CJSpud

Scott: Can you explain your statement - " If you select all of the cabinets and Convert to custom counter it may be faster than drawing a custom counter." I didn't know there was/is a way to create a custom countertop by selecting a group of cabinets. Maybe I am missing a procedure that would be very useful. Thanks.

It's the building season so if responses are slow in coming in, it might be because Chief users are busy. I would concur with the recommendation of using Dan Baumann at ChiefExperts.com. He's been a Chief user/trainer from back when Chief was still in diapers. Other names that come to mind are: David Potter Jim Lawes Tommy Blair Terry Munson Etc. Whether or not these individuals currently has time on their schedules to do tutoring, I don't know. Watching threads on ChiefTalk is a great place to learn as well. Watch all the CA training videos you have time to watch. Did you check out the forum where members offer their services?

Pat: Have you taken any backclipped sections in areas where the panels aren't displaying properly? Just seems like there should be an explanation as to what is causing your problems. If you can't get it figured out, you'll either need to zip and post your plan here or send it to Tech Support.

Rob: Your 2nd photo doesn't look like it would work for a climate zone where heating is required ... not much thickness for insulation. There have been many threads on bay windows that I think you should go read. I think all your questions will be answered if you go see what's already been posted on ChiefTalk.

gw...: I have been a Chief user since v7 in 2001. In observing many users come on board (via ChiefTalk) after switching over from AC, VW, SP and others, it seems to me that in almost every case, those users have not looked back. As with any software, Chief is not everything for everyone, but if your primary focus is doing home designs and construction plans, I think you will be pleased to be using Chief versus VW, AC, etc.. You have 30 days to give Chief a good test. ChiefTalk is a great forum where you can fill in some gaps of information and/or techniques to use when designing with Chief.

In Preferences > Edit > Snap Properties > Object Snaps, do you have a check in "ALL" the boxes. Seems like it should work.

Have you tried to join them with the new "Intersection, Join Two Lines" tool?

Pascalli: Thanks for the clarification. I think Chief's sun tools will allow you to show where the sun will be landing anywhere inside any model with windows (facing east/south/west) providing you've plugged in the correct latitude and longitude for each project. You'll have a lot more fun getting the building science stuff right than seeing where the sun's rays are showing. I recently read an interesting article about thermal mass and storing thermal energy via windows etc. If my memory serves me correctly, the author of the article eluded to the fact that it is difficult to control the rates at which energy is release from a thermal mass ... etc. etc. I think I saw it on the Green Building Advisor blog but it may have been somewhere else. Good luck with your sun studies. Lew ... your off the hook!!!

OK, and to answer my questions, I will rephrase ... How much time would it take you to crate the model that the OP DID post using SU, since that is the present model the OP is experimenting with? Have you ever used SU before and if so, are you proficient at creating a home model such as we can create with CA? Assuming you are an experienced SU user, how long did it take for you to get proficient using SU? Assuming you are an experienced SU user, how long would it take you to re-create the OP's posted model using SU? You are suggesting that the OP use a program (SU or some other sun-study program) that he/she is unfamiliar with to accomplish what can be done in Chief. I am not sure why you would do that??? ... Maybe eventually the OP will in fact do that ... But it sounds to me like the OP is trying to accomplish the work at hand within Chief and is asking for advice on how to evaluate lighting within the model presently being studied by changing settings, etc. I think the OP is looking for Chief solutions, not solutions outside of Chief!

Lew: Maybe ... How quick could you reproduce the OP's CA model and then do some Sketchup shadow effects? Minutes? Hours? Day(s)? Have you created a Sketchup model of a home and did some shadow studies? If so, how much time did you have invested in learning SU at that point? If the OP is "only" concerned about shadows, if I was the OP, I would take a Chief technical illustration in a heartbeat over trying to learn SU and then creating views showing SU's shadows. The OP's original post sounded like there was more to what was wanted then just shadows.

My take on being able to produce reasonable images that are "close to" real life scenes in a real building is that you have to pay your dues with a lot of practice and experimentation. I think the only way a person can get good at this is reproducing a model of an existing building (home), such as your own, and then taking a bunch of photos with a decent camera, getting all the camera settings right such that the photos are very close to what your own eyes see in terms of brightness, shadow effect, colors, etc. Then, create a Chief model of your home, and try to replicate any of your better quality photos of your home. Without doing something like that, it seems to me you are just creating images that "look good" and may or may not be representative of the real world lighting effects in your home based on time of day, intensity of sunlight, month of the year, roof overhangs, etc. etc. Others have put in tons of time trying to get those near-perfect photo quality images with Chief and some of those images (at least the ones I have seen posted) have turned out really good in my opinion. Many power users who create great images as a part of their design business use other programs such as Thea to improve upon images from their Chief models. I just sit back and gasp when I see these users post their great images here on Chief Talk. I think you are just scratching the surface at this point and you've got a ways to go to get those really nice images you want to wow your customers with. At this point, I think it would be a waste of your time trying to learn Sketchup and produce images showing shadows, etc. with that program. You can already get pretty good images with the technical illustration and other camera options. Your call ... just my take on things.

Chief OTB, without changing any settings, has ceilings that are way too dark ... so, if you already have a check mark in the lighter ceilings box, you may want to change your ceiling to be more emissive. Another adjustment that I usually forget to adjust, but then quickly change, is the interior ambient setting for a room. You can also tweak the appearance of a ray trace after it is completed (actually I think you can do this while one is generating as well) by adjusting brightness, contrast, etc. There are other things you can play with that will change the appearance of your ray traces in a good way. I suggest that you go to the old ChiefTalk forum and check out some of the threads where ray tracing and lighting are discussed. Users such as Jintu ... and many others ... give some good advice on settings to use, etc. If you haven't watched the 3-part Chief bathroom videos on ray tracing, you should check them out as well. I think Scott thought you lived at the North Pole and therefore your igloo was constantly dark. Obviously, if you have lots of windows in a home, and it is not in any of the darker months of the year, you should have decent natural lighting in a room, even with eave and porch overhangs providing shading. With that in mind, the exercise then becomes one of doing whatever setting changes you need to have to get the look you want. Unfortunately, that isn't very easy given that there are literally dozens of settings you can alter to affect your room's appearance with Chief's camera tools. When you master it, let me know what you did, because I have really struggled with making good ray traces forever. Good luck. When you get some results you are reasonably happy with, post them here so we can enjoy them as well.

Thanks Tommy, Joe ... good to know what to try to salvage 3rd party symbols.

Dennis: I just experimented with one of Chief's library sconces and was able to resize the sconce in a 3D view by selecting the sconce and then opening its dbx and changing the size in the General Tab of the dbx. I can't do the same with your sconce. Therefore, I think it is corrupted ... broken ... just doesn't work. I can't think of anything else to try. Maybe Joe Carrick (a symbol expert) will chime in and tell you what's going on. I give up.

Dennis: I tried to reduce the size of the 3D symbol and it just doesn't work. I can reduce the 2D block OK ... but not the 3D view of the symbol. I think you need to go find one that works better or try to make one of those yourself.

Joe: Thanks for all your time and effort on sorting this out. I hope the Chief programmers do something about this as it would be a lot easier for us to be able to create cabinets within Chief such as the one you show. After reading all this, I think I am going to keep on using separate cabinets as I have been doing all along, but add a footnote below the schedule to put the Owners, GC and/or cabinet builder on notice that combining individual cabinets into one cabinet may be possible/acceptable with Owners' approval. Great thread ... and good comments from others as well.

Zowie: Can you post an image of what you have and/or provide a little more info on what you have done and exactly how your layout is to be built? Not sure what seamless problems you are experiencing.

Dennis: Which sconce is that ... I tried to do a search by plugging in the number and got a disk image malformed error message so wasn't able to pull it up that way? Edit: I think I was thinking you had the sconce(s) over the vanities but I see there's something else on the bottom wall ,... is that your sconce?

Erik: Scott knows all the fixes for your situation. I would probably make those walls into pony walls with the bottom part with your drywall and the upper part (exterior) with your shingles. BUT, there may very well be an easier way in dealing with that with some of the settings. If you post the plan, you might even get a nice video from Scott .... if you say please!

Scott: No, I didn't F12 the roof to see if it would chop the walls off. But, your idea of cutting a hole in the roof would probably solve that issue if there was no need to add an extra floor such as you do.

Scott: This was so easy, I think I could have done it in my sleep. I did it the way I suggested ... just 4 attic walls joined ... your right, no room def ... that was good as there was no floor framing at the top ... drug the walls up in elevation views (the roof didn't chop them off ... they were sticking out already - Great .... put a PL solid lid on the top of the chimney walls ... found a couple of chimney tops in the library and got them positioned as shown. EASY PEEZZZZY

Scott: I will have to experiment with your technique of adding an extra floor and not fussing with attic walls. What I am wondering about regarding my suggestion is, if attic walls don't provide room definition, then there shouldn't be any 3rd floor framing to worry about. I am going to go do a quick test and see how this might work.

Tommy: I am with Lew on this .... I think it has always behaved that way.

Go up into the attic and draw your walls there ... make a room and give it the desired ceiling height .... or draw the walls on the attic level (they should want to stay under the roof unless you make them do otherwise ... then in elevation views (backclipped) drag them up one at a time. That should give you the framing. Make you wall definition whatever it needs to be for materials. You may need to use a PL solid for the cap. Post your results when you get it figured out. I got something similar I need to do with a plan soon.

I am on a good streak now so hopefully whatever changed, whether it was me messing around with settings on my end and/or if Dan and the ID crew did something good, I don't know ... BUT I AM HAPPY TO HAVE ACCESS TO CHIEFTALK on a daily basis again. Thanks to everyone who's provided suggestions and assistance. Much appreciated. PS: Just in the process of completed some maintenance on my old computer so I will have to check out and see how my access to ChiefTalk works on it.