OldBarnDesign

I've worked on both platforms and I personally prefer PC. Biggest beef with Macs to me is the lack of upgradeability. They are great machines, don't get me wrong, but they are overpriced and I hate sinking 3K+ into a computer and being stuck with no way to upgrade without dropping another 3K in two years. With a PC, I can choose to add more memory, disk space, upgrade to the latest graphics card or CPU, at any interval I want. Concerning software, drivers, etc. Microsoft moved Office 365 to a yearly subscription, so you don't buy the software anymore. Same with Adobe... NVidia will tell you when new drivers come out and you can optionally choose to upgrade and it's streamlined. You can buy legit Windows licenses super cheap. It really isn't an issue. I built my own PC about 18 months ago, spent less than 2K, and it blows my wife's Macbook Pro (which she purchased shortly after I built the PC), out of the water even with the graphics card now being a generation old. To each their own though

Hey Chiefers... Based on the forum searches, it looks like I'm not the only one with issues taming brick ledges. My issues are small issues with brick ledges in construction drawings, specifically the foundation plan. In the 3D view below, you can see I have a brick pony wall sitting on a brick ledge that looks ok, ideally the brick ledge wouldn't cut into the door casing like that, but I can live with it. My issue is in the 2D. I've noticed on a number of projects where you have brick crashing into another wall that doesn't have brick, the brick ledge doesn't always "close off" properly in 2D. Chief doesn't draw a little line to make it nice and neat and delineate. Sometimes it does it, sometimes not, and I haven't figured out the magic. The top circle and bottom circle in the 2D image below show this. In the 3rd image I have an example of where it works and it's in the same plan. The middle circle shows the brick ledge encroaching into the doorway on one side but not the other. Again, in 3D things are consistent on both sides. I've played around with the foundation around this area and can't get it to behave in 2D. I've tweaked walls and it appears the wall intersection tool doesn't let you adjust pony walls. Any hints on how I can fix this? I've perused the forums and watched several of the videos posted by some of y'all on brick ledges. Still no bueno. Thanks!

Thanks Rob!

Also, I am aware of this article now: Troubleshooting Slowness in Chief Architect Plans

Being a pretty new Chief user, wanted to throw his out there to see how others manage this when it comes to creating renders for websites, proposals, etc. Say you create a new stock plan and generate construction documents, and now you want to create some high-quality renderings to show off the plan on your website. Obviously, you need to stage and furnish the house in 3D before setting up cameras, lights, tuning materials, etc. You might also need landscaping and a basic site model for any exterior renders. While you might furnish a rendering or two in your construction documents, those "sizzle quality" renderings typically require a lot more content. I would imagine to furnish and stage an entire house could end up bloating the .plan file quite a bit, resulting in sluggish performance any time you open that file to make a small edit, or to just interactively show a client. I know layer sets are a solution and are supposed to control what's rendered in any given view. My question is if layer sets alone are enough? All that content is still in .plan file, do you find that things start to lag a bit more, load times drag, switching views become slow, etc.? Does the plan file become so sluggish that it's painful to work with? Any advice or war stories about how to manage it? I've thought about having different versions of the same plan, one for construction documents and one that's "blinged out" with content and details to make the renders pop. The obvious problem there is that you have to keep them in sync. If it's a stock plan, it's not supposed to change all that much, but it still has to be managed. Thanks in advance!

I tried using an Oculus Quest 2 with RT ray tracing with a NVidia 3070 GTX this summer. The frame rates were < 10 FPS, so it really wasn't up to par from an immersion standpoint. I've heard the new NVidia 4090 series GPUs have 4x the ray tracing performance compared to the 30 series. That is going to be your best bet I would imagine, but still would be pleasantly surprised if you get 30 FPS. I used to be in the real time graphics business about a decade ago, so I don't know what they offer these days above and beyond the gamer level hardware. NVidia used to offer Quadro cards that were 3-5K a pop (10 years ago) and had the ability to pair multiple cards together using SLI. Not sure that is the case today, but if you are worried about spending $2500, that solution isn't in your ballpark.

Thanks! I figured as much, and it make sense that if a user isn't keeping their SSA active they probably aren't doing enough business/using the software enough to turn things around quickly.

If you have an X14 .plan/.layout files, will an older version of Chief be able to open them? I presume there would be little to no compatibility here because it can be difficult to make older versions of the software future proof. The older version would have no knowledge of any new capabilities. I'm asking because if I were to farm out additional work to somebody, I presume they would need to also be on X14 like I am. If they were on say, X12, there would be issues? Cody

I saw some benchmark YT videos and the ray tracing is supposedly 4x the performance compared to the 30 series cards. If so, hot damn, could you actually model in a ray traced view?

Awesome! Thanks!

Based on my limited experience thus far, I definitely see a slow down when using Live View on elevations, especially if I have a bunch of interior wall elevations. Updating only on demand helps tremendously.

I tried to figure out how to do this today. Here is what I did, though I bet there is a better way. 1) I created a pair of intersecting CAD lines, basically a cross/ + sign. 2) I used the transform tool to move the position of that cross to 0,0,0. You can specify an absolute position in the Transform dialog. 3) I used Edit Area->Edit All Floors and selected the whole plan. 4) I used the point to point move tool to move the plan. I used the center of the front door as Point A and the center of the cross as Point B. 5) Delete the cross or hide it on its own layer. Seemed to work, but again, surely there is an easier way.

When I get this message it's usually because the roof plane baseline is not sitting on the outside of the wall. Make sure the Roof, Baselines layer is on in your plan view. To select the baseline, click on the roof plane, then hit the Tab key. Move the baseline so that it sits on the outside edge of the wall. Cody

My bad, just chiming in on my limited personal experience with plot lines, similar to the OP. I was sneaky and snuck in my own question I'll start a new thread next time.

Thanks Eric! I will play with that setting as well. The mulled unit is nice in that is magically solves the problem. But if I recall, it also treats the entire group of windows as a single entity, kind of like a CAD block so if I need to make a change to one of the windows, I have to temporarily break up the mulled unit, make my change, then remake the mulled unit? No biggie I guess...

Thanks Robert for the quick reply! I have yet to learn about Material Regions so I'll check into that!

Damn, I'm gonna be here a while, I've only got 4 months under my belt! LOL. One of the places I struggle with "unwanted plot lines" is around window trim. So far the only way I know how to get all this trim to merge in between windows is to create mulled units everywhere. One of the problems with that is that the windows show up as a mulled unit in my window schedule, which isn't desirable. Is there a way to get the trim to "merge" so it looks correct in plot lines? Something in the window DBX settings perhaps? Perhaps there is an example of what to do in the sample plans. I need to look. The other place is when there is some sort of construction/material issue, usually around roofs, rake walls, and floor platforms where walls get misaligned. They typically are hard to spot in Standard View and but stick out like a sore thumb in elevations. I guess it's a good debugging tool.

Thanks Cooper!

Hey Eric, yes I have, but I think Cooper's answer is the reason it didn't work. I just now getting to the point where I'm creating my own customer symbols. Thanks! Cody

Hey all, Is it possible to create a new electrical light fixture symbol (like import something from Sketchup 3D Warehouse) and attribute it so that the Connect Electrical tool will allow you to hook a switch to it? I know you can use a dashed CAD line to make it look the same, just wondering if it's possible. Also, any recommendations on finding better light fixtures? Most of the SAS bonus catalogs seem too European, ultra-modern/contemporary, just not our clients' style. Looking for stuff that leans more simple, rustic or farmhouse, not too eccentric. Thanks! Cody

In Windows you can press the PrintScn button and it will copy the screen to the clipboard. Then open Paint or any other image program and hit Ctrl-V. As Solver said, all those fields are related so changing one number affects the others. Rough Ceiling is the height of the ceiling from the floor to the ceiling joists. Finished Ceiling should be slightly lower (5/8" by default) because it includes the drywall. If you change the rough ceiling height, it obviously affects the height of the drywall and vice versa. Hitting the Help button within the dialog will explain it.