4hotshoez

The idea of a terrain break was to reduce the amount of existing terrain would be automatically modified while I added modifiers around the house. It would seem easier to print out the site with contours and draw by hand the contours the way I want them to be then scan them and build them from the 2D scan. I was hoping for some help with cut and fill data from CA. I have been playing with hills to build the terrain around the house and it was looking good until I opened the file again today and now it looks like wavy sand dunes.

I have struggled long with my terrain model. All the training videos that I can find on terrain deal with a make-believe world of terrain rather than the real world with existing contours that need to change. It could be that Chief is very capable modifying existing contours, but I have not found a smooth and easy way. When I say make believe I am referring to a simple rectangular terrain perimeter with a few simple straight lines to indicate a hill or a valley, which is easy to modify as long as all your hills and valleys are parallel. In the world I live in, the contour lines wander around the site. I have been successful in creating an existing 3D terrain model. But when I attempt to change it with various terrain tools, the model is not smooth, and has waves as it tries to re-conform to the existing contours. It does wacky stuff. I know what I want it to look like in the end, but struggle to get it there. Any suggestions on training or maybe this is a weakness in Chief? Attached plan is X7 KingPlan05+site.plan

I was hoping for an answer posted here. Not that helpful.

I never knew that DBX existed. This could make life easier.

Ok, Thanks for the tip, BUT how do I find that dbx?

Are you saying that it is not possible to reference other floors?

Under the Tool menu in Layout, I found "Reference Floor" but the options in all the fly-outs are grayed-out. How do I show other floor levels?

After reviewing the video on new features in Chief Architect x8, I could see all of the improvements were from user suggestions rather than self-promoting or sales features. Thank you Chief Architect for listening and making improvements. Dynamic updates to elevations are a huge help for productivity. I like the break line for the stair. Another help in the ability to control object height as absolute or relative. Some of the little stuff that can make a big difference every day. X8 feels like a true upgrade compared to the X7 upgrade. Keep it up. What is your favorite X8 feature?

Thenks for the tip, Eric. The image shows the siding being cut by the walls. How is this resolved?

Here is the bump out that I worked on manually. I made the foundation wall straight and extended it up to cover the hole after moving the siding walls up. But now the flooring is exposed and I want a built-in window seat at 16 to 18" of the floor. The face cantilevers or bumps out 12 inches and roof extends down.

I know I can have Chief build a bay window for me, but I want to do it manually. Can it be done easy? The floor and wall below the ledge seem to be difficult.

Yes, I have not tried moving the floor level as I know I have had trouble in the past. But I am struggling to work with the contours to make them do what I want them to do. I not sure it is worth the fight. I am trying to work with the existing terrain model and modify to show how the new house sits without gaping holes or mounds of dirt piling up. I have not figure out how to have manual control of how the 3D model builds the terrain. Fight, fight, fight seems to be the Chief A** way.

How do I raise the whole building up so the first floor is at 100 ft after the house is drawn with the first floor at 0"? How do modify contours or create new ones to tie into existing?

I was able to make progress in importing my terrain data. It did not seem to work at first because it would not import a perimeter terrain, but just a closed polygon. So I converted the closed polygon back to a perimeter terrain and all the data was there. Now I would like to establish a relationship with the first floor elevation and the terrain, which is loaded with contours. I would like to set the first floor at 100 ft, and establish one of the contour lines at 100 ft with all of the other contours to adjust with it, but how is that done?

I have watch the training videos. Since I have never developed a terrain model, I have been experimenting separate from my designed house. The question is, can I join the two plan models (terrain and building) into one? I used Sketchup and Google earth to get the topo data, then to determine the optimal building orientation after it was designed. I have not found any videos that tells me how to do this in Chief. Now I want to merge the to files. I am not rotating the building orientation. I am rotating the terrain model. Which should go into to which? Should I insert the terrain into the building model? Or the other way around? Is there an easy way to maneuver the building orientation on a site within Chief? Will merging the two mess up things in my building (windows, trim, elevation of other items)? I don't feel that the terrain model in Chief is any good for developing a cut and fill plan as Chief tends to automatically modify terrain for added roads, walks, drives and retaining walls without my input. So it makes changes that my or may not be possible and gives me no way of knowing what has changed from the existing terrain. If the terrain model in Chief was only visual in its function, then it works, but it seems very close to useful for documentation and calculations for cut and fill. BTW, WISH: it would be nice to have a direct import feature from Sketchup/google earth for developing a terrain model in Chief. Mac has no connection and Windows could be better. Better: drag and drop a sketchup model that can be edited in Chief as 3D geometry.

Thanks, I have been away from Chief long enough to forget the simple things.

Zipping the file shrinks it quite a bit, but DropBox it less work.

I inserted a box window and resized it successfully, but how can I adjust the windows placed in it automajically?

It is likely that the reason the stair/railing issues have not been corrected as requested is that CA has not come up with a workable solution yet. Stairs are the most difficult aspect in programing for a 2D/3D environment. I have yet to see a program that handles all the possible permutations of stair designs smoothly. It seems that someone could though. It is a complex system. The 3D has to look right in 2D as the stair passes from story to story. You can build a stair in Sketchup in 3D and with layer settings, turn off some of the detailed 3D elements so it will show correctly in plan, but even that is not o great as the plan cut is horizontal and the stair cut is vertical. Vertical so the tread, riser, rail and balusters show correctly.

Yes! And I thought it was my lack of understanding of Chief.

Slow Yosemite is the problem. All my Macs were fine until I went to Yosemite. If you could down grade to Mavericks, you could run X7 like lightning on your machine. But I don't think downgrading is an option on the 5K.

Joe, People still ask for DWG all the time. I don't disagree. It is likely that one app, like AutoCAD did years ago, will not dominate the market and become the "standard" format for file sharing. It is more likely that many 3D/BIM/CAD programs will be able to write to a standardized file format that no one software company owns or natively saves to like *.plan. The only reason I suggested *.SKP is because so many people own it and use it. It is well beyond Autocad ever hoped to be in terms of number of users.

My thought was the horsepower behind the effort will likely make the project a success in addition with access to the user via the internet which was not available 30 years ago. Most Chief users do not need to share data to the extent that is done in commercial architecture, so the incentive to get on board with a universal standard is not so strong. Plus, CA development does not have such horsepower to implement most user suggestions let alone a new standard. The developers within Trimble and Nemetschek have resources and good ideas and a strong user base around the world. I have no doubt that in the next five years architectural modeling and documentation will work very well together in a very user friendly way. Even more than we have now. Any companies that stand still will be left in the past. Including CA. I would think this will be making Autodesk very nervous or at least they should be. Keep your eye on Sketchup as that may become the new core technology as a result of this collaborative, and *.SKP will become the new *.DWG as a file sharing format. These are my personal predictions, for what it is worth.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trimble-and-nemetschek-group-partner-to-expand-adoption-of-building-information-modeling-across-building-design-construction-and-operation-2015-05-04 Nemetschek now owns Archicad, VectorWorks, AllPlan and many other Architectural apps. Trimble is also a power house that now owns Sketchup. Both have agreed to collaborate and join forces in development of something better for architectural users that helps develop a BIM standard that is sharable. I know this seems like nothing in the small world of Chief Architect users, but it will mostly effect Revit users at first. And if they are successful in developing a smarter product, all Chief users will be taking a second look shortly after.

Endpoint - 4 and midpoint - 5. I do not use these, but I will try to pay closer attention when they change. I have been moving around to several files, which may have default setting with endpoint and midpoint off. But it just seems more often than usual.