RodCole

Before the X6 beta was opened, CA let out some info that Architectural Blocks were undergoing what I understood to be a major facelift. So, I really dug into this subject in order to be up to speed when the beta was released. What a let down. I was seriouly dissapointed when I saw what little had actually been done to improve this feature, much less fix any existing issues. From what I can tell, there are probably more problems, from a users standpoint, with using Architectural Blocks than there are features. I for one hear you. But, that makes two of us. I would have to admit that Chief's developers have been very proactive in addressing these types of issues of late. Not so much where it comes to Architectural Blocks IMO. One thing I might add is that, in the past, I have had issues come up that I thought needed to be looked into only to find out much later that it really was working the way it was intended. It would be nice, if in those instances some type of feedback was provided so we would at least know what was going on. Architectural blocks could be a very powerful feature with a few tweaks.

I'll have to try your method. That's Glen's method and a glass of wine.

If you are really serious about getting the truss right in Cheif then you could also try this. From a back clipped cross section use the CAD Detail from View tool. In the CAD Detail create polylines for the truss configuration you want using the existing lines as a template. Copy the new polylines back to the cross section veiw and convert them to polyline solids. You can then group them using the Architectural Blocks tool. You may want to alter the material assigned to each member to distinguish the separate parts. The part that I find extremely annoying is that A B will not display correctly in a 2D plan view over walls. You will have to come up with some method to address this issue. You can make any shape truss with knotches or whatever you want. I like this method for such things as structural galbles, or anything else CA doesn't do.

One of the reasons for this type of thing is having the light placed behind the camera, which can catch light being reflected off the surface in front of the camera. Moving the lighting to the side will help to alleviate this problem and it also provides more of the appearance of three dimensionality or depth. One important thng to remember if you are concerned about the speed or processing time of ray traced images is to turn off shadows in all but the few lights that cast just the shadows you want for the effect you are after. Edit: I was finally able to reproduce what you have encountered. Once I was able to reproduce it even a 15W light was causing problems. Interesting that it would not be consistent. Jintu's approach worked, even at much lower U and V roughness settings. Will keep an eye on this to see if I can find out if there are other cuases as well.

Use a 3D Box and set the angle to match the roof plane. Then move it into the proper elevation in a cross section veiw. From there you can rotate it to align with the valley. You just have to fiddle with it a bit to see how the settings in the dbx effect the orientation of the Box and which views you need to be in to work the the Solids. Not very intuitive, but you can do a lot of things with Chief's Solids if you are willing to wade through the process. I cut the jack rafters 1 1/2" above the roof plane so I have something to align to. From there you can cut the ends off with other solids as reg'd. That is a quick and dirty rundown on the basic approach. There are other methods to do this using solids. That is just the way I do it a lot of the time. Hope that helps.

All of the solids shown in the jpg I posted were done exclusively with Chief Architect. No others in that view were done in any other software. There was an area where a timber frame was provided on a back deck area that was not shown. Like I mentioned before, sometimes even if it can be done in Chief, it is not always worth the time and effort when things get more complicated.

I have seen roof planes used as well for the plate stock, but IMO that is a tough approach. You also do not get the rafters cut to fit as your AC file shows. Chief solids can provide the same thing as AC, but it is a tedious process. I do it because I would rather spend the time building the model correctly than trying to clean up the drawings later. There are issues that arrise when using any of these methods for 2D display over the supporting walls. I would not rule out using AC if i were you. Not because CA can't provide the end product, it just that the more complex the items are the more difficult it becomes due to Chiefs interface for working with solids. I have a project coming up that will use serveral symbols created using solids in another application. Other applications often not only provide a more user friendly interface for working with solids, they also have features that CA does not currently provide, and probably will not for some time to come. If you are interested, let me know and I will try to post a few pix for you. Edit: Here is a jpg that shows the use of CA Solids in a project I did a while back. This is the first attachment I have tried in the new forum, so I hope this works.