RodCole

Couple of things. One of the reasons for using Chief over other rendering engines, that I have not seen mentioned, is the ability to work directly with materials on the fly without having to go through the export process. This is a real time saver and when working with customers it makes a big difference since people tend to lose focus rather quickly. My customers really like working with the RTX engine, One of my customers calls it the point cloud because of the pixelation effect. On another meeting with a customer, I was working on an exterior scene and could not notice any pixelation until I moved inside the model. simple model, but still very cool. It ain't Otane Render, but still very nice and it will only get better as time goes on. There are times when it is worth exporting a model to an outside rendering engine. One of those being the Clay Render feature in Octane Render where I found, by accident, that I could have most of the material assignments clay and only change a few materials for accent effect. I am also very interested in Blenders 3.0 development as well. As far a puters are concerned, I recently purchased two new gaming laptops. One with the 3060 card and the other with a 3070. The specs on the latest laptops are more comparable to desktops than I thought they would be. I do intend to build a new desktop sometime later this year, but it is not a requirement for work, I just want it because I want it. From my research the 3080 card outperforms the laptop version of the 3070 by 8 percent for nearly a grand more money. The days of high-priced renderings are being left behind by offerings such as Chief's RTX. I have learned not to argue with Chief when it comes to marketing. One of the most frequent comments I get these days is how excited my customers are to working with the RTX renderings.

I would be interested in this as well.

I live in the greater Portland area and may be interested in working with your team on a freelance basis if that interests you. I do have a question for you though. In the list you provided, experience with vertical loads is mentioned, but not lateral loads. Is this something that you are currently having an engineer provide for you? I believe that I more than check off the boxes in your list and I also have considerable experience working in the commercial construction arena as well working as a CAD Detailer on large and small commercial projects. In this capacity my duties were to create a 3D model of the projects and produce working drawings for the construction crews. This would include both wood structural 3D models and details as well as metal framing. Part of my work involved reviewing Architectural plans and engineering details and specifications in order to produce RFIs "Requests for information" to ensure both a smooth design as well as construction process. From this I have gained experience in working cooperatively with both Architects and Engineers, both in person and remotely, and I believe this experience, and my background in engineering, could be of benefit to you in the residential world as well. I also have many years of experience working with residential projects including a great deal of high-end work including design, architectural renderings, and construction. I have been using Chief Architect since Version 2 starting in the early 1990s and still use it today along with other traditional CAD software. My schedule is fairly busy currently, but I do feel that, moving forward, it might be beneficial for us both that we touch bases to see how we might be able to work together. If you are interested, please send me a message with your preferred contact information.

Another approach is to use a PDF conversion program and send them both the PDF from a Chief Layout page as well as a DWG file of that page that you created from a program such as PDF to CAD, about $99.00. There are probably other less expensive options, but this one has been around for a while and it works. I have found that having your own PDF converter is very handy if and when you want to work with a DWG file in either AutoCAD or another CAD program that uses that file format and alI you have is a photocopy or a PDF file available. Scan it to PDF, Convert it to DWG and then you will probably need to scale it as well so having some sort of dimensions is very helpful. BTW, if someone is telling you they have to have the file in exactly the format they work with and set up the exact way they work with it, then that tells you something about their computer skills in general. From my experience, this is usually from self-proclaimed experts who are generally a bit antiquated in other skill sets as well. As in, why don't they have the ability to convert a PDF to CAD themselves.

Try the backgrounds that have snow in them if you want more natural colors. It may not make much sense, but that is what I have found. What would be nice is to have a background photo that has snow in the lower portion of the pic and a neutral blue sky above that with a few clouds thrown in. Then when you place plants from CA's Library the scene it would look correct and the color would not be off. The other thing I have thought of is to edit your site pic to lighten it up a bit and then add the library items. Chief backgrounds seem to be working in a manner similar to HDRI light sources in other rendering engines. Hope that is helpful. Show us more stuff when you are flying. Good luck.

Just curious, have you tried to import the file first into another program such as AutoCAD or TurboCAD? Chief is not always the best way to deal with large amounts of data in non-native file formats. Chief does a great job of displaying 3D symbol modeling files and very fast at displaying it as well as soon as the model has been imported. But other more CAD related programs often import data such as point cloud info and large DWG files a bit better than Chief does, at least from my experience. Can you fill us in a bit more as to what you are trying to accomplish using the total station data. The obvious guess would be terrain surfaces, but that may not be it. The reason I ask is that there are actually quite a few ways to represent terrain surfaces including but not limited to 3D Solids. Inquiring minds want to know

I have experience with the type of work you are seeking for this project. I would like a bit more information regarding the scope of work you would like to be provided if it is in addition to what you have posted. Rod

I sent you a message

Interesting proposition, but I don't have any idea of how to make the comparison short of some sort of head to head test. My new laptop has a RTX 3060 and a fairly powerful i7 intel processor, which seems to work well together.

Gene Hopefully you have your new computer by now, but I thought I would follow up with an image produced in X13 with RTRT and a RTX 3060 card in a laptop. It took about 3 seconds for the image to settle in, but interior views with stainless steel and other reflective surfaces can take up to 10 seconds or more. I think I can get used to that. This does not directly answer your walkthrough question, but I would imagine that there would be some sort of relationship as far as the timeframe is concerned. This image is from a current project that is still a work in progress so much is still unfinished. Just thought you would like to see something from X13 RTRT. Enjoy your new computer.

I am in the Portland Oregon area, Tigard to be more specific. I will send you a message in the next couple of days.

I just recently purchased a new laptop with an RTX 3060 card. Normal time for a render to settle in for me is about 3 to 4 seconds or less with a simple scene. I have mostly been working with the Real Time Ray Tracing, but I would expect that you will be very happy when producing walkthroughs on your new system.

I don't have experience with Archicad, but I have worked with Revit on a daily basis doing commercial CAD Detailing for construction companies. Revit, in my opinion, is a fabulous and fascinating tool and it is capable of some amazing things once you are very familiar with it's methods of modeling. From my experience, anything remotely close to what you posted the link to would best be attempted while standing on your head using Revit. Great program, even better marketing. You have pointed out something that I feel is very important for this discussion, and that is the overwhelming number of perfectly fine programs that you could learn in an attempt to accomplish your goals. Not my idea of a good time. This is a choice you will obviously have to make for yourself, but I would highly recommend that you choose one parametric automated architectural modeling system and supplement it's shortcomings, and there will be shortcomings, with one CAD slash Solid Modeling application that is powerful enough to do what you want without being to much of a brain burn to learn and will work well with the application you ultimately choose. Regarding your comment about brute force as it applies to CAD programs, I happen view it quite differently. My analogy is what I call the Hamburger Button, our marketplace continually tries to simplify and automate things down to the level that there is no need to think, just push the button. For myself, I choose not to wait for any application to automate exactly what I want, just get as close as reasonably possible. I would also like to point out that as much as anything it will come down to your level of skill and knowledge of ways to do things that are not apparent OOB, Out Of the Box and that will take time and help from folks like those on this forum. Finally, you appear to have overlooked that it is often times the builders who are the ones who make things happen, often in spite of the plans.

I have used Chief since the early 90's, and it has improved dramatically since then. I have also used Chief for both commercial and residential work. In the commercial arena I have found that Revit is fairly straight forward for most of the basics, but it gets complicated fairly quickly when you start pushing the envelope with it. I actually used Chief to model the walls and metal wall framing in a multi-story hotel and everything went fairly well. What I found with Chief is that if you are already comfortable with industry standard CAD programs, my guess is that you will become frustrated with Chiefs CAD tools fairly quickly. I am not saying that the tools are bad, just different. What I do is to use Chief for what it is good at, and TurboCAD Pro Platinum for more complex Solid Modeling. There are a few hoops to jump through when using other programs along with Chief, but there are ways of dealing with that such as importing PDF files into Chief's Layout. I am not saying that what you are after can't be done with Chief alone, just that from the sound of your background and expectations, then I would seriously consider a secondary CAD / Solid Modeling application as well. Hope this info was helpful

For general information regarding CAD standards try this out. United States National CAD Standard - V6: Uniform Drawing System Module 1 It will give you most of the basic standards I believe you are looking for as far as plan sheet naming and catagory coding goes. The implementation of this is not very consistent, as you appear to have found out for yourself, but it does provide a good basic starting point to work from. Hope this is helpful.

Jeff Very nice work, thank you for sharing that with us. Could you provide a bit more information about the process you would like to follow regarding the design phase of your projects. Feel free to send me a Personal Message if you would prefer.

Mike If you do a search for NCS United States National CAD Standard-V6 it should get you to a site with 4 pages of information regarding, in part, the layout page naming industry standards. On the second page under Level 1 Discipline Designations it provides a list of categories and its letter designation. Regarding, what I think your question was, for A-1 ect.. you would put A-# in the Layout, or whatever designation is appropriate.. Hope this is helpful.

My comment would be similar to the ones above. I have my computer under a large shelf that provides an extra surface area as well as to keep the light off the screen. I do have a small clip on LED directional light clipped to the edge of this upper shelf. This small, but bright light is directional and can be directed away form the screen and down onto the desk in order to light my work area when I need it for reading and such. I used to think that a large overhead light would be the best possible lighting set up. I just never got around to it and now I am glad that I didn't. I like the small, bright and directed light much better. BTW I have a second monitor off to the side, and a Flat Screen TV a distance away to the front. Works for me. Good Luck with your project, hopefully this is not to late for you and your team.

Joe Have you happened to come by any systems that rate Floor / Ceiling systems for older homes? I often come across 1x12 Rough Saw Lumber installed diagonally to the floor platform. This was a very common system many years ago. A problem arises when situations such as remodeling an older home to convert the basement into an ADU. These usually have very low ceiling heights, making difficult to arrive at 7' clearance . Just curious if you might have found something in your travels.

Expand or Contract the Column width for the column that contains the image and it will expand and contract the image size. One thing that can make this more difficult is if the text in the column heading is long. The text you have should not be a problem. Let us know if this works for you.

I did some ADU units a couple of years ago on remodel projects involving older construction methods. In my case the flooring above was diagonal 1x12 planks and not T&G. What I wanted to point out is that, from what I remember, the entire assembly needs to be approved, and that is typically by the specific drywall manufacturer in order for the assembly to be considered to be approved. I am not disagreeing with the statement, merely pointing out what I believe to be even more stringent requirements. I am also curious what others have come across regarding these matters.

Telling on myself here a bit, but it does provide an example of how things get a bit out of hand if you are not careful. I do know better than to do this but, I thought I would save some time by using the default settings "concrete" in the Polyline Solids tool to create the metal framing members on a Storefront Window Wall. I quite happily painted the members black and while I was at it I painted the door black as well, or so I thought at the time. The problem showed up when I added the Material category to the Door Schedule, then a mile long listing of the actual material definition showed up in all of it's glory with black showing at the end. I could have changed the material definition in the door's dbx, but instead I dropped the doors from the Schedule because I could in this situation. Even though I did know better, I thought I could get away with it just this time, but that darn Cat in the Hat got me. Lesson learned, again. 2 cents.

My sentiments exactly on having the ability to copy and rotate section and elevation cameras.

Chop I am not exactly following your question. I believe that it is only the Pro Platinum version of TurboCAD that exports to the 3D PDF format. As far as importing PDF files I believe that it is only 2D PDF that can be imported. So, TurboCAD is only good for exporting the 3D file, not for viewing it as I understand it. When I opened the file it opened in Bluebeam for me, which is my default program. I do see that multiple layers are available in the file as well as solid fills. One of the reasons that I do not use the 3D PDF format much anymore is not that it is not very useful, but rather that the viewing programs available seem to be to difficult for people to learn how to use and so they just don't bother. That makes it hard for me to want to continue creating these files when folks don't use them anywhere near there full potential. My 2 cents. I think the answer to your question is that the rendering options available in the viewer app being used controls how the objects are seen on screen. Good question though. I would kind of like to know the answer to your question, as I understand it, as well. I think that it would require seeing the 3DS file from Chief that Zbrant57 used to understand this situation a little better.

Glad to see that things worked out for you.