RodCole

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.

I would point out that X8 has a few features that make working with other software packages much better. Not good, but quite a bit better. So, I would say that in order for this to work best one would need to think about using the latest version of Chief, and, as you say, maybe not the latest version of another package, but one that at least works well enough to get the job done. I would like to point out that there are currently far too many workarounds slash secret handshakes required to be what I would call practical. The potential is there IMO, but Chief would need to make a few improvements to symbols and file exchanges for this to be a reality.

From what I have seen, the problem Chief faces is the same problem that all of the automated systems currently face, and that is creating viable automated systems while still providing the tools req'd for customization. On one side of the spectrum we have programs such as AC that you can pretty much create any geometry that you may want. The cost is in the time it takes you to learn how to use these tools at an effective level, and then the time it actually takes you to put all of these customized pieces together into a complete model and then pull CD's. It can be done, but most folks really don't want to have to beat themselves up with this level of detail. So then a measure of automation is introduced out of necessity. The other side of the spectrum focuses on automated systems that work wonderfully, up to a point. Where I see the divide is that Chief seems to shy away from creating more powerful CAD and 3D Solid modeling tools, at least at this point in time. Whereas their competitors are actively trying to incorporate these types of features that have been around for quite some time in programs such as AC into their automated systems. To each his own as far as which way to go IMO. The problem that I see is that so much is being lost when we only have one option or the other to choose from. For all of the hype about BIM by certain developers, the reality is that what they really want is not an open playing field where the best products win, it is simply market share. There is actually considerable push back from government agencies world wide on these issues. It seems that what they want to do is to promote the development of BIM tools that actually aid in the exchange of information between all parties early in the design process. Un-American it may appear, but still rather interesting IMO. What I would like to see is better file exchange so that the best tools and processes win. Chief does appear to be moving in that direction, but a bit slow for what I would like to see. So, how I see it, and I believe market pressure will direct this development is toward hybrid systems where file exchange is fundamental. Actually I have found that a lot can be done in this regard with Chief currently, so long as you are willing to fight your way through the lack of compatibility. Too bad, so close but yet so far, IMO.

What I found is that in order to qualify for use in the prescriptive method it is the manufactures thickness rating, not the actual thickness of the panel that counts. I agree that it does not make a lot of sense, but that is how I understand it to be viewed by building officials. Kind of goes against everything I was taught in engineering classes, but it appears they are leaving it up to the thickness rating stamped on the back of the sheet by the manufacturer. BTW, I was using the continuously sheathed prescriptive method and it passed just fine. Another thing that I found to be a bit irritating is that it is very difficult to find the thickness rating unless you actually look at the back of the sheet. That information has to be available somewhere, but trying to determine who the manufacturer is and then find their rating is a royal pain. There probably is some consistency between manufacturers, but I did not get much help with that from any of the suppliers.

I agree that this should be much easier to accomplish than it is now. It can be done using the methods stated above, but there really should be something a bit easier to work with. I had a project a few months ago that was an addition on to a house that has T-1-11 siding. I thought the same as others that with only 5/16" of remaining panel that it would not have enough shear rating to work. I was surprised to find that the actual thickness of the remaining panel was not the issue. The issue is the rating stamped on the back of the panel by the manufacturer. It turned out in my case that the siding's shear rating was fine. There is another issue with using a product that is both the sheathing and the finish siding and that is the application of the rain guard type of barrier or the lathing. Nothing so far seems to make a whole lot of sense to me about how to go about this type of situation. So, if it is not so much the shear issue that has many builders using far less T-1-11 today than they used to, then I would think that it would probably have more to do with market preferences and the association with low cost housing that is being avoided. Two cents.

Where have I heard that before? Hum, I think it might have been from Lew come to think of it.

I am curious if anyone here has actually read the agreement that was required to be acknowledged in order to be on Chief's new forum? The reason that I asked is that, from what I remember, there are potentially additional issues regarding intellectual property. Just something to think about.

Along the same line of thought. I was struggling with selecting Wall Hatches a while back. So, I called tech support and was told to select the Hatch tool and then I could group select only Hatches while the Hatch tool was active. I was reminded that this method works for most tools in Chief. In my case with the Hatch tool, what I really wanted was to have the ability to pre-set the default hatch pattern. But, since that was not available group selecting was the next best option. I don't know why I didn't think of this on my own either. I usually pride myself on having a firm grip on the obvious.

Regarding the isolate layer question you have. One thing you might try is to call up the All Off layer set and then select only the layer or layers you want to display. For this method to work well you will need to make sure that all layers are off when you are finished with a particular task so that the layer set really is all off. This is not the automatic process that other programs provide, but it can work. I don't actually use the above method as much anymore since I have developed my own working layer sets tied to Layout Views. There are a lot of ways of going about things in Chief, sometimes it takes some experimenting to find out what works best for you.

1) Yes symbols may work for what you are after. The problem with symbols is that the way they are inserted makes it very difficult to maintain the proper alignment between say a group of beams or columns and potentially text or dimensions in 3D. What I have found is that in order to organize objects on layers you will need to create separate yet correctly oriented symbols. That can be done, but it requires a bit of preplanning and the use of a set reference point that you can align all of your symbols to. Also X8 has an improvement that makes the process a bit easier as well for setting the elevation of the inserted symbols. 2) Yes, some of us used to do that for remodeling, but the walls work much better now than they used to. The problem is that you will probably have to relocate everything to the proper elevation after you have placed it. Which means more time spent on that as well as the extra complication of an additional level to deal with. You will just have to try it and see if that works for you or not. I get what you are saying about wanting to get things to work in one program, but at some point that becomes a limiting factor to what you can accomplish with your work. Competitive pricing makes the cost much more affordable, but there is still the learning curve to overcome. If you can figure a way around that one, please let me know.

What Perry said. I was taking it for granted that the situation was something beyond what Chief could do live using reference sets. My bad. The point I was trying to make is that there are a lot of options available in Chief for displaying objects even beyond reference sets, but at some point it gets to be a lot of what I call bookkeeping trying to keep track of all of the work arounds. In those cases I find it easier to use other programs that are well suited to managing layers, regardless of floor or level considerations, and also have a variety of display options that Chief does not currently have. If I had to choose between Chief's workarounds for 2D, which would not be live, and another app, that was definitely not live, but better suited to the type of output I was after, I would use the other app and do the req'd conversions. Thanks for catching that Perry. Curious, when you say anno sets, I take it that you are driving layer sets from anno sets. I generally drive layer sets from Layout Views, but I think we are talking about the same basic thing.

I take it that you are wanting to display roofs live? If that is the case then that is a tough call with Chief. When facing the type of situations you are describing, anymore I just export the items in question and place them on separate layers in a program that will not only provide layer control, but also hidden lines as dashed. This is not live, but if this is done late in the design process it is a workable situation. In order to return the drawings to Chief it generally requires that you be able to either print to PDF in the other program or explode / flatten the drawings and convert to DWG for the return trip to Chief. Some day Chief will probably have the type of capabilities you are after. If you don't want to wait, then you might want to consider using other tools in concert with Chief.

No problem. I have a question for you if you don't mind? Are they still holding the first Thursday art walk or display these days, and if it is, is it going well?

The Pearl District and Flanders Street narrows it down to Portland Oregon I believe.

It does not close them all at once, but what I have done is to assign, I think it is the close window command, to the F4 key. That is an old windows standard I think. Anyway, you have to press it each time you want to close a view, but it is quick and it does not close any views that you may not actually want to close. That and driving the plan view from Layout and setting up the camera defaults cleans things up quite a bit. This way a Layout box view becomes the organizing factor, therefore there is generally less need for a ton of unrelated views.

How I handle the first issue is to set the overhang of the roof plane and place one truss and check that it does not have the tail. Select the truss and open the truss dbx and lock the truss envelope, then Multicopy that truss as many times as req'd. BTW, I use solids to model the overbuilt area, either in Chief or other software. It is not all that difficult, but there are quite a few steps involved. From my experience, planning out the steps req'd to get the truss configuration that you want is important. I believe that one need's to learn when to cut their losses when working with the truss tool, and try other approaches or work arounds to get the job done. Chief actually does trusses very well, so long as you stay within the confines of the tool. I on the other hand, do not like staying within the confines of the truss tool. So I have to find other methods that work. Hope that works for you. Depending on the plan, Chief's trusses can be a bit difficult to get just right, even if you edit them. There are several ways to go about getting the trusses to be accurate, but that requires one jump through a few hoops, and or use other programs depending on the final output you want. For 3D PDF output, the geometry of Chief's trusses are not that great. Probably best to post the plan to get help with the porch. I have to hit the road right now. Good luck.

Terry Sorry if I miss stated your intentions. Try adobe's Acrobat Reader DC, that is the one that I am using now. As for BIM, interop, output, model accuracy, 3D PDF and anything else that one might consider to be a goodie, that has not been the focus of this particular thread to date, as has been mentioned. I was aware of that, I was just trying to answer what I thought was a question you were posing regarding some of the potential drawbacks to artistic rendering.

Thanks jon. Here is a pic of a Chief stair model that has had some work done in another program and then brought back into Chief as a symbol and rendered as a technical illustration. The goal is to have a fully customized and technically accurate stair model that can be rendered for arch viz purposes. So far my render times from Octane for stair models are coming in under 10 sec. This model should also be capable of being used to produce fully detailed shop drawings if req'd. I think this is at least in part what Terry is pointing out as a drawback to artistic renderings alone, if they are not actually buildable or able to convey the necessary information to build them correctly. IMNSHO that ain't necessarily so.

Thanks David, I will have to check that out. I have heard quite a bit about Sketchfab, but I have not tried it yet myself. Looks like now is the time.

jon Could you provide a bit more detail of the stairs. I get that you are trying to set up an attractive scene, and you have succeeded. It is just that accurate modeling right down to shop drawing as well as high quality rendering is something that I am very interested in at the moment. Custom stairs in particular are what I am working on, but it could be anything else that could possibly benefit from the processes.

BTW, the modeling was done mostly in CA, but the export to the 3D PDF file format was not produced from Chief. I do appreciate your point of view, but I do not agree with the premise that engineered drawings on work planes in dedicated systems will be the norm. Take for example the 3D PDF file that I posted, depending on the application used to create the file, dimensions and text can be placed in the model space and it can orient itself to face the camera. 2D views can be printed from the model and sent out to any device that can read a 2D PDF file. The point I am trying to make is that both detailed modeling as well as high quality renderings are available from the same model. It is just a matter of what type of program one chooses to use to meet those needs. Edit: Here is a pic of a work in progress. This is a Chief model rendered in Octane Render in under 2 min with no post processing. That way you get to see that at this point at least my model needs some more work. I for one really like the special lighting effects that others are posting. But, for now at least I am after speed and realism.

May not be pretty, but it can be useful for modeling many structural details. This along with pretty pictures is where things are headed IMO. This is a 3D PDF file of a complete framing model, less the roof overbuilt area. I may get to that latter if time allows. There are many rough edges as far as the modeling goes, but hopefully you can see the potential of this type of model export. If nothing shows on your screen, then allow the file to be read and click on the screen and wait till it loads the model. Layer control is off to the left by using the check boxes. X8 Hou D 3D PDF.PDF

At times I get customers that would like to view the program on there own. What would be nice is to have a free and easy to use viewer that allows you to do flyovers with textures applied. I know about Chief's viewer. I have used it for years and it does not fit the bill. A U3D file with textures and layer control would be nice. I think that is possible, but I have not had the time to learn how to set up the textures so they show. Anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated.

My experience has been the opposite of what you are saying. In that as soon as a customer sees something with enough quality and detail that they can see it as real, then they get very interested in the design. The next thing that I hear is that they want to be sure that what they are seeing on the screen is in fact what will actually be built. The rub comes when the art, as you put it, does not align with the reality of the construction. A customer that knows what they want, and has the tools available to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of it, will be in the drivers seat. IMO this is how it should be, and from what I have seen so far, customers are willing to pay for this option.

Yes, that is the point. It has to be none, or transparent for the symbol to show if it is placed into the wall. What I would really like is to be able to have an option on the Hatch tool that would place the hatch only on the main layer of the wall. The problem is that what ever the fill style is that is assigned in the Wall Definition, that is what shows in all Layout views unless a hatch pattern is assigned to a visible layer. It would be nice to be able to have a bit more control over the Wall Definition's fill style per view. Another way to deal with this situation would be for Walls and Symbols to have control of display order.