VisualDandD

Man the second one is brilliant! I used chief for cut/bal calcs on my own house. Albeit not as elegantly as you! I made my terrain model and the in 3d set the material of the terrain to be transparent. Then using a series of polyline solids (color coded red and blue), I sized my "cut" areas, and my "fill" areas, and then using the DBX I got volume of my solids. Then it was a simple table. Your second option just shows how many cool and interesting ways there are to get things done. LOVE IT!

I'll bought a nice tripod with a center handle. It takes 15-20 sec to scan and another 10 or so for it to process data and update your scan on ipad. After the initial scan, you can move the camera before it has processed the image. As soon as the new image pops up, hit scan again. Rinse and repeat. My scan was kind of haphazard and for for doing more accurate work, I would have thrown in more points. But I was just excited to run something thought it! My mom is visiting, and she sat at the island the whole time. My dog appears 3 or 4 times because she was following me around It really is pretty easy. For "as builts", if you are not worried about being in the pics, you can speed up the process a BUNCH since you dont have to go around a corner. I ducked out for most of them, but didnt bother for others. There are cheaper 360 cams (400-800) that are compatible w/ matterport hosting, but they are not accurate enough. They are also aprox 24mp vs 134mp (matterport pro) They totally rely on the visual stitching. The matterport has 6 lenses and 3 what I think are laser rangefinders. The "Pro" camera gets all the 3d measurement data whereas the cheaper cams dont give that info. The would probably work for simple realestate listing though. I am going to play with it a bit more and see what else I can learn. Will share for sure!

That was aprox 20 scans. It was very haphazard. I took the time later to read tips and tricks and I would do it better if It were for a job. I think it took me about 15min. This thing is pretty awesome. If I had a detailed model, you can pay for a full 3D file in OBJ format. You can get whatever dims you want off that. I checked a few sample dims (using the little tape measure tool on the viewer) and it is dead nuts! Certainly within the margin of error of measuring post drywall. Thanks! The design is a compromise between what my wife and I like. I like modern and she like more traditional. Here is a rendering I did early 2016 when the house was just a dream. This I where I believe in the power of what Chief can do. (but I did render movies in lumion ) Here is then Sept 2016 where I was tightening up my cab layouts. House is a courtyard home with pool in center. It is a super energy efficient home. I used a staggered stud 2x8 wall system I got an engineer to bless, and have full foam encapsulation. (Including attic). I hired an energy consultant to help me size my equipment. It is 8600 HSF and the cooling load for 95deg design temp down in North Carolina had us at 3.6 TOTAL tons cooling (on max day). I put in a crazy system...(might bore your guys but has variable speed indoor AND outdoor unit. The outdoor unit can bring itself down to about 1.4 ton by running slower, therefore optimizing run efficiency. It was a fun project for sure. Designing for one's self can be the most fun, but like every client, I wish I had more in the budget!!!! I HATE 'as builts'! I dont like doing remodels for that reason alone. For what I would have to charge to take the time to do it, I cant really justify. But this really changes all that. I actually agreed to do a remodel recently for a long time client. I cant wait to try this out!

Got my matterport today! Used it right out of box without reading any instructions. I did a quick scan of a small part of my house this morning. (Excuse the mess! ) This is really cool and I am going to start playing with all the features! Not really sure exactly what I am going to use it for, but I am sure I can find some way to justify House designed in chief too! Built it 2 years ago. https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=jpTB21Nojnr&mls=1

Not sure if this is what you mean, but this was done in chief and then rendered in Lumion. Need to have Sketchup Pro. To be honest, it is essentially useless except for the general depiction of LARGE areas. The LIDAR used is often 2-3 meter resolution, meaning the info can be off 5-9 feet Not nearly accurate enough for true site mapping and benchmarking how a home will sit. This is a broad map based on GIS just used to show cove lot and sun study. This is an example of a detailed lot placement vid I made for a client. There are several layers used. One is gis based and then the detailed site model was done from a surveyor provided topo. As you can see there is a significant difference. With only a 12" error setting foundation ht, you can cost a builder $1000's. Pay a surveyor and get an accurate model done.

I use chief in a lot of 'outside' the box ways. I attached a portion of a design revision video. I use these types of screen cap annotations of revisions for most of my major revisions. It allows me to really walk the client through the process of how I came to the decisions to make the choices I do design wise. There was discussion elsewhere about designing in front of a client. I made the statement I NEVER do that. What I do however, is show them clearly how and why I do things specific to thier design goals. These vids are often 30-40 min, but I chopped this down so you can see what can be done in chief model wise. Everything was composed and brought together in chief (but using lumion to show it). The vid is an example of very tight site placement with the clients being concerned about seeing their neighbors on a tight lake lot. I think there were 4 total models compiled to make this. I still dont know what I will do with the matterport, but I am looking forward to figuring what I can do with it! Already thought about topo modeling of a cleared site. Costs me about $1000 to get an accurate topo made. I am thinking I could shoot cleared ground and use the OBJ and sections for site topo???...:-) Second one was a trick I posted a while back on how to get GIS data directly into chief. In a modeling program, you can dress it up nicely!

Sure. Was not until I checked the box for 'advanced options' on the symbol import that I got an error file that it could not find the ".mtl" file. Like a DAE, OBJ will most certainly associate textures with surfaces of a model. But it does it differently than DAE (which just makes a simple file folder). It creates a .MTL file of the same name. All it took was going though the files Matterport sent me to play with and sure enough, I found the .mtl file of the same name. Just create a file folder and put both the OBJ and MTL file in folder and do import. Set unit of measure to meters (took some trial and error but figured out that is how dimensions are referenced. Was more guesswork than anything and playing around. Chief actually does this process better than sketchup in my opinion. (I had been trying to play with conversions and plug-in's in sketchup). I cant wait to try on some more normal structures. I do almost zero remodeling, so I probably wont use it much, but I like to see what I can do with Chief. I have been playing with VR and Oculus and the matterport I can justify to work with some of my clients on marketing. 20+ years, and I still have not figured out what I really do for a living

Got it!!!!! Quick vid attached showing what you can pull into chief and how you can use it. Thanks guys!!! The dialogue helped a lot!

Correct. IF>>>IF you have associated them. When I do the OBJ import. I get the obj model in 3d. And then when I open plan materials, I have all the materials reverenced in the model, BUT there are no images with them. I can by all means one by one open each separate material and associated the correct image with it (same file name that I get from matterport). But that would take forever. Your solution of converting to a DAE was a GREAT idea....except it automatically purges referenced materials that done have actual images attached..... When you open the new DAE file, all those materials are now gone, leaving no association.

If I only could figure out where Chief stores it's data for textures in the root directory structure. I remember one time I found it when I was looking for an easy way to create normal maps. I dont have the time now to hunt every program folder, but if anyone know it, that would be great. With that option, I can just cut/past since file names are exactly the same....and BOOM, it would work in one shot!

I called chief support....they did not seem very interested in thinking outside the box to help. Hmmmm Chief user 20+ years. Current SSA holder consistently for the past 10. Totaly calls EVER to tech support.....3. Na.....we only answer questions on how to use chief..... Well, that is exactly what I am trying to do!

Man....I got so excited when I saw this idea. Did not work. When I go to export the OBJ file from Chief, it drops any of the materials that dont have associated texture files with them..... So the link between that section of the model and material is gone.

Other idea.....If I could mass import those jpg textrues as new Plan Materials and then import the OBJ file, it might associate the images with the model referenced ones. Any idea if we can "Mass import" say 40-50 materials all at once?

Great dialogue. I am experimenting around with some of the sample files they sent me. I imported a very large OBJ file they sent me as an example, one issue is associating all the textures (which are the actual pictures of the structure. I can go into plan materials and directly replace them one by one with the assoc pic. (But there are 60+ pics in this file). I am not sure if there were an easier way....but I was thinking if I could go into where Chief stores plan textures, I could just cut the ones chief stored for those materials (which are blank but have the correct file names associated with the model) and paste in the actual images. Re-launch and see if the model loads fully textured! Anyone know where chief store custom textures or have a better way?

Ordered my Matterport today! As I mentioned, it is really for something unrelated to my design work, but I will play to see if I can extract value from it as well on that front. Matterport will do PDF floor plan (accurate to greater than 1% for only $15 +/- from a scan). But I can also get the actual OBJ file it creates from the scan, Anyone know a good way to go from OBJ to something 2d suitable for transfer into chief? I have a OBJ extension for Sketchup, but it is hard to see how I could use it. (other than maybe using a crosssection plane or something and then tracing?)

Thank you! Perfect timing

I am ordering a Matterport camera and wondering if any Chiefers use it and if so, how? I am getting for a totally unrelated reason, but any integration into chief would be cool. I know (if I figured out a good way) it can really speed up the process of 'as built' drawings. You can get a 3d OBJ file from the scans which I have played with. But I am not sure the best way to translate this into say a floor plan in Chief? If there are any users out there, I would love to hear what you are using it for. Thanks!

Interesting on the stair break tool, but for it to be really functional, it would be nice to be able to 'break' the individual tread itself. It will be interesting to see if you can break just one tread, and define as winder and get the functionality. In the past, it was either using landings (which trim did not generate properly) or trying to use winder, which often caused strange things at the top of the stair and wall...etc. Looks like some pretty good stuff though!

Made a quick screen cap. Went slow so you could follow. Had to cut audio, as I have kids going crazy around here

Pick the plane you like call it roof 1. Open DBX and note fascia ht and ridge ht. Open the DBX of the other roof plane and set fascia ht = to roof 1. Now select radio button so you lock fascia ht. Now enter ridge ht = to roof 1. And hit ok. (pitch will be what it needs to be. Now join them.

I had a client that requested a bowed rear porch which needed to be broken up into straight segments to build (in real life). Rather than doing tons of math, I took the bays they wanted to segment, and connected them with an arc. (the porch rail had to meet at 2- specific points to not have the rail hit windows. I then copied the basic cad multigon bays and the arc to a new plan using copy>paste in place. Then it was diving up the arc into segments using auto center tools (only took about 2 min). The next step is a new one for me. Normally I would copy the cad back to my original plan and try to figure out desired wall angles, enter the off angles in manually, and trace my CAD. The problem was there are too many off angles. I did it a MUCH easier way. I copied all the cad and pasted in place and then used concentric resize to drag the lines inward a small amount. This gave me parallel lines. I then used CAD to WALLs function. Even though my walls were not exactly 2x4 it just created a new wall type. I then selected the newly created walls and changed them to the type I needed. Then it was just simple copy from one plan and paste in place on the original. This worked for both levels of the house. This was sooooo much easier than ways I have done in the past. Just a simple concentric resize of a copy>paste in place CAD line made for a perfect CAD to Walls function. I just ignored all the off angle walls in the plan and I am good to go! I also used the to "auto frame" the roof planes which I brought over as well and adjusted where the intersections were. Super easy! Been using Chief for almost 20 years and still finding new ways to do stuff.

I am not familiar with that. Been using my own layer sets and Anno sets for a long time. Takes as much time as just selecting the layset I want to export. All my wall lines, fills etc are layerset defined. I'll check out the pre defined ones...but I have adopted my ways to work well for the way I work. I even have layersets that generate marketing materials. (Solid fill black walls, no dims, turn on room sized, upsize room text labels....etc). I am a big fan of letting Anno sets do the work for you.

I do very similar to the above. I, however, remove most thing engineers dont care about. I 'strip down' the plan to make it easy on them. I remove windows and doors (since all they want is the opening). I remove all wall layers. One guy I work with also likes when I send him a 3d model. I export in obj and he opens in his cad to verify beams will fit under roof...etc. (very nice to have a guy that actually double checks this stuff).

This but do a cad detail from view so snaps work everywhere. Then draw shape the size you need then copy/paste/hold position so you can get perfect alignment. I usually snap to the outside of the veneer and then match materials. You will end up with a CAD line which can be erased when you send to layout.

At end of the day why would you be sending anything to the truss people? As a builder, they should control that flow of info. They are also responsible for the order. Did you order the trusses? (no). Then if at the time the builder had the correct plans and "ordered" the trusses of a prelim plan, it is his issue. I dont take my "not for construction" watermark off the plan until the final set is issued. Before chief had this function, I just used a outline text on page 0 of layout. But even then their could be a change after plans have been finalized. I say unless as part of your scope of work you provide sub contractor supervision/coordination, that is not your job to make sure the truss guy has the right plans.