HumbleChief

+1

Thanks Michael, Wished I had waited for your advice but I THINK I chose the correct options by selecting 'Replace Existing Defaults" instead of 'Rename' and 'Use Existing Layer Sets'. Looks OK and should only affect this single plan but your idea is better me thinks.

Is there a way? Can't really understand the cryptic options for importing Anno Sets - Thanks

...yes but there is no way any user would know this as Chief doesn't tell anyone about this 'feature' so your (OP) confusion is understandable.

One can also not set the solid fill color of a p-line box to a default of one's choice. It's just like the early Models T's black, black, or black. I fill 95% of my boxes with white but there's also no default for this setting. Asked a million times but some things will never change in Chief. Yes I know we can set up a tool icon and other work arounds for something most people expect to find in a 21st century software program but should we have to? Shouldn't this type of functionality be built in? Just like the OP, I think it should.

True that. I have 3 monitors of various resolution (see sig) and an older 780 NVidia card worked great as does the newer 1080. If you have 4K stuff then you might need the video card muscle. If not you can save a few bucks by buying a slightly lesser card than the 1080.

Yeah, that's a bit weird to think of Chief as something other than CAD software but as Lew points out is does not share the same characteristics as ACAD etc. and plays by different rules.

Yup, that's a good bet for Chief and if your budget is tight you can save a little on the graphics card by going with the 1070 instead of the 1080 and putting that money elsewhere, and still achieve very good 3D performance in Chief.

That's an all round bad choice for Chief. Check the responses to the other thread you are in.

Don't forget the the CPU wars are really ramping up right now so if you can wait you should see price drops across the board.

The dual Xeons ( I have them) will be great for RayTracing but not so great in all other areas. Chief likes clock speed and good single core performance and only seems to respond well to lots of cores when Ray Tracing. I've done tests against other machines with newer i7's and they outperform my dual Xeons in (more important IMO) every day tasks which is where the rubber meets the road in Chief. If you Ray Trace ( I hardy do any more) then the dual Xeons will be great. This is not to mention that if you had dual Xeons of the fastest around then perhaps it would be a great machine all around as well? Dunno. But for budget and value the best i7's will be a better bet for Chief IMO - as well as the Nvidia cards versus the Quadro cards.

So sorry to agree with you. Not sorry about the agreement but sorry that Chief will, in essence, never really be fast no matter how much hardware you are willing to throw at it. I have recently used some high end software from other vendors, in this case AutoDesk Inventor and Solidworks and you can feel the investment the programmers and by definition the company has put into the software, something I think you also feel when using Chief but in a not so good way.

I actually never had a problem with 3D performance, I just thought I did, and thought the 1080 would speed things up but it had no effect - again on 3D performance. And no doubt the 1080 tests so much better than the 780 but the 780 simply moves enough data fast enough to not see a difference in every day use for me on my system. It's most likely the single thread performance of my Xeons that is causing a bottle neck in Chief but the 3D performance has been very good to excellent, even with the older 780. One thing that owning a 1080 will do is give someone peace of mind knowing they have the fastest video card around and that can be valuable. One just has to measure that peace of mind against the actual cost/performance/value equation to have that peace of mind and whether peace of mind is an objective measure for computer video card performance. For me it's actually a toss up. I'm really happy I have the 1080 because it means I don't have to look at my video card for any performance boost. Would I take my own advice and buy a 1070 or any other lesser card next time? Dunno.

Yeah spend the $900 elsewhere to gain speed if possible.

Today's video cards are so powerful and Chief barely strains them even with large models. I my opinion $900 is a ridiculous amount of money to upgrade to a card that you will most likely not see noticeably better performance. Yes you will have a better, faster, video card and you won't have to upgrade for a while but the lesser 1070 will also last you years before you need to upgrade, and when you do, you will most likely upgrade the entire machine and every component will be better, faster and a better value. To Chop's point above I upgraded from an older 780 (I think) to the 1080 and noticed no increase in performance other than the placebo affect of knowing I had the latest and greatest video card.

That looks like exactly what I was originally looking for. How did you do that?

Thank you Eric but no, I was thinking of a way to accomplish the waterfall without a custom counter top, using just a single cabinet with a molding. I couldn't find a way to suppress and edge for moldings like can be done with a custom counter top. As soon as a custom counter top is created we are again dealing with multiple pieces. Works a treat but if you change the cabinet size, the counter top has to be changed to fit. Might as well use a couple slabs/custom counter tops for the edges as Chief (and others) have suggested. I would LOVE to be missing something.

VERY creative Eric - love the thinking outside the box. The only downside is to Johnny's point above about the lines showing in Vector view for those who care about such things. Otherwise should work in most cases. And darn, it almost works as a molding with a single cabinet but can't find a way to suppress the molding on the front side with a cabinet. Is there a way? That would be cool and quick.

Thank you for all the great replies and help and as usual Michael is always very helpful and the method he uses is good, expected and the method most obvious to most users. I was looking for a slightly different method that uses a single cabinet to create the same effect instead of the typical 3 pieces shown in the video above and most solutions. To that end there are few different techniques here, all good, all useful and all very helpful. So another thanks to all for the help.

Good option me thinks

Actually checked there first but didn't want to use that technique - wanted to use a single cabinet instead of 3 pieces which is why the question was posted as it was.

Not sure you have the right forum to figure construction costs but perhaps someone will chime in. I do not know modern construction costs.

They make an 8 x 4 x 16" block wouldn't that (13 1/2 courses) get you to 9 ft?

Like it

Interesting - I was trying to create just the waterfall counter top without any cabinets for a pretty unique situation (homeowners wanted to slide a table in and out from under the counter top) and didn't want to use 3 pieces (of anything) to do so and found a few limitations but found a way to get it done BUT, when trying to create a waterfall counter top with 'drawers' it turns out there's no way to use separate materials on 'panels' and 'drawers' so the method fails, unless you want to have a soap stone drawer front. Wonder why Chief would link panels and drawers to the same material and leave doors to their own separate material? I'll explore a little further. Custom doors/drawers separates the materials and results using just a single cabinet with panels seem acceptable.