RodCole

David You might want to check out the newly released cards from nvidia. The 1070 and 1080 are not that much more money and outperform the previous cards. Probably best to wait a bit until more product is available though.

I have been running into this situation lately as well. I have even had different configurations within a single rather long dimension string. It did not take long to fix, and it was quite obvious as well, but still it should not work like that. If you can show a specific example of this type of behavior, then I would suggest that you send in a report of this as a bug. They won't know it needs fixing if we don't let them know.

Where using Blocks becomes a viable option is when you will need to change the text within the Block itself. That would ordinarily not be necessary, but in case this is req'd you would need to make sure the Block is in a separate plan so that the original text is not changed unless that is what you intended. In my case I am modeling a hotel where the floors are being modeled as separate plan files and then the architectural elements will be combined into a single plan file. This way I can Save each floor as a separate plan and then only have to redefine the req'd text Blocks. I would point out that Joe is talking about copying and pasting text, not Blocks containing text as I understood him. Remember, there can be problems when group selecting Blocks in this manner.

When you place the text Block in your plan from the Library or the CAD Block Management dbx the Block is placed on the active CAD Layer at the time of insertion. This actually works well so long as you understand what is happening at the time of insertion. Try it out.

What is more important to me is that when you want to use text objects that have been made into Blocks you also need to keep in mind the active CAD Layer at the time you insert the Block of text. Setting up Annotation Sets will help greatly with this so the CAD Layer you want is active at the time of insertion. I tried getting around that by setting the Layer I wanted the Block to be on and then copying the Blocks to a CAD Detail where I could then copy and paste from. What I found out was that often times if you group select separate Blocked text objects and copy and paste them, some of the Blocks will be changed to match other Blocks in the selection set. Not a good thing at all. I have not found this situation to be occurring yet when using the Library though. I will be sending in a bug report on this soon.

PDF 2 CAD is what I use and it has worked fairly well for me so far.

Nice work. Does this app access the complete feature set of Chief regarding viewing? Such as, does it allow access to layer sets? Can you open Layouts and open camera views of the model from Layout Boxes? Inquiring minds... Looks like a great app, and I have a hotel project I am modeling the framing for now and this looks like it has some real potential for providing information to the fab and install crews in the field.

Great question and worth placing as a request. I agree that this is a royal pain to work with IMO as well. What I do to help things out a bit is to lay out the grid arrangement that I want and then place an object that is the correct size of the grid in the plan at the location of one of the tiles. It has to be at the elevation of the tile to be of any use. Still a tedious process, but it does at least give a bit of visual feedback. I have found that I can get things accomplished quite a bit faster this way. Still love to see a real fix for this though.

Yes X8 is somehow transposing my 3D overviews when opened and printed in either Bluebeam or adobe's Acrobat Reader DC. It even does this after being sent to layout as plot lines. What is odd is that it looks right on the print preview, but it prints transposed.

Yes, there are even more ways to do this as well, but I would rather not have to do that. Even better would be for Chief to make walls work and play well with others "Symbols".

It would also be nice if we could apply a hatch to only the main layer so that in plan view you could display the fill style, but in a framing plan the wall's fill pattern would be off so that symbols representing such things as hardware could be displayed.

I have posted a few 3D PDF files, but I have not actually posted a how to on working with these files. From what you are describing, the animations that I have seen that are similar were made using either Sketch Up or Blender to provide the animated geometry. The rendering was then done in Octane render in order to speed up the production time. There are probably other rendering and animation option available as well, it is just that I saw them on the Octane forum. Not familiar enough with Lumion to know what it can do. This same basic production process with the exception of only animating the camera itself can produce a walkthrough, but again there is the learning curve to deal with. My own personal experience has taught me to keep the presentations as short as possible without missing any important details. So, my focus is not on providing long presentations, but rather short and sweet along with 3D PDF files that allow the user to get to the information they need as quickly as possible. Where I see the camera animation or walkthrough heading in hopefully the fairly near future is for the user to control the camera movement and the rendering will be done in real time using GPU technologies providing ray trace quality images. Octane Render is set up to work along these lines, so long as you use a screen capture software. Interactive real time rendering is where things appear to be heading. The best solution to me would be for Chief to step up.

Have you had a chance to check out Camtasia yet? It sounds like you may be wanting a bit more than just a walkthrough, or even a video for that matter. Also, have you dealt with U3D or 3D PDF files? I feel that this format is far better for both bidding processes and construction info as well. With the 3D PDF file the user can access any part of the model at any time to verify the design.

To answer at least a part of your question. From what I have seen so far regarding the development of rendering and animation software my personal choice is to invest the time required to learn programs such as Blender, or Unreal as johnny suggests. Nothing against Lumion, it is just that investing time into learning about graphics in general is not a bad thing given the importance this topic. Where I am spending my time currently is working with Octane Render. It is not that expensive to start with, and the quality and speed are exceptional. This is an interactive near real time rendering program with very limited orbiting tools, but I am finding ways to use this to advantage when creating short partial rotation video clips. I am not familiar with paperless video production, but what I am familiar with is the production pipeline strategy employed in the gaming and video production industries. This basic concept applied to 3D geometry utilizing best of breed software "not necessarily most expensive" is where I am focusing my attention now. That does not actually mean waiting, it means checking things out in order to decide where to invest your time and money. Why I prefer Octane is because for one it is very powerful, and if I decide to use a particular animation program in the future there will probably be a plug in for Octane as the GPU rendering engine for it. If not, I would imagine that path animations will be supported in the not too distant future in Octane.

If I were to make a wish it would be to have Chief develop around the best features available in other programs. Even if they were not the very best, Chief would still be my preference for a great many reasons. First would be easy access to changing materials without having to go through file exchanges. Material changes should be possible inside the rendering engine such as is possible in an interactive renderer such as Octane Render. Interaction with the model itself like johnny mentioned would be seamless as well within Chief. From a practical standpoint these are huge time savers. Chief's walkthroughs in ray trace with GPU rendering would be quite desireable, even if it were not the highest quality image it would still be good enough for most circumstances.

Wish it were that simple. There is a trade off of image quality between the more automated programs and the, shall we say, more complex programs. The image quality on the automated programs has improved greatly recently, but for some types of renderings they do not offer the same level of detail that a full non biased ray trace engine can provide. I would imagine that the gap will continue to narrow on the image quality issue. The other thing to consider is not only time invested in the learning curve, but the time required to produce the video production itself. This is actually where the more complex applications start to become more interesting. With the advent of faster GPU technology and new software that has the potential for real time unbaised ray tracing and holographics it makes the decision a bit more complicated. Where I see this heading is that even the currently more complex applications will maintain their vast array of tools that allow for finer control of image quality, and it appears that the production aspects will become more akin to simply moving the camera or a headset and the rest will become more automated. Free is good, I just wish all this stuff would just get here already. The beginnings are supposed to come to market sometime in 2016. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the marketplace.

Not sure how you set up your schedules, or even if you happen to use them, but if you do use schedules make sure that the window is included if your window is on the attic level.

Roger It is a bit difficult to follow just what you are asking for. I take it that you are wanting to know if someone can draw the geothermal loop design using Chief Architect? I have never found the need to draw the actual ground installation, but I have worked with designing interior systems using both concrete and warm board products. If you are determined to model the installation I would suggest using solids since they can provide you with volumes which may be of interest regarding materials estimations. You can get the volume by running the material list. If you are after modeling the tubing Chief as well as other programs can do that.

If you have the appropriate software you can export the geometry and convert to solid then do the req'd operations and return to Chief as a symbol. Symbol placement can become an issue in certain circumstances, but there are ways to deal with that. I would also add that being able to covert not only molding poly, but also framing would be very useful.

While it is true that Chief can do many shapes that one may want. It is also true that Chief's tool set regarding solids is rather limited compared to other more specialized programs. Where this comes into play is if you actually need a particular shape that Chief either does not do at all, or does not do well. Here is an example of a sign that I made a few months ago for a project. The sign maker provided me the design, but he did not have the ability to provide me with a 3D model. The city planners wanted to see the signage as it would be installed since they were providing partial funding for the project. I was able to find and convert the actual font that was to be used on the sign as 3D text. I actually find more opportunities all the time to use other applications along with Chief. Maybe some day that will not be necessary, but for now...

This is not the article I mentioned earlier, but it is talking about the new technologies that will be released later this year. http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gp100-pascal-zauba/ I have not heard anything yet regarding the price point.

I read an article recently about the next round of GPUs to be released by nvidia some time in 2016. They said they were 10 times as efficient as the current round of processors. Depending on your circumstances, you may want to consider these GPUs rather than the current crop.

Will I just checked it and the model is there. In the older versions of the adobe reader the model would load automatically. With the new DC Reader some files require that you both allow the file to be opened, and then you also will need to left click once on the white model viewing area in the center of the screen. Sometimes it takes a while for the model to load so that it shows on screen. I am not exactly sure why it works that way, but I have found that some 3D PDF files would not open unless the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader DC was used. Another quirk that used to come up was that sometimes a file would not open unless the file was first downloaded and then opened rather than just opening from it's online location.

Here is a 3D PDF file to check out. Not to say 2D documents are not important, but I was talking to a framing sub the other day about setting him up with a similar 3D PDF file to the one below. The first thing he said was, can I use it on my phone? The answer to that question is a long story, but it can be done if you know how to go about it. The younger generation would far prefer to use a phone or tablet to a set of plans it seems. To view the file you will probably need the newer Adobe Acrobat Reader DC in order to get it to work. It is a free download. Once you open the plan click on the allow once option in the upper right of the screen if req'd. Next click on the white portion of the screen and wait until the file loads. This should only take a minute or less. Make what ever setting you want to make to the render styles or lighting and use the mouse to fly around the model. You can control the layer display by checking or unchecking the boxes on the left side of the screen. I am still learning how to set these files up properly, so you will probably find a few places where to model is not quite as detailed as I would like. But, my later ones are getting much better and faster to produce as well. Even though this is a residential project, the basic principles are the same for commercial applications with the exception that many of the components may require custom modeling. There are also methods when using Chief and other applications to produce plan and section views that include dimensions. This goes a long way toward lessening the need for 2D detailing. TC 2015 McC Z 3D PDF.PDF

There are applications out there that I have seen that allow you to basically sketch your 3D profiles and then it converts your sketch to precise geometry. This is still actually modeling the object in 3D, but with the aid of software that lets you approach the process a bit more naturally for us humans. The rub is that most of the initial programs of this type have been rather expensive. I would suggest you do a bit of research as to some of the newer applications to see if you can find something you like.