andypapamarcos

I recently decided to build a new home and because I have been using Chief Architect for over 20 years for previous home additions, I did all my modeling in CA. I then brought my ideas to an architect, who used REVIT for the construction drawings, and then the build was contracted to a robotic builder who used SketchUp for all the framing models. I ended up working with all three tools and (from a computer engineer perspective) was able to understand the pros and cons of each which I will summarize here. Also, the timber framing contractor used CADworks and then gave me a 3d model I could import into CA. Chief Architect - the best overall home design tool and especially excels when it comes to views and renderings as well as walk throughs. Many people who looked at the work thought I had already built the house. Revit - very complex and powerful tools for creating wall assemblies, schedules, construction drawings, etc. In terms of the construction details, it did everything 2D that CA did, and more, but took a lot of effort to correctly use even the most basic tools. The 3d rendering capabilities did not come close to CA. SketchUp - even today, I use the 3d sketchup model when I want to know what is inside the walls. It is unparalleled in examining the inside structure of the building especially in how it reacts to a 3d mouse for rotating and zooming. It would be great if Chief Architect would output the framing model to a sketchup file. I have tried some of the export to 3d model stuff but not been able to get it to do what I wanted. If I could only use one tool it would be CA, but the combination of these 4 tools came in handy for the full project. Good luck!

Alan, If the question is how do you use Joe's macro from FloatClass, - you go to menu CAD - Text - Text Macro Management and then import the json file. Once you see it in your list of text macros, instead of putting : %room.name% Ceiling%room.elevation.ceiling% you would put : %room.name% Ceiling%Ceiling Height Label% Joe, did I get that right? Andy

Chopsaw - thanks! Seems the option to send to layout does not preserve transparency or at least I couldn't find that option. Here is one more example of a hybrid, this time with the cross section slider where the first view is Standard, then select the opposite slider using the same value for the cut point with Glass House and merge the pictures. I scaled it down to a smaller size this time. Anyone have other ideas on how this might be useful? If this was useful and not just a novelty, I'm sure CA could assign rendering techniques to each layer in a view set or assign a layer set to each rendering technique and make the views real time. Andy

I find that glass house can sometime be very helpful to figure out how things are built, but sometimes it is difficult to show or share those views with people who are not used to them. So I wanted to create a hybrid view where some things are Glass, some are Standard and some are Line Drawing. Turns out, CA makes it pretty easy. Create a layer that has only those items you want in each view - for example in this picture, walls are glass house, floors are Standard and cabinets are Line Drawing. When you have the view you want, select each layer set in turn and do 'Export - Picture' making sure to pick your rendering technique first and also to check the box to make the background transparent. Then using Photoshop, stack the three drawing on top of each other and save the composite. Still playing with this and suggestions are welcome! Andy

I guess it depends on what kind of GPS data and what you plan to use it for. For example, you take your iPhone and walk around the job site using 'MapMyTracks', then download the file as MapMyTrack123.gpx. Create a new plan and do File-import-import GPS Data and select the file. Import it as Elevation Points and then import it again as a polyline (if you want to see your path). You have the option to adjust the elevation and where to map the origin. Create a terrain perimeter and generate the topo lines. The result looks something like this: On the other hand, if you are using a Trimble or Topcon GPS field collector, you probably just import the data as xyz elevation points. Andy

Thanks - that one line really is the entire macro - here is a screen shot. Andy

I was about to ask this, but figured it out eventually, so posting it here for others. I went out to the job site and pulled in 100+ xyz elevation points from a TopCon total station and loaded them as 'import terrain data.' CA generated a nice set of Topo lines but I wanted to view the original point info. At first, I selected one point and then did ctrl-j to select all elevation points. in the Display Text of the General tab, I wrote %elevation%. That gave me something like 10 decimal points of data in inches. Of course the key lies in text macros. So I created a simple text macro with context owner-object called elevation-feet with the content (elevation/12).round(1) and put %elevation-feet% in the text field. The results was as I wanted - see picture. If anyone knows a different/better way to do this, please chime in! Andy