VisualDandD

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!

I get where you are coming from, but the model is correct.....it is just the fact that when I define a closed space as "attic" which I need to do especially when it is spanning across multiple ceiling heights below (you can break them up with invis walls and define correct ceiling and floor heights to cooperate with the steps in the ceilings below), it automatically "decks" attic floors. I have adopted drawing in my "attics" as I have elevated plates there anyway....(again...chief would auto frame the walls if I dont...they would just be undefined). If I check "no room definition" I solve the desire of chief to build a platform under it....BUT it screws all the changes in elevation up that are happening below. Make sense?.... If you get where I am coming from, how would you achieve these conditions?

When doing several varying ceiling heights though out the plan as well as elevated plates above ceiling joists it really makes the process more straight-forward (and even possible in some instances where otherwise it wont cooperate). If I dont put the walls there, chief will auto place them (if I select) but they have to go there. My only option would be to change some of the wall definitions to not close in the rooms....but that would make the varying ceiling height issue more challenging as I discussed before. I am just wanting to define an "attic" room as not having decking. Dont think it is that nuts of an idea.... Just like when you have clear span joists over a garage and the attics created are not decked as standard (unless you are going to attempt to put storage in them). Seems like we should have the option in an attic room to provide decking or not by default

Hi all. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I have been undertaking using chief to generate material take-offs. At this point, it is baby steps to verify how it is calculating numbers. I discovered something today I never much paid attention to. When I draw a 2 story house (where some is finished and some is attic), I generally close the whole plan in with walls at the perimeter (this creates "rooms"). I define attic rooms as such and use the platform that is created as my bearing heights for rafters. ( I often set ceiling ht in these rooms to very low numbers.... as low as 1/2" to 24-36" on elevated plate rooms. The fact that chief puts a "platform" under any room you enclose is OK. My plans are generally steep roof pitches which have to have elevated plates anyway. (for both insulation and eve clearance above windows). OK...so that is the back story.... So when I was looking at material calcs, chief puts plywood subfloor in all my attics by default. I realized this when my sheet count on the 2nd floor was WAY off. So I thought....no problem, I can just define it in default room types. Problem....there is no "default" setting for "attic" rooms. (or am I missing something?) So besides going in and manually editing the floor finish (deleting subfloor) is there a way to have the attics automatically generate without the attached subfloor?.....if not there should be a "radio" button where you can uncheck subfloor in attic spaces. (instead of having to edit the "floor structure" tab) Am I just missing something..... Drawing in manual ceiling joists does not seem to change this.....

I still have one of these....but I am not sure what to plug it into

Ha......I have quite a bit of framing experience as well as contracting. I can do 'rule of thumb' take-offs all day long. I also have Planswift which eliminates the "by hand" part and I could just import PDF's in and use it. BUT....I cant help but want to extract the info out of Chief. I KNOW it is there and can do it. I am just looking at real world efficient ways to do it. With about 20 years direct field experience, I think I can find that balance. Chief is not far from being usable.... just am looking for better methods to make up for some of the shortcomings. Thanks! Never saw that. Thank you for taking the time to post the link!!!