VisualDandD

First, off, I already spoke with tech support, ...but just sharing this. Today I went to do something I have done in previous versions without issue. I copied an entire house using "edit area all floors visible" tool. I then went to paste it into a terrain model I have as a template. Chief did not like that. Got a nasty message and it locked up on me. Now here is where it gets weird. I had to Ctrl alt del to end task to get out of chief. When I opened it, both of the files I had open were wiped clean. Nothing in them. All floors were deleted and not a single thing in either plan. Thankk goodness for auto save....I looked up an older version and "saved" the files. Here is something weird......it also took out my library browser. It was no where to be found(and it was docked at the time). Tech support showed me how to "reset" it...which worked fine. Long story short, I just did the process the other direction and had no issues. I copied the smaller terrain file and pasted into the house plan. (and aligned up my new terrain perimeter with the poly line that gets copied over). I dont think it liked the big copy...... Just throwing this out there. Done it a bunch of times in older versions without issue, but as is the case with models, there can always be something that is causing the quirk or large poly counts.

I usually find it is a 'baseline' issue. I often start with 'auto' roof tools and then modify the planes. If you are trying to match overhangs on differing pitches, etc and move roof plains with point to point, the baseline often gets screwed up. You see this all the time when trying to make a 'full' return and only one side will generate. As for making roof planes line up, just enter fascia height and lock it, then enter pitch.

Gary, I like to use the watercolor with line drawing on top. It does a nice job of illustrating without people feeling the need to overly pick them apart. I think you are talking about the technical illustration though. That is good and shows nice shadows, but it is a little too 'rigid' looking for me. I also do some involved photo-realistic stuff, but most people dont want to spend the time or money on it.

I do it with polyline solids in a brick shape I made. I draw an arc to match the window or opening, and turn on "show arc centers and ends". I place a point at the center and use transform replicate to produce copies at certain angle intervals. I usually start out at about 2.5deg It is pretty quick, except I found that X6 wont use Transform/rep "about current point" on polyline solids. Your choice is to do them as cad and then convert them later, or know the coordinates of the point and entering it in manually.

OK....got it to go. I just pulled a new camera and sent another to layout and it worked. Have no idea????

Hey all. Wondering if anyone else has this issue. I usually go in and select a layout box in my layout and lighten the pattern lines to a lighter grey. I am having issues with this working in X7. I can open the box and change it, but there is no effect in the layout. (I tired all kinds of colors and even line weights had no effect). I can go in and individually edit them and change their attributes. (Using "edit layout lines") Anyone else have this issue? Thanks

Ill try that, but that was not it. I use Microsoft security essentials. I looked and did not have older versions of Chief excluded.... I will do that now though. Running from SSID so I dont think it would a file transfer issue either.

I have noticed a slow down. Most when zooming in and out and also a longer pause anytime new walls "connect". Another bug I am noticing is that when I select something and the handles pop up, I will grab the center one to move it and it will just stay there. The cursor will freeze. I will then have to re-select and grab again and it will move. It is not just one plan, but doing it in several different ones.

This is from the bonus lib. (water supply and drainage>conductor heads) Not exactly as decorative, but you could easily dress it up and block it.

I know I had them at one time. They might be in an old version, but you can convert. I may have to pull out my old laptop with older versions to check.... If I can find them, I will post

Check your file sizes. If they are big....like 500mg+, you have the wrong codec set. For some reason the program comes by default set to IYUV. This needs to be changed to "XVID" under Preferences>Render>Codec options. You may have to download and install the XVID codec. Just google and install. Once you use that I can make a 2min walk-through that is only about 60mb. They should make this more clear for people and I found it by accident somehow. I used to get 1gb vids and have to convert with Microsoft movie maker to get them to play.

Never done it...but got me thinking. I took the 3d trees and using the material selector, I changed all the leaf material to 100% transparent. Worked like a charm! For mounds of snow, the landscape feature would work well. Just put the right material on it. I would imagine you could start with just white and experiment from there. You just have to crank up the triangle count on the terrain to get them small enough to look good in small areas.

The effect works well in ray trace. This is a quick dirty one,....I used a different camera so I did not fix my background. Really just wanted to see the window effect. Tweaked the transparency and emissive and this worked great for a quick one. Again....no bumpmaps...etc. Just quick and dirty. The "image" type landscaping would need changed to help this out a lot. This was 3min with 10 passes. (small though...1000x480) Cant believe I did not think of this earlier....this is so much easier to get good looking glass..

No. Soooooooooooo much simpler then that. I have played with that before to get the look I wanted and it was a major PITA and took tons of time. This is just a standard backdrop too. The window is "painted" with the material painter. (first I select the surface and make a copy of the material for the glass and re-name "glass sky view" it so I can switch back and fourth easy). Material properties are still left as "reflective" under properties. I can then eyedropper and paint the rest of the windows (even mulled units) which you cant access the material DBX when mulled. I then play with the scale and offset to get the right look. The texture has to be big enough so it can span across multiple mulled units without repeating. I settled on x=120 and y=130. Last I mess with the offest. To get more "sky" in the view, I brought the texture point down a little to y= -10. I am sure from plan to plan you would have to make small adjustments to scale and offset to get that right balance, but it can be done very quickly. This looks great in watercolor. In standard render it is not as dramatic. I found that adjusting the diffuse down to 80, dropping emissive down to 0 and setting transparency to about 60 gave some good effects. (I did not run a ray trace, but I am sure I could come up with a good look) I attached the picture that I "painted" on the windows. Took me a while to find the one with the right balance. Let me know if any of you guys play with the idea and what you think, or any improvements you can possibly come up with. Justin

I prefer to do watercolor with line renders as they take much less effort than raytracing to get a nice look. They leave enough to the imagination that they dont need to be perfect. With raytracing, I have gone to extremes to get that nice look from my glass like putting up giant 'billboards' to get good image reflections...etc. It is usually the glass that lacks character in most of the views...but especially the non ray traced ones. Tonight I decided to play a little and did a simple technique of applying a custom texture to my windows to get the effect very easily. Not sure if others do the same, but wanted to throw this out there. It helps a lot to take the sterile look out of a model. See what you guys think. This took me about 30 minutes of playing and now that I have it saved, I should just be able to re-use it with small adjustments.

What will be interesting is to see how this flows though annosets and defaults.... Who wants to try first

I have an idea! Possibly..... can you just delete the chief font all together.....and when you open a file Iin chief) that has it in it, it will prompt that it cant find the font and then give you a selection box asking you to replace it with a selection. I think I have seen this happen when I open old chief files where I dont have the font on this computer. (It is a chief prompt) Not sure if this will work but it just popped in my head.

Wow....what a pain in the rear! I decided to bite the bullet tonight and not deal with this going forward. I downloaded and installed blueprintdpt and updated all my annosets to use this font. I am now realizing the downside to using "rich text". When using standard text with a "text style" everything updates globally when you update or change the "style" unless you have "custom" selected. I am getting more into refining my annosets, but see the need to go back and create a real good template. (I use the "save as" method not templates). I will have to update a lot of my notes and labels as I used "rich text" a lot and did not realize how difficult this would make things as I went further with annosets. Funny, I just began taking a look at annosets and really tweeking them. I cant believe I waited as long as I did to use them! Anyone who has not come up to speed on them should invest the time for sure!!

I had to open a plan I did in X4 and noticed the same thing today! I was wondering what happened. It clipped all my text and I had to go expand each text box in the whole plan....... I found that I could double click the text and it would open the dialogue box. I could then just click "OK" and it would resize automatically which made the process a lot faster. But, I had to open EVERY bit of text.

I played around with it for a minute. Specifically the base 3 drawer cab to the left of stove (looking at the stove). It is a connection issue. In elevation view I resized smaller (dragging handle from left to right. Brought it down to about 24". Then I slid it left to separate it. Slid it back right to connect it. (Great....no seam). And then re-sized back to original width into corner. No seam now. That is all I played with, but I am guessing that will fix a lot of your seams. BTW...where did you get the Thermador appliances?. They look nice.

I get this every now and again. Sometimes I have to move the cabinet back and 're-connect' it. I will copy, delete, and then paste 'hold position' and that sometimes works. Sometimes it is persistent and I will go as far as deleting and using a new cabinet. Does not always seem to make sense...... Make sure your cabinet width is not poking into the adjoining cabinet as well.

I run two monitors. My "main" one is a dell 2560x1140. I have had it a few years and the price has come down a good bit on them. ($500 range) It is nice to have the resolution on that one. It is also very easy on the eyes. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824260111 Makes the 24" 1920x1080 next to it seem small when I drag dual window open, I find that I feel 'cramped'.

Thanks Joe! Been away from forums for a while. I will be hanging out much more often. Taking time to really optimize and learn some new things as I am getting busier. Thank you again!!! Justin

Thank you. At least I am not going crazy. I can confirm it works on X4. I used it all the time. The weird thing is you can rotate a poly line solid around a 'absolute point' just fine. You just have to go though the extra steps to do it. (Hit the input point button and it will give you current points exact coordinates.....you then have to enter them in manually). Hard to believe I am the first to notice this...... How would others manually model a arched soldier over a window? Attached is the project I was working on where I ran into the issue. I finally figured out to draw the bricks in CAD first and group select and then convert to polyline solid. Much more work then using the pre-made ones I used to save to library and just transform/replicate......

I know I can do that. (sorry if I did not make that clear earlier). My problem is I can not perform the function of: -an array copy rotating about CURRENT point (using transform replicate) see above posts. -of a polyline solid -in elevation view. -works in CAD in elevation.....just not once you make it a solid. Able to do in X4 and previous versions. (recently upgraded) Thanks!