Gearheadloco

Thanks Alaskan_Son, OK, I will leave the house where it is, and try to move the land around beneath it. The imported .DWG file is only about 12 layers and they are at the moment on individual layers in Chief. Would you suggest re-importing them and have Chief put them all on one layer? They aren't too much value to me as individual layers. But how is the Point-to-Point move done with the layer or layers that the terrain is on? That sounds like the ticket - will I be able to give a value relative to the terrain boundary like in a traditional setback? Appreciate the pointers, Phil

Yes, I have a couple of times - it's interesting. When you bring the terrain into the existing design, I don't need to tell the camera to shift 262' up to see the top of the land in 3D. It puts the house in the dead center of the property (37 acres) and about 20 feet underground. I guess adding terrain that is at the "wrong" altitude gets "fixed" when there is an existing design done at sea level? I'm using Chief to do my own electrical, plumbing, solar and septic design....I used it in the past with the architect who is in Sweden to go over space planning. Having a 3D render of the house would be great in visualizing the septic tank and pipes, the leach field etc., which is the current task. Anyway what I'm trying to figure out now is how to give a corner of the house a certain setback from the lot edges per the site plan being done in AutoCAD by my structural engineer. And along with the X,Y of that, I'd like to dial in a Z for the house so that I can experiment where retaining walls need to be. So yes it imports, but I haven't figured out how to dial in X, Y and Z of the house to the land so that I can dig the house out of the terrain. Thanks, Phil

Thank you Kbird1 and everyone! I took the 3312 inches from the Full Camera View, converted it into feet, and jammed it into the "Perspective Full Camera Overview" dialog and I see it too. As anything but a Chief Architect expert, I need to ask a couple more questions if you guys have a few more minutes to help - At this point I'd like to import the terrain into my home design drawing, and locate the house at a certain X,Y,Z coordinate on the land. I'm not quite sure why 3312" / 12 or 276' is a magical number to see the terrain, but would I need to "raise" my house design 276' along the Z axis so that it and the land are visible in 3D? Is there a Chief video or help topic that talks about marrying an existing design to new terrain that is at a different "altitude" ? Sorry, not exactly sure how to describe this. Thanks again, Phil

Here you go! Let me know if you get the same results - everything looks good in 2D, but crazy in 3D. To the best of my knowledge the Terrain Perimeter is in layer "BDY-E" and the Terrain Elevation Data is in layer "Contour5ft_Clip" Thanks for your help I really appreciate it. I'm able to continue work on the house, but I wanted to show it planted on our land in 3D. Phil H03001.SITEPLAN PHIL.DWG

Thanks for the responses! Actually I didn't want to risk messing up the building design by importing the terrain into my actual work file. I just opened a new sheet to do the import to see what would happen. So when there is no structure at all in the design, is it possible for my terrain (at 8,000 feet or so) to be flying high above? I actually called Chief Architect tech support this morning and sent them a copy of the file I'm trying to import. It was actually THEIR idea that my property may be "up in the sky" in 3D view. The tech checked around to see if there was some sort of way to set the altitude of the lowest point of the import topography to zero as you suggest, but there isn't anything. There is a checkbox to set the origin to 0,0, but not 0,0,0 if you see what I mean. So if that is the issue, do I need to go into the AutoCAD file and manually subtract the lowest elevation from all of the topo lines before I can see it in 3D? Remember everything shows up in 2D (Terrain Perimeter and contour lines) just fine as a top-down view of the lot. It's only when I switch to 3D that things go awry. Thanks for the suggestions! Phil

Hi, I'm having no luck visualizing in 3D a file import in DWG (or DXF) format created by a surveyor using AutoCAD with input from a Colorado GIS website. I "think" I have the two layers figured out that map to Chief's "Terrain Perimeter" and "Terrain, Elevation Data" layers correctly. When the import is complete sure enough there is the lot (in 2D) with a perimeter and a series of contour lines that range from about 7,985 ft to 8,100 ft in altitude. When I attempt to visualize the lot in 3D: Camera View Tools -> Perspective Full Overview, all I see is white screen. 3D is working fine with structures, etc, but nothing at this altitude. Is it possible that I am "below" the lot at sea level and the lot is flying 8,000 feet above me? I believe that anything viewed from below would be transparent anyway. How would I set the lowest point of the lot (contour line) at zero altitude to compensate? There doesn't seem to be an option for this during import if that is the issue. Thanks Phil in San Diego