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Graham Very nice!! Your in depth knowledge to raytracing is much appreciated. Thanks for sharing, very helpful.

Who said this forum members will help you how to ask questions and seek help. You can't learn Chief architect, if you are not wise enough to understand the intent of the four replies above. What is wrong with some one, if he tells you that your question isn't clear. Just make it clear and all will be good for you. I am assuming that your condition is good and you don't need any doctors consultation. Don't get me wrong, but this could be the only thing you need right now. Sarcasm..

Great, thanks for the pointer. I will look at it. Nice work!

"Roof cuts wall at bottom" in wall dbx roof panel.

Very nice David. That looks more realistic. Of course yes, in your method you get nearly perfect results except the time and effort it takes to model. I adjusted texture and applied as any material using mat painter. This saves time and allows more flexibility to use later since any readjustment is done in dbx, but it depends on the level of detail you need. Thanks

Material regions are not good at corners, applying cladding material directly on wall would give that look in IMO.

Great video Michael. Spcially I like the option that makes use of the "cad to wall" tool. You have explored an other speedy workflow. Thanks for sharing

Johhny those look great, but here is what I have got in 16 min using only chief. I am not saying chief is better and of course it can't be because those engines are primarily geared towards producing high quality realistic images. But I am curious to know defects of this particular image. when I look at floor and glass materials they seem to me what they should look like in real world, but I could be wrong.

Here is a RT took 15 minutes. I am not an expert in this department, but I think Graham can produce that look in CA.

Glenn thanks for the valuable info. That is exactly the concept I was trying to explain using the 5 room drawings on the XY plane in my post. You just picked the best fit and the whole thing comes in handy using this graphical representation. I think working with plan view using the structure dbx and watching changes happening on the platforms instantly through this graphical representation will be helpful to have full control over situations like the OP was asking. Thanks for the tip again. Larry I can see the complications one may face in working with chiefs structure dbx. Lots of interdependency between vareous parameters inside the structure dbx makes difficult to fully understand the relationships and effects they impose on one an other. It would be great to have more intuitive way to deal with it.. Watched the video you posted using glen's tip and that is very interesting concept. It helps a lot to visualize and make changes graphically. Nice one.

Larry I can see what you are overlooking some thing, when it comes to chiefs structure dbx. I often see confusions posted by users regarding how chief handles floor and ceiling heights. I would encourage you to stay calm and look deeply the way chief is handling levels of multistorey structures and split levels, I can assure you it is very nice and logical logical indeed. Perhaps the best way I can think of. I advise you to drop the preconception of the room paradigm you oversee every time you open the structure dbx, try to shift thoughts, so that you first see that you are dealing with levels, not rooms. As we open the structure dbx, it envites us to input various paramemeters in relation to three levels that gives us the gap(2 rooms one above the other). The major level being the middle one or in other words floor level C, which is affected by upper and lower levels the ceiling heights relative to it. Perceiving this way will help you understand why chief has given us the absolute and relative heights in the structure dbx. the logic that Chief deals with the relation ships between LEVELS in the structure box is very logical in my opinion "FORGET ABOUT ROOMS, FLOORS AND CIELINGS HERE" think about levels instead. Well, let me ask. How do you control your dimensions in floor plan? Assume you are drawing 5 rooms side by side. Start from left and click on the first Interior wall, see dimensions appear on both sides. You can move it from both directions depending on the existing conditions and limitations. you go your way to fix dimensions of each room and always make adjustments to the adjacent rooms. The same thing, the difference is that it is Z( vertical). If you change the layers and thickness of walls, it affects both rooms or may be the exterior layer matters. Wall thickness increase relative to exterior sides of walls. The same thing when you deal with floor and cieling structures Absolutes affect floor levels and the relatives also have an impact on the overall heights, as well as in between each other. We need to understand what should be what and how it is related to the adjescent levels. I can't think an easier an more logical way to do this, but I could be wrong. I don't know how much clear is my writing, but hopefully you understand the point I am trying to make. By the way I am not good at English. Yesterday I was asked to write the past tense of think, and I thought ....thought and thought and Finally ended up writing "thinked"

There is nothing wrong with the message, obviously there is height diference between a two or more rooms above the room you are trying to alter the ceiling height. There is no way that chief can give you an active cell to input a value for ceiling in that specific room. Though not sure what you want, but would ask 1- do you need to keep the level difference of the upper rooms floor levels? Try to think logically based on how chief works!! That will lead you to solutions 2- do you want to assign floors of each room to have the same ceiling and floor heights? If so, rest to defaults regarding cieling heights, wall top and bottom heights etc Any way clarify your need and you will get exact answers for what ever scenario you need to have. Post plans...post plan ...post plan

Hey Johhny Nice work, here is also a crappy model I gone with chief, can make more pretty but simply to show the possibility. Parts I put together were pretty easy using p solids.

Yeah Johnny. I wasn't actually in disagreement with the obvious limitations of chief's capability regarding the basic 3d modelling tools, and ofcourse very poor generic 3d modelling tools. I think little improvements in the areas of molding line tools in profiling and pattern creation could be a big time saviour and help chief to step up and keep doubling it's reputation regarding automating most of the building elements + additional 3d modelling capabilities without applying a very bulk tools that could also have its own implication some how on their targetted market.. I don't know but you wouldn't be so courageous to master learning the room paradigm and those automations if you had an alternative manual tools to accomplish the tasks. And of course chiefs main objecyive is to make a difference by reducing the modeing time ans making the software more and more intelligent to do the job for us. I think they have done great job regarding automation. Yet, at this stage not being able to draw a cube and edit it in all views makes no sense at all!! I will make a video when I get time regarding the use of molding lines and surface profiling.I will share very good tips and tricks. Will also try to suggest few improvements that could step up chief's modelling capacity by Milion times without adding a lot of complexities to the software tools. Thanks

Here is my go with roofs, and a 3 isteps in create symbol wizard, the process went through moldings, windows again molding. Also can save parts to apply different texitures. This is just first trial in no time. Again I never said I am comparing chief with 3dmax in generic 3d modelling tools, but it isn't the the software that matters. even if you are using 3d max, Your imaginations are more inportant than the tools of the software. Not perfect, but you can see the surface I posted in above post is used here.

Have modelled Johnny's basic sofa surface in a couple of minutes and if I proceed I am sure I will be close to that look, but I am not comparing Chief with 3d max by any means, just to show that we are not far from beating them soon if ..... I can see the way forward to easily mold the shape of soffa.

Graham, I am not sure how the availability of those settings are affected by the video card, but here it is on the ref manual. Do settings disappear as javatom was saying? Or are they available in the setting but limited regarding their effect on model? Don't know what that exactly means, but the reference manual clearly mentions that, the availability of some options are limited, depending on what your vedeo card is able to support.

The availability of render panel setting in the preference are system dependent, specially the video card determines what setting to appear for different systems and may not be available due this and other system related issues. But I think edge smoothong is limited to 80% for some VC and may not be available as you say for unsupported VC. Though not sure what causes your problem.

I was also obtaining similar results, and was surprised that, it is not the surface count only that maters as most of us believe ....don't know why I didn't mention this in my note yesterday. BTW, Have you read the manual for other points I was raising? In 3d view defaults setting, surface counts has a setting to bundle a group of surfaces to mono count, though it is only for vector view, it has again a noticeable impact on the overall speed of the model.

Well here are few other model speed determinants you can take advantage. Before I go to those, let me emphasise that, while working on model we want to see changes appear immediately and auto rebuild floors/ceilings are prefered to be active for me, though there is a stage I reach to make it off after model structural basics are no more expected to change. Here are some other factors I have seen to be speed determinants. I have tested this settings on massing a commercial building that had 400000 surfaces. 1. Software edge smoothing in preference/render panel, is a major determinant of speed. And its impact is very significant as you go from 0-100 2. Hardware edge smoothing in the same dbx to #1 which has drop down settings like none, 2x..8x etc. When I select "none" sluggishness decreases significantly, I am not so sure about #2, but hopefully Graham will experiment and correct me if I am wrong. 3. In 3d view defaults panel there is a setting for colour "off" and "on" regarding elevation, orthographic and perspective views. Not sure about this again but I suspect it also make some difference. Again in the same dbx window there are settings related to 3d views and are there as a function of "layer set basis" and "object basis", I think this is area has also an impact on speed. I am sure some one will explain it more scientifically, but I can see some or all of the above have a great impact on speed.

Oh Chop Sorry, l mislead you!! I was talking about The 40th point you mentioned. I was saying I actually should be celebrating 540. The #5 is missing....hope I am some what clearer now, other wise the interpreter will chime in to clarify what I am trying to say in my broken English!!

Hey Chop You are welcome sir, and thanks for the point, hummm there is an abstract 5 on the left. Not written in black. Right?

Here is my go. Chopsaw has exactly described the way for you to go with it, so I will not repeat the how to, but took few minutes to model it, and hope that solves your need for now. Attached is a zipped folder containing the test plan, .CALIBZ material library for right and left wings and other associated files.DOOR%20MODEL.zip DOOR MODEL.zip

Griffin I think the reason you failed to import a contour lines in DWG form is that the lines in AutoCAD are not preset to have a z value that indicates the lines are actual terrain data. I advise you to check the autocad lines have associated Z values. Once you confirm this, then import it in to chief. Chief will recognize the lines as a terrain data during import process. You must assign those contours as a terrain data while you import it, and simply you can see those data auto generate your terrain as it is. You can see the alignment of chief generated contour lines are exactly in line with those you imported. I prefer importing the cad lines rather than tracing them as PDF and again assign one by one. Why? Too much work. Even if they haven't z data, it is easy to select the line in AutoCAD and fill that data manually in side autocad. You also have to make sure your surveyor provides you an actual contours rather than simply a contour line that is lacking the Z values. I usually import data processed in eagle point and chief builds accurate model based on that info. If you you import wrong data, chief will build a wrong terrain. I can assure you, nothing is wrong with chief's algorithm in calculating terrain. I have also used points in grid format directly taken from survey instrument and they work great. After building the original terrain is when you start modifications to fit your needs. You have a lot of techniques to perform this inside chief, and they are good once you learn how they work.

Terain break is the tool. Here is a a pictorial comparison showing how to lock the specific area you want terain calculation to happen without affecting undesired area at a distant. I think this tool allows us to control the smokey interaction of terrains in chief.