KirkClemons

The current version of Chief Architect (X7) is supported on Windows 10:

http://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html

I am using Windows 10 on all my systems and love it.

Yes, basic. I use it mostly for trying to move an object by a specific distance, instead of trying to go through the transform/replicate. Saves on clicks. Never run into a case where I needed to multiply, divide, or add multiple values.

It's also a little known fact that you can perform basic arithmetic in the specification dialogs of Chief Architect as well.

This could be due to the codec throwing an error, and stopping the process. Try a different codec and see if you get any different results.

Try this out.

I tried to attach the drawing file and it said the file is too big! Sorry....

I was just meaning you could attach the original image file that you want to turn into a texture. Unless you do a backup entire plan, the plan file won't have the texture anyway.

If you want, you. Can attach the original and I'd be happy to take a look.

Does anybody know if "paint" in windows 8 will work before I purchase Photoshop? I'm trying it now, but I don't know if I'm doing it correctly because it still looks "tiled".

I use GIMP to do most of my textures. There are even a few plugins that work well with it. You can download it from here:

http://www.gimp.org/

Also, you may take a look at this app, it does a decent job with most images:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php?id=projects:johnj

This video should help:

http://video.chiefarchitect.com/player/player.php?id=190

I downloaded a stone image from a manufactures website to put on the fireplace as a new texture. I have messed with the scale of the texture every way I can think of to show the texture properly. How do I scale the texture so it doesn't look like a tiled image on the walls? I have attached an image showing the "tiled" look I'm referring to. Thanks for the help!

The images will need to be photoshopped into a seamless texture in order to remove the 'tiled' effect. Scale and size won't have a desired effect in this case.

This is also a known issue with X7 when using that particular arrow style.

Switching to another arrow style resolves the issue for now until a fix can be implemented.

There is one light symbol that slows my rendering down to a crawl. it's one pendant light that I like putting on my kitchen scene...I forgot the name...

How many light sources does it have? And what's it's surface count?

That's great! How does the scene look in your opinion? Are you happy with the results?

This is just what I've come across in different Architectural Visualization topics, but as a rule of thumb, if you are creating a day time interior scene, you don't want to turn on the lights. This makes the scene seem out of place for most people because if there is sun shining through the windows you won't usually have every light in the room turned on.

That being said, I generally turn off small lights such as cabinet lights and usually just go with the one main light fixture, such as the pendants or the cans but not all of them. If possible I avoid turning any fixtures on in a day time scene. Instead I boost the direct sunlight intensity in my ray trace settings and try to angle the sun into the room through the windows as much as possible.

Then use "Studio" lights to brighten up the scene. What I like to do is add a point or spot lamp directly behind the camera.

Under light data I turn off 'Casts Shadows'.

Then play with the position and intensity so it doesn't mess with the scene but actually brightens it up.

This way you only have 2 light sources that are actually present, the sun, and the studio light behind the camera.

You get nicer, softer lighting without the added time required to render all the light fixtures.

What I usually do is use 'File> Save as...' to create a separate copy of the plan. Then delete everything around the room I want to ray trace.

Is there a way to isolate the one scene in raytrace and it ignores all others versus having to delete or turn off?

Unfortunately, not. That would be nice to have as an option, but since everything in the plan plays a role in the results, everything is included.

It's not huge, but definitely higher than the average scene.

Are their any objects behind the camera that won't show up in reflective surfaces that you can hide or delete temporarily?

Also, isolating just that room into it's own plan can help too.

And of course, keep an eye on the number of light sources. Only use what is absolutely necessary to portray what you want to show. I've seen minutes added to a scene just from adding one light source.

It's been discussed. But I'm not sure how close we are to consider beginning to implement that type of solution. I'm sure that as more ArchViz artists begin to use our software the demand may warrant the man hours to develop such a service but for now, it's just a 'would be nice someday' on our radar as far as I know.

Someone from our development team may know more.

No there is nothing like that available in the software at this time.

In my experience, lights are the biggest hog of resources when it comes to ray trace time.

But it is possible to have a high surface count object that slows things down. These would generally be imported from 3rd parties though because our content team keeps all of our symbols at less than 10,000 surfaces a piece.

I thought this was worth sharing for any Mac users that need to store information securely:

http://www.howtogeek.com/227479/how-to-create-secure-notes-in-os-x/

This catalog contains a lot of trim and moldings:

http://3dlibrary.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?r=site/detail/713

It looks like the material type has been changed. In other words, it's no longer glass. If you open the material properties for the glass you will want to make sure it's a 'Transparent' material.

I just finished the upgrade this morning and have had no problems accessing this forum.

It may be time to backup your Firefox bookmarks and reinstall using factory settings.

Firefox may just have an older certificate cached in memory. You can try clearing Firefox's cache and reload the page.

Also, for Firefox, you can click 'I understand the risks' and then click 'Add security Exception', which will add the certificate into Firefox's allowed sites list.

Tif is just an image format, so most programs should be able to convert to this. You can even export your layout from Chief, though not to scale. There are also free tools online that you can use. I've personally used this site and it does a decent job for free:

https://www.cometdocs.com/