THBlack

Purchased a SurfacePro9 and loaded CA15 on it. I know. It's not known to be a monster graphics machine. But it works and fits my ergonomic needs. Can still give it back right now and get my money back to get a monster instead. Need your insight / help. CA 15 walk-throughs are very important for me, especially being able to add a background. Until now, was using CA12. Problem is that once I give it a large walk-through, like one having 6K frames, it starts out fine at one frame a second but then slows down about 200 an hour. Is this normal for CA running on another, more suitable machine, like a gaming computer? If so then I may keep the SPro and live ( and still be very happy) with CA15. If not, then I'll try to swap my SPro with a monster machine. (PS: Just gave my final reply to my original thread regarding Surface Pro's. See it if you are interested on the machine. It has some very awesome potentials for the right application of CA15). Thank you.

I purchased a maxed-out SurfacePro 9. I7 and 32G Ram. CA15 installed and works. Shows 1G video ram. CA12 does NOT work. No support for OpenGL, despite reinstalling all drivers and installing the OpenCL and OpenGL compatibility pack from the MS Store. Very pricey, but can be a KILLER MACHINE for executive meetings with big clients. Screen produces gorgeous imaging, just like an IPad.Looks like a photo. Small machine, exactly like a tablet. Get a few walkthroughs on file, show them to clients. Remove the keyboard from 'tablet' and hand it to your client. Open the plan, place a camera somewhere and take a few screen shots on the spot. Email them to your client or put them on a USB (need a dongle with a USB port for the SP9), and hand it to him/her. Can make a big difference to a business who can afford to have a few of these 'tablets' around. After rendering a few walkthroughs on the Pro, I have a major question. Will post it next as another thread. Depending on the answer, I may send it back to MS.

Thanks

Anybody have experience running C14 or C15 on this machine? They can come with up to an Intel EVO i7 with 32G RAM They are very portable and light-weight, compared to other platforms. Thanks

Have a project that uses multiple buildings. Wasn't working well for me, so I started making buildings on separate plans and then inserting them back into the master plan as symbols. Wasn't very happy about doing this but it worked. Reason wasn't happy was because when I made walls for new buildings on the master plan, sometimes the walls broke by themselves. Would make them longer and always broke at the same place. Drove me nuts. Thought that the plan was corrupted or there was a bug in CA. Then . . . Turned on Invisible Walls in the Active Layer View and saw that I had a BUNCH of ROOM DIVIDERS all over the place. Found that walls broke whenever I'd extend a wall past a room divider. Have no idea where these room dividers came from. Is this some 'feature' in CA? - I'm still using V12. Have SA but am hesitant to upgrade because my computer is not a powerhouse and don't know what higher versions would do to my project.

Try this if a symbol works for you: Get a Full Camera on the building. Tweak (Check / Uncheck) the items on the Active Layer Display until whatever you you want is in that Layer Set view. Click Menu / Edit / Select All Click Menu / Tools / Symbol / Convert to Symbol

Thank you very much for your helpful pointers. CA is Superiffic!

I have two questions. Have walls of clearly defined thicknesses. When I do dimension stuff, sometimes the measurements are off by an 1/8" or 3/16". When I zoom in I see TWO borders for the walls. What's going on? Thought one is for the 'bumps' that the outer / inner surface material has. Is that so? If so, say I re-define the walls and just have material that is a solid color, no bumps. Would that make it precise, no double border? (And afterwards, after I do my surgical measurements, will bring back bumpy? Or maybe something else is going on. How do I get precise dimensions without double-vision? Question two: My computer and graphics card gets by. But when I see sample rooms / buildings of others using CA, I see eye-popping realism. I don't think it's the ray tracing. My colors don't always seem to render in the camera like I see them when I see a sample object. Like the good old days when you only had 256 colors. Looks like that is what is going on. Is there some magic switch or option to see objects in the camera look more like the sample without having to ray-trace and wait a week for my computer to finish tracing? Thanx

Thanks, Larry!

I'm modelling ancient buildings and using pass-through windows with round arches, plain-Jane openings. Those days, they managed / focused lighting somewhat by shaping the window openings. Frequently, the opening / hole on the outside was smaller than the hole/ opening on the inside to let the rays of the sun expand into room that didn't have much other light sources. For the ones I am modeling, it's the reverse. The interior openings are smaller than the outer openings. Would like to make/have a special pass-through window that I can pop onto walls, specify height, resize, like the pass-through window that 'comes out of the box in CA.' Can CA let me do this or know where I can get one? Appreciate tips / pointers. I'm a newbee with CA. Kindly word accordingly. Thanxabunch. T Black

Thank you so much. Larry, your video was very helpful. Please tell me how you got the dialogue box to see the floor references and select them. You said that you had a bunch of references. Where can I find out more info about them and try your magic?

Thanks Glen and Joey. I do not know what 'interactive floor plans' mean. All I want to do is draw the buildings, be able to see them in 3-D, take pictures, walk through them, let others walk through them. That's it. Given my short shopping list and a puffy computer, do symbols now make better sense?

Thanks so much, Glenn. What do you mean by symbols not being dynamic? What would I lose? If there is a later mod then I'd just go back to the plan that had the stuff before the conversion, change it, and re-create the symbol. Right? Also, I don't have a very powerful computer. Am doing this for a special project, not to make a living from it. I saw that the more I futzed around with floors and other buildings, the more CA became fussy. Does this match your experience?

Thank you very much again Chapsaw!

Modeling a complex that has a set of separate buildings, some having multiple floors. Learned that once I defined Building A, which has 3 floors, and then I go onto Building B that is supposed to have two, when I select Building B and try to add a floor, the new floor is added to building A. Looking for the best approach to handle this. I have X12 and delayed upgrading to X13. Does X13 let me do this and manage multiple buildings with multiple floors? X12 has a limit of 30 floors. Does X13 have the same limit? Assuming that there is no difference for what I am trying to do, from poking around in the forums, seems like the way to go is to have a master plan with just terrain stuff and then make each building off of a copy of the master plan. Then, convert each building to a symbol and plop them down onto the master. If I want to change a building, would need to delete the building from the master, edit the plan with the building in it, and convert/import.. Is this the best / only way to do this? Which training videos / resources are best to get me up to speed on symbology? Thanxabunch. You guys are great. - Got one more question coming up on Colors. Harlan

Thanks to all of you. CA is such a beautiful product. So much stuff in it.

Using CA 12. I'm a new-bee. Made a three-story building with doors, windows, stairs. Have some stone slabs inside for 'furniture.' Would like to copy the entire shebang and past the copy somewhere else in the plan. Placement needs to be done with precision to fit exactly where it needs to go. Can mark out the area with lines. Can this be done. What's the best and easiest way? Will I be able to tweak the parts once it's set down? Thanxabunch. Tzvi Black

THAT'S IT! They look like carefully crafted / hewn stones. Hope nobody else thinks that my beautiful buildings are covered by ceiling tiles. Harlan

Can anybody guess what I used for the stonework in my image, above?

Thanxabunch, Chopsaw and Glenn!. Glad to know that there are helpful and engaged people out there supporting this terrific product. I'm giving CA a workout by working on ancient buildings. Just wondering how it would fair if someone took on using it to build the International Space Station. Would be a great project to use for a race to see who can whip it up the fastest with all the detail. Just need a floor plan and a way to make a foundation for it. Here is a starter for the floor plan, together with a background image for an Architect that thinks his/her work is so super that it is 'out of this world' https://www.flickr.com/photos/165445115@N07/44304304270/ Harlan

I've been using Designer Pro a bit and recently upgraded to X12 because of the added features and the unique requirements of this project. Didn't know the name of the feature in X12 to get me going. Your reference to p-solids and the X12 reference took me to polyline solids. This is what I needed to hear. Thank you. The video / rendition you did was beautiful. What type of texture / rocks did you do / use for the structure? Below is what I was able to hack together thanks to your tip. The corner by 'A; was fussy. Walls insisted on connecting when all I wanted was for them to kiss. So I put some slabs at the ends of the walls to keep them from connecting. Is there a way to stop the auto-connect to get walls to kiss without having to do this kluge? Did the cut-out by making a p-solid at the end of the wall, then another one at the height and angle of the cut-out, then subtracted. Want to use native walls as much as possible instead of making the entire thing with p-solids so that I could use architectural objects like doors. Wound up gluing together wall segments. From A to where the room starts for the first B opening is a wall that is six feet thick. Then drew walls that were two feet thick to make the room and added a doorway at B. Then drew a single six foot wall to where the next room would begin and made a grand entrance at C. Then made the second room with two-foot walls. Then completed the wall with a six-foot thick wall and put an entrance there. Whew! Not sure if the developers of CA meant it for someone like me to bang it up this way. But it worked, so far. Is there an easier way to do all this besides the p-solid and hack routes? The 'D' diagram is an entirely different floor plan. Four standard walls with diagonal passageways cut into the corners. I didn't try this but would it work if I drew normal walls and then pushed in a p-solid where I want the passageways are needed and then subtracted the p-solid? Would the passageways stay as holes in the walls where I need them or would the walls snap together? Or would it simply not work and I'd need to do the same kludge? Finally, can you recommend some training / videos to get me more into making stuff with p-solids? Thanxabunch ! !

I'm new to CA and need advice on the best way to do some things. I'm using X12, the latest version. I'm modeling ancient structures that have the following features; 1. A large courtyard surrounded by four walls. Three walls are connected and have standard doorways (two are shown for one wall in attached diagram). Fourth wall (Wall 1) touches at corner. Diagonal passageway is cut into Wall 2 at ground level. Walls extend upward and touch. What is the best way to cut out the passageway into Wall 2? 2. Wall 2 (and the other 2) have small rooms inside them. There is a doorway / passageway from the courtyard into the rooms. What is the best way to do this? 3. Walls have diagonal passageways in the corners where they intersect. See bottom diagram. What is the best way to do this? Thank you very much. H Black