mattyt12

Ild model as a window as Designer1 mentions. Would use a 2D cad overlay for plan which is how I treat stacking or bi-fold/multipanel doors.

+1 for poche fills, these would also dress up perspective overviews when the cross section slider is utilised.

Would recommend reviewing the videos as Johnny states but looks like you are printing directly from plan, would suggest printing from layout as you have more control over scaling settings.

I use draftsight which has a free version, its works much the same as qutocad including commands. Its a quicker way to do a little tidy up of the dwg like join polylines if they are broken and nominate Z-Values for contours if it hasn't been done.

Yep this is exactly how I show fences, sediment fences, retaining walls etc on site plans, gives you control over the spacing of the cad block too. It works well with CAD objects but not so well with text where you have a change in direction of the line but you can adjust the spacing to suit, the new preview panel helps greatly too, It would be handy to be able to convert the polyline to a distribution path though, you can covert one back to a polyline currently but not vice versa unless im missing something.

I am

Probably not the correct way to go about things but to save time and frustration in scenarios very similar my workflow would be as follows; - Model Terrain as existing and not modify - Draw retaining as subfloor walls and set top height as required - Draw dwelling with floor level set at zero (my method I use real world elevations to AHD from the surveyor on the terrain and use the subfloor level above terrain in the terrain specification to set my floor level. - Any sections or plans I use a cad polyline with fill to notate any onsite fill, perspective I use a slab/polyline solid or terrain feature To me spending hours modelling a terrain to appear 100% correct isnt an efficient use of my time and usually causes much more frustration and stress that I can do without.

not sure about the bump map locations but the normals are in the same folder as the material image location which you can get from the Texture Source File. You have to check view hidden files under folder view options but I wouldnt think its a good idea messing around too much in there as I imagine its hidden for a reason.

Im with Joey, I like to keep it simple and clean. IMO rendered ones are too busy and distracting, let the interior render views sell the colours/finishes.

I just use lites so it appears correct on elevations

playing around with 3D details

I may be mistaken but I think the polyline solid appears (in plan) on the floor that the elevation view is set to

picture say a 1000 words......I generally try to avoid any file over 5mb unless its a specific item to use in raytraces, otherwise I'll make my own.

havent looked at the model to see as to why the lines are appearing but you can delete or edit unwanted lines with the edit Layout Lines Tool

change the material type from area to strip on the pattern tab, you can control the angle you want here but to adjust the spacing you go to the general tab

Good to know cheers Mark. We just completed a dwelling last month and about to submit a DA for a new one 10 doors up (basically the whole street is about 1m above the hightide mark)and theyre requesting an additional 800mm in floor heights.

chnage your drawing scale from "fit to paper" to "to scale"

Hi Mark, Not really answering your query but have you checked with PSC whether they will support filling the site? Youre limited to max. 1m high retaining in the DCP, even so that is about 750t of imported fill which would likely have to be sand if its waterfront up there. Not sure if you've considered the cost implications (masonry walls, fill, piering etc) but if it were me or one of my clients (of which ive been involved with a few up that way) I would be encouraging bearers and joist construction. There is scope in the DCP to allow the lesser flood level "Where the proposed development facilitates ongoing flood adaptation (e.g. where the design facilitates building raising in the future, such as pier and beam housing design) then Council will allow a reduced Flood Planning Horizon level 50 years from the date of application." You should also be able to lower the Garage level aswell. The new minimum floor levels for habitable rooms are based off the 2100 1% AEP + 500mm freeboard (which was changed from the 2050 1% AEP), sheds or non-habitable rooms ie garages should be off the 2050 5% AEP + 500 freeboard. May not be the best or correct way but if I were modelling what youre trying to achieve Ild use polyline solids or slabs to denote the fill and walls.

I did explore trying to use a macro or even just utilising the info in the terrain/terrain feature dialogues (creating an existing site and a copy for a modified site then comparing) but interestingly found; - Terrains have an area value but no volume value in the dialogue box - Terrain features do generate a volume value but its derived from the 2d polyline times by the height nominated in the dialogue, therefore the output is a box and not relative to the terrain data thus not giving a true volume of the terrain feature.

has anyone had any experience or can recommend site cut and fill calculation software?

perfect, cheers guys

When placing a cabinet adjacent to a wall chief automatically creates a fillet piece, most of the time its what I want but is anyone aware of how to control this?

you have to have a 3d view open of the object to have access to the 3d export file types

I currently work for a builder based in Australia but also operate in New Zealand as well as the US. I currently have an X8 Premier licence but have also discovered that our main designer for the whole operation also uses Chief. My current workflow has altered slightly to utilise Chiefs 3d capabilities where before I would still do bathroom/kitchen layouts in 2d CAD. As most of our clients are not experts in interpreting 2d plans, 3d visualisation is a really handy tool. This got me thinking of the inter-operability of my chief plan files and the room planner app, this would be advantageous for both our clients as well as our supervisors on site. My questions regarding the viability of this are as follows; - Will clients/supervisors be able to upload files to the room planner app on their Ipad or device? - Can camera views be setup and saved so I can steer them to what I want them to focus on? - Are the rendering techniques used in premier available in the app as I find that vector view provides the most clarity

Updated the new update this morning but still encounter shifting shadows when printing to pdf. PITA work around but closing out of the plan and layout file, getting back into it to print again seems to solve the issue. Seems to be an intermittent problem, sometimes it prints right first try others not.