stevenyhof

Here are a few...

This was more of a process in testing to find ways to draw cathedral ceiling beams with the correct wood grain...

Chief does not have good garage doors so I made up a few... 

And this one, another thread about simple rendering one why with some backgrounds I made from Twinmotions, and ended with some pretty nice looking renderings done completely with Chief. 

Here are some backdrops I made for daily working within Chief.

Stem walls using alternative methods...

50 minutes ago, parkwest said:

What does “with this type of relationship modeling” mean?

Unlike AutoCAD and others, Chiefs walls, roofs, etc. all work together within a relationship with each object/element to seam things together. Softplan and Cedreo use this same type of relational modeling. Some just do it better than others. 

To answer your "interesting" query, I have been designing with CAD since the late 90's. It does not take me long to know if a piece of software can do what I want or not. Even when Chief shows us things like auto trusses, I step out of the box for only a moment (meaning, do something a bit more complex) and Chief falls apart. It is these types of things that I would test or spend a few minutes in forums to find out what others are running into to not even bother with a trial. I know of Architects that do such complex work that Chief needs to turn into a manual solid tool (like AutoCAD) just to pull it off. I love Chief and it's automation, but I have also spent time building tools, solids, materials that help me where Chief's automation fails. So far I have been drawing about 120 plans a year with Chief on my own, and few are very simple like they were just 10 years ago when every builder and realtor were building spec homes. 

You've been here for almost 10 years. I see you have Softplan on your list of tools you use. What is your thoughts on Softplan vs Chief? 

1 hour ago, parkwest said:

What caught your attention?  Thanks!

It was a number of things I do not really recall, but a number of the questions people were asking and the answers that were given. I could tell in a few minutes that Chief was ahead of the game with this type of relationship modeling.

29 minutes ago, para-CAD said:

Amazing work, Steve.  Thanks for all the work you have into this and for sharing!

Thank you, Sir! It's been a lot of fun to learn rendering and now being able to do it within Chief.

6 hours ago, Rich_Winsor said:

Keep up the good work!

Thank you, Rich! I could make everything flawless if I wanted, but I mainly wanted to prove to myself and others that Chief has the tools to do a great job with rendering. 

Here is a modern home I drew and just completed the construction docs. Then I spent two hours making a rendering. Spent an hour just messing with backdrops, and lighting inside and out. One thing I am learning, and that is that with the simple method I am proposing at the start of this forum thread, a nice looking rendering can be done quit fast. But when you start to mess with photo backgrounds to attempt to make the whole image look real, the lighting and backdrop hue causes a very individualized camera experience.

House designed by BD/DSGN

Years old fake plants by Chief

On 4/4/2024 at 6:11 PM, SHCanada2 said:

need it on a non covered wall to see it better

Its not very nice in the window. I just wanted to figure it out. The window is insulated air to blank out the glass and the broken glass are solids turned into glass. If you put the sunlight on the floor the glass turns black and unimpressive.

On 4/1/2024 at 10:02 AM, robdyck said:

All the window panes are intact...shouldn't some be broken and others very dirty?!

Just kidding of course, what you've done with that image is pretty amazing!

So, what you think of this broken glass? About 10 mins work just to see how it may look

3 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

it doesnt have some features of zom, but easy to work with and yes just runs through a browser and they keep adding features

I don't use features. The client and I are talking and watching my screen and I point things out. I did get "Region to Share" - a small piece of software so you can show only a part of my screen - that is very nice. Zoom has that built in, but most do not.

Outside of that, I do not use drawing tools, etc. So it can be a very simple system. 

10 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

just had to use zoom and shared my screen..abysmal performance..glad I dont use that anymore, haha

I checked out streamyard, but is it simple for non video conferencing people to connect on their end? Seems it needs to be done in a browser and depending on their devise, what browser is best to use. Have you run into any issues with that?

13 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Auto framing can slow things down (especially if a Schedule is used?)  as can Fills with huge numbers of CAD lines too.

I do not have auto framing on, and rarely use framing. I think I did use framing on this house though if I remember correctly.

I purged those things and it did not change. I am including the plan. It may be my molding I use around the house that is stone. I have a few region trim boards on the elevations, but I have that on a number of my homes. If you open the plan and open the front elevation and drag one of the region boards, or anything for that matter you will experience the lag.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HpRKPxrJlsF4Ru_idKphKKWaS7_9JNVA/view?usp=sharing

Thoughts anyone?

Thank you

19 minutes ago, robdyck said:

Were you aware of these functions already?

Now that you mention these, I do remember. I just haven't done it before so it did not come to mind. Hope my age isn't showing 

I will do this and let you know if it helps

Thank you 

10 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

There is way to many variables, to give up on any of them after 1 session, it may not even be Meet, it could be your or your client's ISP or perhaps slow WIFI, an Eth. cable direct to your router will almost always be faster and more stable too ( though it's getting closer these days with Wifi 6e and Now Wifi 7). 

 

Personally in the last 3 months I've only have trouble with Zoom, we switched to Teams which worked fine.

 

M.

 

Yes agree. After I closed the meeting and thought about it a while, I opened the plan back up and went back to the same areas, like the front elevation view and a section and both were sluggish in the same way. Some chief issue on those views. So it was something with the plan. However, the voice thing will need to be addresses. I may need to add an Eth card as the built in one is not working well so I'm on wifi where the modem is like 2 feet away from my computer. But I also have a networked modem situation from Verizon because one is in the house and the other in my office, connected to my garage. So there are surely some variables here.

Speaking on a chief issue, like with AutoCAD, is there a way to purge old and unused entities, etc. to make the file size smaller? Or a way to find out what is causing the change.

26 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

not a fan of meet either. I use streamyard which is for more than just video conf calls. Also loom does a great job I hear and transcribes the entire meeting along with downloadable transcribed content with chapterization

Thank you, Rene! I left loom because it was doing funny things with my monitor setup and their controls, but I will look into Steamyard.

I Just tested Google Meet with a client and right from the start there was delay to my clicking around. She also said that my voice was breaking up. I stopped the meeting and met her on zoom and while things were still laggy at times (what I have been used to), she said my voice was very clear. So, onto the next video conference tool to test.

6 minutes ago, SHCanada2 said:

I avoid google, as it tries to use credentials, rather than allow one to log in with typed in credentials. I cant count the number of times I've been sent google links to my email, only to click on them, and cannot get in because google thinks I should be using some other gmail credentials.

 

MS teams used to have a similar problem, but I havent had any issues in the past couple years.

 

Zoom may be simple, but I've never been left out of a meeting.

I just set up google meet because I have an admin account. I will see how it goes before moving to MS. Thank you for your input.

So this is what I have come up with. I like Google Meet, however, it does not allow to show a region of a screen/window. When I show my screen, zoom allows me to show a portion or a region of the screen. In this way I do not need to show my toolbars, but only the screen which will be larger for those viewing with smaller devices.

With "Region to share", https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n4066w2r5q4?hl=en-US&gl=US - I can now use Google Meet and show only the portion of my window that I want. I also use Powertoys because I have a large monitor and can snap my windows/applications to screen regions that I set up. So I will give this a go and see how the computer performs in a video conference.

1 hour ago, robdyck said:

Perhaps one of the best things about Google Meet is how simple it is to start and join a meeting, plus the ability to join with multiple devices. This is especially handy if you have a laptop or tablet as well as your desktop running during a meeting. By comparison, I despise Zoom.

14 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

I don't disagree , a 3080 is no slouch, at least as far as chief goes , and I doubt you'd be absolutely wowed by the change as I mentioned, perhaps see what X16 brings?   I did it cos I wanted too and I wasn't buying a whole machine like above, I swapped out the MoBo and CPU and went to a 360 AIO for the 14900k.   The 4080 Super was on a whim and a "want"  not a need .... and it certainly pushes more pixels faster than my 3080Ti, but I don't notice that in Chief only elsewhere.

 

I mostly use Teams or Meet nowadays as most clients are in the M$ or Google Camp nowadays and they are "included" depending on your plan.

 

M.   

1 hour ago, MPDesign said:

I went from a RTX 2070 8gig to the 4060 8gig and hardly noticed the difference. Maybe 5 seconds faster.

My build was from parts ordered from Newegg and totaled around $1900. If I recall the card was about 600 of that number. The price of cards is unreal! No wonder Nvidia is doing so well!

I have been tempted, to buy a used 4090 but don't really need/shouldn't spend $1700!  

Thank you guys for your input. I think I will sit tight right now on my computer build, and going to check out Google Meet right now. 

1 hour ago, Kbird1 said:

 

I don't disagree , a 3080 is no slouch, at least as far as chief goes , and I doubt you'd be absolutely wowed by the change as I mentioned, perhaps see what X16 brings?   I did it cos I wanted too and I wasn't buying a whole machine like above, I swapped out the MoBo and CPU and went to a 360 AIO for the 14900k.   The 4080 Super was on a whim and a "want"  not a need .... and it certainly pushes more pixels faster than my 3080Ti, but I don't notice that in Chief only elsewhere.

 

I mostly use Teams or Meet nowadays as most clients are in the M$ or Google Camp nowadays and they are "included" depending on your plan.

 

M.   

Thank you for your feedback on these things. More to consider. I do have google so will look into google camp and see how it performs. 

10 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

That's because zoom is using hardware acceleration and heavily fights the encoder as it isnt very optimized. Also the reason I do not use Zoom

Is there something that is less taxing than zoom?

2 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

Nothing wrong with your current computer system..not worth the money IMO. My ten year old mobo and cpu on the Evil Dead machine in my sig is only 20% slower than triptych top of the line computer when it comes to raytracing. We are talking just a second or two

That’s good to hear. I don’t use it much for rendering but on bigger drawings while on a zoom call can make it a little slow. Then maybe I do wait for the 50xx graphics cards. 

Thank you, Mick. You have been very helpful in learning about computer systems. I will definitely look into this deeper. 

2 hours ago, robdyck said:

All the window panes are intact...shouldn't some be broken and others very dirty?!

Just kidding of course, what you've done with that image is pretty amazing!

Trust me, Robert. I was looking at ways of breaking the windows, but the fuss and time I already put into that rendering is well over 12 hours. 

1 hour ago, MPDesign said:

Wow, Awesome job Steve!

Really great views right out of Chief! 

Curious how long does it take your card to render the images?

 

Thank you, Michael!

I do not make any money at present from renderings. I have done a few for money, but because I have wanted to do this for so many years, I just needed to prove to myself that I could do it and find a process that I could repeat in a little time. You can fuss for hours, like my cottage rendering above, but if I was on the clock I could do this in less than 2 hours once I had the materials. Finding and setting up new materials is what takes a lot of time.

When I set the samples to 500 it takes maybe 45 seconds to render. One thing to note, you can get 4k and 8k images out there, but some of the images I am using, like the pavers were 4k, but I reduced them to 1k (1024) just to keep the lag out of every step. You start to place 4 to 8 4k materials and maps into your drawing and you will come to a crawl. Well, maybe not you, looks like you have a very nice computer!

My son and I put a computer together yesterday on https://pcpartpicker.com/ - not sure when or if I will pull the trigger. 

Yes. Those are in my library posted above