VisualDandD

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)

Never quite understood threads like this. These...."look at what I did....now guess how I did it" threads. To each their own, but if you want to share some tips, great....then do it.

It is not true that the elevation data is satellite. It is mostly LIDAR.(shot from small aircraft or helicopter) There are different resolutions that are shot, but most of the FEMA flood plain is shot at 3m intervals which is good for about a .5m vert accuracy. In less populated areas, they dont use such high res. One downside, is the accuracy over heavy canopies is greatly reduced. They mostly fly these mapping missions in the fall/winter, but the canopy can still prevent good readings.

could you also use wall material region?.... Just an idea

Why do the gps conversion? You can bring the data in correct just as we went over in the workshop. Of course....it is only as good as the Google data. Generally lidar over populated areas. Pretty decent, but I always import site done topo models for difficult sites.

Try this. Should work for you. I have collected stuff for years, not sure where I got this. dome.zip

Drawn in Chief, imported into Lumion. Believe it or not, I have only been working on it about a 3-4 days. I went through a drawing binge the first few days. This other (and long uncut ) vid shows the initial concept. (as well as outdoor/indoor flow which is the highlight of the home) I have been steadily cleaning up things and bringing into more focus when time allows.

Did you say stairs?

I share a little something I have been working on. Model still "rough" but honing it in. Could not wait to see what it would look like rendered, so I ran these quick shots. Still lots of stuff to do....even tweeking colors/textures/bumps/lighting. (fixing landscaping coming in the front wall ) Guess I have to finish the design first!

I disagree completely. You have to know your intended audience. For a "promo" type or sales vid.....I agree completely. Much like a movie trailer....constantly moving shots, lots of transitions etc. Creating something of visual interest that is exciting. Now....working with clients to give them a true "feel" for their deisgn....the video is MUCH longer and not nearly as 'exciting'. It cant be... They need time to get comfortable and flow through the spaces. Jumping from one scene to another keeps peoples attention who are not invested in your project. A homeowners attention is focused and the WANT the long boring video. They want to move slowly through...and are never yawning or becoming disinterested. In fact, they usually go back and play them over and over.....sometimes pausing at parts to look even longer. Again....it is all about knowing your audience.

It will only take 180 hours of work to pay for the chief license to do the side work though.....Oh wait...have to buy a PC too. Ok.....so about 300 hours of work @ $15/hr to pay for the license. Sounds like a bargain to me. Where do I sign up?

Shadows could be EASY. Just draw a cad box and put a transparent fill on them. Should take very little time. Heck, before chief did it way back, I just used to shadow my own elevations in photoshop. This was one I did a looong time back. (probably chief 9.5 I think) No auto roof function used here....

These are even quicker....(you could turn off trees). I have a reflection "painting" I use for my windows...but this is nothing other than a watercolor ortho with line overlay and shadows.

Just do an ortho view with shadows and 'technical illustration". Play with settings...etc. Not exactly what you are trying to do (I did not take time to paint windows black...but took me 5 min) An ortho with shadows combined with an elevation. If I took a little more time, I could make it nicer.

Just a quick question... Have you taken the time to try to just watch any of the instructional videos on chief, or just read a few pages of the manual. I dont mean to be rude...but the question that you are asking is one of the most basic functions in cheif. If you dont know how to do this I am assuming you are not familiar with the product at all. Take at least a little time and put some effort to lean a little. Heck, you could go on youtube and search for drawing roofs chief architect even.....Or pay for online training. While it is true that "there are no dumb questions" there are questions that show someone desires to put fourth zero effort to lean even the simple tasks. Just my opinion...and there are several ways to do what you....in auto function, it is quite easy and as long as your offsets are large enough, Chief will draw them in (when you define the walls as a gable. Manually....it is quite simple. Draw in the roof plans, break the current roof plane in several places to allow the valleys to connect when you manually "join" them.

I have a surface pro with the I5 and 4gb ram. I do have chief installed, but I could never see trying to actually do productive work on it. It is nice to have to be able to open and manipulate files....pull a section if someone has a question...etc. As a reference, I have a great workstation which is optimized for my Chief. 3 monitors (2-24" 1920x1080 and one 27" 2560x1440) I am running a I9 4790k overclocked at 4.4 with 32gb ram and a gtx 970 graphics card. I also have a gaming mouse with all configured hot buttons and a logitech g13 gamepad with all the buttons configured for drawing. I have 3 ssid drives and 2 2-tb drives with full continuous backup as well as file history. If I HAD to, I could draw on a surface. But I would never want to.

You guys got me thinking of different concepts and I came up with this. This was exported out of chief and modeled in Lumion with effects.

Not sure exactly what you are looking for....but something like this where you can see door and window openings?

To make cleaning up the floor plans really easy I just realized you can toggle off patterns" in the ortho view (and any other layers you dont want to show) and it will generate without pattern lines in the new CAD detail you create!

I just tried something and it may work for you. Go to "orthographic overview" Click 3D>view direction>top view. Now you get a nice overview (you may have to turn off flooring patterns...etc). NOW here is what I did not know actually worked in this view. You can now click: CAD>cad detail from view. You now have that perfectly to scale in cad and can annotate/label/pattern in plan view. Let me know if that works. I am familiar with RCP's but dont use them for my smaller projects. Hope it helps!!!

Yes I am not sure you are understanding 100%. I figured out that if I want to achieve what I am looking to do, I have to go back after and change attic walls definitions to "no room definition".....which then take away the "attic" definition. OR I can go in and edit each "room" in the "structure>>>>floor structure" tab. I am suggesting it would be nice to define a room defined as "attic" to not by default have the same size floor system as main floor and not have decking. (it seems you are in agreement). I never paid attention to the extra "platforms" as they were hidden in attic and I was not attempting to use the material take-off feature. Thanks for your help!