VisualDandD

Than why does the crossection view look weird? I usually send to layout first, than adjust the properties. Ok...now I have it! Funny, my typing wpm has gotten pretty fast over the last few years and I make more and more silly typos. The subconscious is pretty neat. To tell you an honest admission, my Grammer did get worse after suffering a tbi in 09. Not an excuse....but if I didn't have spell check sometimes, you'd probably think it was a 6yo typing

Your right. Forgot to mention that about the perspective view. I drop it down to just below header height. The other is just a ortho top view (in standard render) combined with a floor plan view.

I do them a few ways. Some are just perspective views labeled in photoshop with a little tweaking. Or you can combine ortho views and watercolor for a different effect. (no perspective)

Na....just not the way I draw (or would build) so it was difficult to see what you mean. The weird thing I thought would work would be to delete ceiling and draw on in manually and even though the clip lines on the floor plan went away, the roof still followed vault??? That had me puzzled. Frankly, I would draw it with 2x6 and the do "cad detail from view" for my sections. That is what I do anyway. Then I would edit rafter depth and manually draw the deeper cut on rafter.

I dont get the issue. Raise the clg ht and make the rafter sit at whatever depth you want. (for proper birds mouth depth or whatever your desired stand height is. If you are talking about the tail of your rafter getting skinny, that is just the framing DBX of that roof plane. Change gable sub fascia to 7.25 and you will have a straight tail. As for getting the ceilings to align, it should not be an issue as the 2x6 has to be elevated to flush out the roof plane. I am just not seeing the issue. This is another case where this would probably take all of 30 seconds to answer if you posted the plan and gave desired clg hts...etc. (just saying )

Or you can change wall definition of the lower wall and change material of the center portion to your same tile material. (or just change it to a single layer wall with the tile as the material. This will make it display correct in 3d.

Why not just draw a rafter, and then set it to the dept and width you want. Lower it with transform replicate 'move' in the "z" plane. Of course polyline solids will work too...as will soffit tool, but for something like that, a simple rafter might do the trick. I used polyline solids to build these dec trusses. I wanted the detail of the reveals created by hanging the outer trim boards down slightly. Lots of ways to skin a cat...

For any that thought x7 upgrade was on the lighter side....the multi monitor support was worth it for that alone I often draw with three full screens going. Transparent fills is a close second....now if we could only cut holes in fills.....

I did the VERY quickly. Needs a good bit more detail to start to make it more realistic. Also some tweaking could be done in lots of areas...etc. Just wanted to shoot over something fast. I shot you an email if interested. Full 3d walk thoughs not a problem... Here is an example.

Search engine is TERRIBLE. Often I will search for exact words that are in the description and it will not pull them up. I have about given up. Most of the time, I will do a very broad search and then click on "view in browser" and hope it brings me close to the right place where I can then go and find it. Problem comes with all the bonus cats or specialty things, this does not work as well on.

They usually run one within a certain window before their new release. (which usually comes in the first quarter) This works out well as you get brought up to current and then get the new version when it comes out. I took advantage of this last time, and the discount was a nice incentive. (I was a few versions behind as well). Well worth it....

Sometimes I just draw a cad line at the place I want the wall to go to. Then I go back and edit wall. (sometimes I have to drag it back in the opposite direction first). Then edit and use 'snaps' to bring it to the cad line you placed. Delete line after wall is placed. Not 100% sure that is your situation, but taking a shot.

Modeled in chief. Textures / bump maps in photoshop and normal map, then rendered in lumion. Thanks. I struggle with the desire to make something that looks good vs the time invested. You can always go further, add accessory items, tweak textures more, play with more light settings etc, but there comes a point where returns diminish. I get excited sometimes, and come up with some real nice bumpmaps and re-run a rendering. When I show it to my wife, she says "It looks the same" . That is the balance point. At some point, I am just working to improve it for me and it adds little in the way of functionality to the rendering itself. That is my biggest struggle. Knowing when it is enough....and moving on.

I agree too. That would be nice for sure. In the DBX you could have "frame" options and could define materials as you wanted. "casing" could be used for bullnose tile around opening...etc. Seems an easy transfer. For those that are interested, Here is the rendering I did where I was looking to put niches in. It might be a small pain to draw the two walls as I did, but it renders quite well. Just as a reverence, this rendering could be taken a lot further with more details...etc, but I stopped at the point where I felt it could serve the purpose of laying out the spaces. With more time investment, you could really bring it in to focus more.

Normally I dont do such detailed renders, but I have been playing a little. I find the more stuff I add, the more I need to add to take it to that next level of realism. This was really more about getting a feel for a Master BR/bath layout....but I took it a little further. I could keep going endlessly, but at this point, it would be more for effect than anything else. I think it serves its purpose as is. Chief with textures done in both photoshop and normal map. Animation in Lumion

Thanks! Never saw that update. Funny, I have been using Chief for a looong time and never realized I could force two walls on top of one another! Figured that my method was nothing revolutionary for sure. No, never saw it referenced before. I always appreciate your ingenuity and approach to things. Thanks for sharing!!! Justin

Quick "dirty" non detailed render of said niches.

So I had to draw and model a niche and remember some of the threads to create them. Specifically I am making a shower niche. Joe did a great thread, but his method required the walls to be framed and that was not what I wanted. Yusuf posted he had solved it, but never showed his method. So....I thought of what I could do to accomplish the flexibility I wanted. I dont think my idea is revolutionary by any stretch, but it works quite cleanly. Materials can be defined how you like them to create whatever effects you want. It is just a real simple way of doing it with a pass through and two walls. Sure, you have to draw two walls to do it, but to me this is easier than the other methods. Just sharing...... I know...not real mind blowing I do realize that framing wont be 100% correct, but I think if you had to, you can manually draw that 2 feet or so. Heck, I would just let it ride... niches.zip

Not a Dell. I built it myself. Has been fine (actually great) till upgrade. @Jcaffee That is the thing....not repeatable at all. I have had it happen on many different plans. Usually precipitated by hitting "save as" or exporting something. Like I said,,....there is no rhyme or reason. Just seems to do it every once in a while. I have gotten in habit of "saving" before any of those. If it crashes, I just open it up again and do the export and it works fine..... Hard to identify any particular "issue".

Wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. Have not called tech support and figured I would ask here first. System stable under win 8.1. Upgraded to Win 10. Latest Nvidia drivers...etc. Chief crashes a lot....and did not at first upgrade. It happens when hitting "Save as", or during exports either an img or DAE file. Sometimes it even crashes trying to open an additional plan file. (dont think mem is an issue) System details I7 4790K gtx970 24gb ram So anyone else seeing this?

I do this all the time. That is how I design many of my projects. I use chief to "sketch" and I dont worry about all the 1/16"s etc. I am just sculpting. Sometimes, I even alter room DBX's to create offsets in roof planes very quickly..etc. When I start to get close, and am happy with my shape, I turn off all the layers that are not important, and do a cad detail from view. I now start a new plan (from one of my save as templates that best fits it) and I redraw the house. The CAD overlay makes this VERY quick. This time, I know where all my important points are (eg important centers, and things that need to align or offset). I now bring the model into dimensional accuracy and eliminate all the odd dimensions. All told, I can redraw a model in less than an hour in this method. I open the original and copy over areas I spent a lot of time on (cabinet layouts in kitchens..etc). I cant tell you how useful this is to me. I am working on a new personal house and the versions just keep piling up. When I am finally happy, I will just redraw. EDIT....I attached some pics that show the evolution of a project. These are all basically the same plan. It is still in flux with me doing the "dirty" drawing right now.

I made the jump to win10 and one thing I noticed is that my "undo" function is MUCH faster. Like 1/4 to 1/3 the normal time. I have a fast system i7 4790k overclocked 32g 1600 mem Multiple ssid drives GTX970...etc Anyway....even with mutliple windows both 3d and floor plan, undo updates VERY quickly. This is a huge improvement in work flow for me. I use Undo quite a bit. Just wanting to see if anyone else has notice this.

On the far left roof. I suspect if you open that roof plane DBX you have some funky settings for in the framing tab. See if there is a difference between the other roof that is coming out correct. That would be what I would check first. And attach plan

Shot you a PM. It is always nice to meet another local Chief'er! Give me a holler and maybe we can catch up sometime. Justin

Good info. I assumed that google maps just used GIS info. I know that much of them along with FEMA flood plain maps were constructed from LIDAR. Good info to know. Thanks for digging it up! As for suitability for building pads, I know that good earth info is NOT even close enough to approximate. Working on a house now where I exported the google earth data and sectioned it to check elevation drops. Google earth show 17' change in elevation across building pad. I went out and shot it with a rotating laser....and it was 5'. I have seen this in several cases. Data is unreliable and pretty much useless.....unless you just generally want to know what way the water is shedding. I either have topo's shot by the surveyor, or I grid off the areas I want to know and shoot my own. (I shoot my own for my projects, but tell clients if they want accuracy then need to have a topo done and get their surveyor to do it)