit max. Change in drop to 2", IOW, max 8' run to a drain. Using multiple area drains in lieu of scuppers for overflows.

I am finding I am putting the drains I centers of decks vs at perimeter walls.

Any comments?

You are possibly making the framing much more expensive doing a center drain in lieu of a one way slope. IMO

At the risk of annoying a few people, my preference is that as soon as a thread gets hijacked, the hijackers start a new thread and allow the original thread to return to the stated thread subject. Thread hijacking is easy to do, I admit to falling into the trap myself.

 

I doubt the the OP really got an answer to his question other than a couple of posts saying 'switch to CA' without much discussion. I'm speaking out because I was interested in learning about what the competition to CA has to offer. That discussion got completely swamped out once the thread was hijacked. Anyone viewing the thread subject title would have had no idea this thread was about the need for a CAD 'offset' tool - who knows, you may have had additional contributors had the thread and title been consistent.

You are correct blame the Troll under the bridge. It is because he doesn't have a home. Living our of a shopping cart is difficult. Working on projects even more difficult. He does the best he can.