KTransue

Don't let him kid you ... It was spite, pure and simple. Hahaha! I had high hopes that I could use RTRT on my new killer 16" M2 Max MacBook Pro (12 CPU cores, 38 GPU cores, and 96GB RAM!). So, last February, I took it with me to our Chief Experts Total Immersion Summit to try it out with Rene's new state-of-the-art external GPU ... but the GPU didn't have Mac support. And I had already exceeded my return window. Still love my Macs but -- I have to admit -- I did cry a little.

@ChiefPat971What these gentlemen are saying is that you’re working too hard at your testing. Chief works beautifully when you understand it. It appears that you’ve interpreted “exterior” and “interior” layers to be only the outer visible surface materials, and all else to be the main layer. The main layer should be only those things that make up the structural thickness of the walls. In this case, just the block itself; not the insulation, plaster, etc. that is applied to the structural block. The sprayed on insulation, air gap, interior and exterior material coatings, paint, etc. are all part of the inner and outer layers, inconsequential to the structure itself. If you design your walls that way, things will work out much better.

Well, that’s interesting. Because there’s no ”cabinet” directly below it, it probably is considered an “upper counter”, “elbow bar”, or “breakfast bar”, so it probably gets a gimme. But, because those same forward thinking code teams that approved a change to prevent .0002% of the people from hurting themselves might not realize that a cord is long enough to hang off either way, it might fail. I hate your kitchen design, by the way. Too many counters. Lol.

Just received an email from my electrician who forwarded a write up in Electrical Contractor magazine (www.ECMag.com) addressing this issue. The last paragraph of that article suggests that “One interesting solution is to raise the counter height for seating on one side. This creates a vertical area in the countertop for receptacle outlet placement”. So, basically, the same thing that has been done since the 1980’s … that every designer is trying to get rid of. LOL.

Interesting that they don't offer a correction on that ...

Electrical manufacturers don’t advertise, so when they want to sell a bazillion of their product they just come out with something (like pop up outlets) and work to get them mandated into the code. FYI … The NEC is revised by the "National Fire Protection Association’s Committee on the National Electrical Code". The organization is composed of 18 code-making panels (CMP) with IEC representatives on each panel as well as manufacturers, inspectors, users, installers, labor, consumers, testing labs, and special experts. If you really do want to see this change, there is a process … but it may take a while. In the mean time, the NEC is designed to be adopted by local and/or state governmental bodies. Local jurisdictions may choose to adopt the code in its entirety, with specific additions or exceptions, or they may choose not to adopt the code at all. Your best hope (any of you) is to contact your local jurisdiction and argue the ridiculousness of this code change before it gets adopted in your area.

Anyone hurt is too many, thus the reason for the codes in the first place. But, “you can’t save people from themselves” … Just gotta play the odds. And, based on the number of lottery tickets sold every week, 1 out of million may sound like a pretty good chance, but really we’re talking about .0001 percent of the population. The degree of “hurt” wasn’t clear, though they did end up with a hospital visit. I wonder, though, how many other injuries in the home also resulted in hospital visits. My guess is that this very small percentage is an even smaller percentage when compared with all the other things that could happen in a home. What might be next on the chopping block? Fireplaces? Stoves? Staircases? Tubs? Showers? There’s a point of reason here, and they’ve clearly exceeded it. I’ll climb down now off the soapbox. Thanks for allowing me to stand there for a minute.

Oh my God! I didn’t notice that! I stand corrected ... So, then, 162 per year! 162! That’s .00002%!

Countertop obstacles, aesthetics, and convenience aside, let's put this in perspective, just for grins ... The driving motivation for this code change was the CPSC's concern for safety in the kitchen (just the kitchen, mind you ... As it turns out, there are plenty of accessible receptacles in other parts of the home) ... Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) data shows that between 1991 and 2020, an estimated 9,700 people, many of them children, were treated in United States emergency rooms for burns and other injuries after pulling on or running into power cords plugged into outlets installed below the island /peninsula work surfaces. So, of the 137,400,000 housing units in the United States, 9,700 people -- "many of them children" (so we can assume that it wasn't "most of them" -- hurt themselves by misusing common electrical receptacles. Assuming half of that number were children (4850), that's .004% -- or four thousandths of one percent -- had problems keeping their children away from the kitchen island electrical outlets. "Stop it, Junior! Get away from the island and go stick that in the outlet by the table!" Yeah, that seems like a good reason to inconvenience the entire rest of the country ...

For jurisdictions that have adopted the International Residential Code (IRC) — at least up through the ‘21 edition — the IRC still requires any countertop over 12” in width to have at least one receptacle, which means that an island is required to have at least one. Any requirement for additional receptacles is established by the typical determinations (24” from an edge/corner, etc). Receptacle type, capacity, and “placement” within the IRC requirement must adhere to the NEC rules, except that the IRC also disallows a receptacle to be underneath any countertop protrusion over 6”, which screws up my typical preference for making two of then readily available yet still out of sight by tucking them just under the countertop on the pilasters supporting the island’s dining ledge. No telling what will be in the ‘24 edition of the IRC, but that’s the way it is for now.

@MarkSirianni, @Chrisb222, Did you reach a conclusion? I also use a 16” MacBook Pro, as do several others here, but have not had the issues you’ve described. There is a thread on ChiefTalk that I’ve participated in regarding image transparency causing images to print as solid almost-black boxes, but I don’t think that is what you’re describing, right? My 2019 MB Pro 16” works well the way I’ve been using it, and I’ve not had the problems you’re describing, though I did load it with all the RAM it would hold. I’ve been advising another on the possible use of an eGPU solution and am curious about your conclusions.

Read back through this thread for a history of contemplation and consideration on this issue. We know the technical reasons why. What we don’t know, or didn’t at the time, is whether or not this issue can be addressed by the PDF generator in the first place, preventing it from becoming a problem at all.

Got it. Just can't "automatically generate" a whole roof system without manual intervention, letting Chief figure out the details. That's fine ... I was just trying to see how some felt that you could pretty much build any roof automatically. Simpler roofs, yes. But more complex roofs, no. Oh, you sly dog ... Definitely didn't see THAT one! Thank you.

Thanks once again, Eric. That is, as the video says, "a powerful tool when you want to manually edit roof planes", and I appreciate the thought. My quest was to achieve these intersections without manually editing the roof planes, but that's really not a practical reality. A very good tip, none the less!

@glennwActually, the construction is pretty straightforward and quite doable and, in fact, already exists. The challenge was to see if Chief's auto roof generation could determine the intersection point and self-tweak that intersection based on changing pitches of the main roof and the porch roof -- it couldn't. If it could, then the designer could play with different pitches to achieve the desired aesthetic without having to intervene to modify and complete the joining of the planes. This happens to be an existing home that we're doing some redesign in, but I was just using it as a test bed because "it looked like an easy one" to check the capabilities of Auto Roofs. Haha! Fooled me!

... I'm not seeing where you're setting that intersection in question using overhang dimensions. Enlighten me?

... kind of defeats the purpose of "automatic" roofs! haha. Thanks for the craziness.

Plus, you magically modeled my wife's she-shed! haha!

Dammit, Michael! What did I miss? What is making the porch's shed roof stop at that particular point as it climbs the slope? That is, if I change the pitch to, say, 5:12, it still stops at the same point (and just hovers there above the other roof).

Thank you @Kbird1 ... The truss base may be a reasonable approach, even in this very simple case ... though I'm not sure if they'd require more tweaking or less tweaking then the simple shed roof dieing into he main roof, and then pulling down the main roof slope to the baseline, especially when the both ends of both roofs are to remain visible. Might have to play with it just to see. Either way, auto roofs couldn't handle it, which is what I was trying to determine. Thanks again.

Thanks, Michael. Yes, I know that it's a straightforward exercise for manual roof builds ... I just wanted to see where auto roofs succeed and fail. Thank you for your thoughts ... always appreciated!

@Alaskan_SonMichael, the term we use here is "over-built" or "over-framed". In effect, it is a roof plane that is framed -- in some part -- above another roof plane, and the second plane ties into the first plane at one or more places. In this case, both ends of the primary "salt box" roof shape are visible, as are the ends of the roof over the two-story porch that die into the other roof about ¾ of the way up to the peak. But, what I'm really trying to do is understand where the capabilities of automatically generated roofs succeed and where they fail. I've read that auto roofs can work 100 percent of the time, but my testing proves otherwise. As always, I'm happy being proven wrong ... especially when I can learn from it!

@solver, rumor has it that you're the master at auto roofs, so when you tell me it's not currently possible then I know I can give up. (sigh) I had high hopes that I was going to be utilizing wall settings and auto roofs for everything. I'm reminded of something Dan Baumann once taught me: "Auto Roofs will get somewhere between 0 and 100 percent of your roofs correct." haha! I do appreciate you taking the time to point me toward that link, even though the suggestion is now three years in the making.

Thank you for helping me think this through, but I don't want the pitch change to happen over the exterior wall ... Actually, I don't want to have to determine where the pitch changes at all. It should change wherever the two pitches come together, or it kind of defeats the whole automatic roofs thing. I'm hoping I'm once again missing something simple, like a checkbox that I didn't notice has been there for a dozen versions (e.g. "Overbuild Roof Plane? -- Yes/No")