Alaskan_Son

I can definitely help you get this done. I sent you a PM with my personal email address.

Hey Chris, Sent you a PM. I'd be glad to help you out on this.

...or just careless. Particularly if those macros are writing or overwriting files.

Yes. Rotate Plan View along with a few additional annotation object defaults.

I'm curious why you asked the question then? I see this happen all the time. You guys ask us for tips and clarification, we give answers, that leads to more questions, we give more answers, and come to find out you have no real intention of actually seriously learning or using it...just playing around. A little inconsiderate if you ask me, and a big reason why I've become a bit burned out donating my time here. I don't care if you don't want to invest in hiring someone to help you, that's totally your prerogative. I'm just suggesting that its the best way of making real progress. If you decide to go it "on your own", then at least have the decency of not wasting people's time if your questions aren't sincere. It can take a lot of time and energy to answer questions sometimes.

As with Brown Tiger's approach, I'm not sure this is any easier. Different? Yes. More efficient for you? I'm assuming yes. Slower? I think yes, but that is obviously debatable. But easier? I don't think so. Same exact challenges. I'm thinking that there is nothing that I'm missing. It's just going to be a pain to sync things back up if the house gets moved late in the game and that there aren't any additional measures we could take to alleviate that. Again, I can obviously do it all the plan like many people do and there would be no syncing, but IMO that is just a lot slower and less intuitive for many cases.

If you're being serious, then you're going about this wrong. That's a terrible place to start trying to learn how to use macros in my opinion. I'd say the majority of people who take a stab at macros make little to no progress or ultimately fail because they take a poor approach...figuring it out on their own or trying to pick up one little tip at a time. If you have 2 or 3 years and hundreds of hours to invest reinventing the wheel, by all means, go right ahead, otherwise, I strongly suggest you consider just investing in some one-on-one time with someone to show you the ropes. Its really painful for me to watch some people try to learn one little tip at a time, spend hours experimenting, run into a road block, ask for another tip, spend a few more hours, run into another roadblock, pick up another tip...and I'm thinking to myself...I could have helped you sort those particular issues out in about 15 minutes. And the thing is that there are forks in the road at every turn. You have to learn how to use macros in Chief, you have to learn at least a little about Ruby, and most importantly, you have to learn how the 2 work together. That's where the real challenge lies. You can master Chief and you can master Ruby and you might still be completely lost when it comes to writing macros in Chief.

Not sure I can totally agree with that. Let me try to clarify a bit... In principal we only need to draw things once--lot lines in the CAD Detail and roads, driveways, and landscaping in the plan view. There are a few scenarios to consider though... Plans change like in the scenario I spelled out in my previous post. I had drawn all the roads and the driveway in the plot plan until a landscaping plan was added to the mix later. That meant I needed to move at least the driveway over to the plan view. I went ahead and moved the lot lines and road as well though since that is also information needed to draw up a good landscaping plan. This resulted in an unintended duplication of some items. I could have just deleted the road from the plot plan had I wanted to, but the lot lines had to be drawn twice if I wanted in the plan view and wanted to stick with the CAD Detail method. Accurately drawn driveways are dependent on accurately drawn roads and accurately located structures right? This means you need to sync up something right from the get go. Doesn't necessarily mean things need to be drawn twice in a strict sense of the idea, but information has to be moved from the plot plan to the plan view somehow, or it needs to be drawn initially in the plan view and then move to the CAD Detail. This leads to the aforementioned syncing issues. Accurately drawn roads are dependent on the lot lines. No 2 ways about this. This means that if you want the road in your plan view that the lot information has to be synced between views somehow. Assuming its an easy lot and with liberal accuracy tolerances for the plan view, there's still the issue of what happens when the house gets moved on the lot later in the game. If you have all your driveway and road information in the plan view then all that gets moved along with the house similar to what I showed in my example above. Again, you might not need to actually draw the lot again, but you have to get that information over to the plan view somehow if you want to properly reposition your roads and driveway. IMO its just as easy to copy and paste the lot info. and leave it in both plan. It makes for an easier way to sync the views back up. Anyway, at the end of the day, I STILL think the Plan Footprint CAD Detail can be a faster and more intuitive method of drawing up site plans...even with the syncing issue. There's definitely a tipping point there somewhere though. It kinda depends on the complexity of the project and on what sort of pages need to be produced. If I need to draw up an accurate terrain? I can't say the CAD Detail method would have any benefit. If I just have to draw up a quick site plan? CAD Detail hands down.

To put it simply? Because it's faster and more intuitive to draw it as a Plan Footprint CAD Detail. Just to make sure we're on the same page too...the Plan Footprint IS live. It's only some of the various components that are drawn with CAD. Also, just so we're clear, I don't always use the CAD Detail method. It kinda depends on the circumstances. In the example above, it was way faster and easier to use the CAD Detail method...at least at the outset of the project. Let me paint a picture of how that went with this one... The house was already drawn. I was just hired to clean/button up a few things with the model and to produce a custom layout with a few pages (foundation plan, floor plan, and 4 elevations). That was it; however, I was then asked if I could also draw up a quick site plan using an aerial view of the property along with survey information and was asked to place the house at a specified orientation to the street and to match the median distance from the road as well as at a median spacing when compared the the adjacent properties. No problem... Create a Plan Footprint CAD Detail Input lot lines Draw setbacks Import, scale, and position aerial view Draw roads Draw rough outline of adjacent houses (this step wasn't completely necessary--I just find it useful) Take various measurements of existing houses Rotate and position house--DONE... ...until I was asked later to set up a page for a landscape plan that wasn't originally contemplated. I wasn't personally going to draw the landscaping plan, I just needed to set it up so my client could do the drawings himself. This wasn't really a huge deal. I just needed to copy and paste some CAD work from the Plot Plan CAD Detail over to the plan view so he had some road, driveway, and lot information to work with... ...then they decided to move the house which results in the issue I showed above. Again, not a huge deal, and they decided to hire a landscaping architect to draw up those pages separately now, so it's really not a problem. It just got me to thinking a little about refining my methodology to help reduce extra work in the future. This is something we kinda have to do either way. Typically it's easier with the CAD Detail method but not always. In the example I posted above, I was drawing to match the orientation of the existing plat/survey that we were referencing. The main plat was drawn with North pointing straight up (as usual in my experience) but this particular zoomed in portion was drawn with North pointing directly to the left,except that the bearings quickly proved the North Arrow on the drawing to be incorrect.

Can't speak to the rest of your response right now, but one quick note about this one. It's a very quick and easy process to update one or all views when using plot lines. I think the perceived inconvenience of the extra (click(s) and the short downtime while the views update, is far outweighed by the benefits.

Klingon? Just kidding. I blurred that out before I posted the pic. Have no idea whose truck that is. I just don't like including any personal info. when posting online.

There are a lot of options in this regard Lane. You can control what is reported in the material list by adjusting the Components of any given object, by changing what Categories are being reported (either before or after ML is generated), by changing which Layers are being used, and by changing which Floor(s) are being used among other things. You can use various Material List generation methods such as the Materials List Polyline to further limit what is being reported. You can use Schedules instead. Again, these have lots of control over what exactly is being reported and how it is being reported. You can copy and paste from both schedules and materials lists to an spreadsheet for further manipulation. Too many details to get into in a quick post, but if you'd like to set up a on-on-one session to walk through it all, just shoot me over an email to alaskansons@gmail.com and we can discuss further..

A few quick notes: Your plan view is printing at zero line weights on my end just fine. Not sure what you're doing differently. Using Live Views has no benefit in my personal opinion for vector view elevations and sections. I'm a little curious why you think its better. Maybe I'm missing something. Live views essentially just result in images though. (i.e. you see exactly what your camera view is seeing) and then printed results are pixelated like with any other image. Plot lines on the other hand result in very crisp and fully controllable lines. Not sure what happened with your CAD Detail but its sounds to me like you had some settings wrong. If I produce a CAD Detail From View using one of your 2 elevation cameras I get a print with super thin zero line weights. How are you printing? To paper or to PDF? And if to PDF first, what PDF printer are you using?

Thanks for the input BT. I can't say your method sounds any better though.

Here's a quick recent example... Plot plan (with live Plan Footprint)... Start of a landscaping plan with driveway... Reposition the Plan Footprint on the lot... Not too cool. Whether or not various parts and pieces are drawn twice (can vary from one instance to the next) things have to get synced up somehow. I manage, but I feel like there might be a more effective method of dealing with this that I'm not thinking of.

The Plan Footprint CAD Detail is really quite a handy feature in Chief. It can help make drawing up site plans quite efficient. Having said that, it also has a couple problems. Most notably, and the subject of my query this evening... We can draw lot lines, setbacks, roads, power lines, etc., we can position it all according to any North direction that we wish, and we can position/rotate the house on the lot totally unencumbered. Here's the problem though. Some of the things we naturally want to put into that CAD Detail such as roads, sidewalks, and driveways also need to exist in the plan view sometimes for 3D views and possibly landscaping plans among other things. My question is how do you guys manage the 2 different views and those potentially duplicated objects? Those things are truly a PITA to sync up if the house gets moved on the lot. What i do now requires creating one or more CAD Details from view, turning layers on and off, cutting and pasting one or more temporary lines between views, drawing angular dimensions, placing temporary points, group selecting and rotating various objects using Current Point, and then group selecting and moving objects using Pt. to Pt. move. We can obviously just draw it all in plan to avoid those particular issues and I'm fully aware of that and capable of doing so, so please try to avoid responding if that is all you have to offer. I'm just trying to find out if anyone who actually uses Plan Footprint CAD Details has developed a more effective method of syncing their plan and CAD Detail in such a way that moving/rotating the house on the lot is only a minor inconvenience. Right now I consider it to be a moderate to major inconvenience. It's not always a problem, but when it is, it really is.

Ya, I totally get it. I don't mind paying for quality in the slightest. The expenses associated with hiring a qualified and competent architect or engineer are totally expected. I would just prefer to find somebody local. If they use Chief that's definitely a bonus. With regard to price though, I'm not looking for the cheapest but I also don't want to someone that's overpriced either. I just want someone that comes well referred and that will treat me fairly.

By the way, we may not necessarily even need an architect. It may just be that we could use an engineer willing to do a little hand holding. I don't feel like this is something I couldn't properly design and draw up from a practical standpoint, I'm just not very familiar with the various commercial code requirements that might come into play, and the fact that we're building over an easement/utilidor is uncharted territory for us.

In my experience, Rich Text inserts at the top center, and regular Text depends on the Alignment setting...Left (top left), right (top right), center (top center), justified (varies). No way to change it that I know of. I just type what I want and then move it. Honestly not sure how much time should be invested right now in changing the behaviour either. Sometimes I want my text centered underneath something, sometimes I want it centered above something, sometimes I want it centered ON something, sometimes I want to use one of the corners of the entire text box for placement, and sometimes I want to use just the first line of text for the alignment. That's a toughy...just move the thing or utilize a myriad of settings and defaults.

A lot of Sketchup's add-ons look pretty cool (and some of them actually are pretty cool) and a lot of them are free, but but BUT... Plan on spending a lot time and money anyway. Many add-ons aren't free, many features and uses require purchasing the Pro version, and you have to find, download, install, study, and learn the quirks of each and every add-on...in addition to learning the ins and outs of Sketchup as well. You're essentially buying your software one tool at a time from a super broad range of different companies. And it's super easy to spend half the day playing with an add-on that you may ultimately use once or decide to never use at all. Better to do that or spend the extra 15 minutes to just model in Chief? Anyway, here's how I look at it...spend time and money trying to learn and stay up to date with 2 programs and be kinda mediocre with both of them, or try to truly master the one and just piddle around with the others when you find time. P.S. I'm not necessarily recommending against using Sketchup or saying that it isn't a valuable tool. I use it myself from time to time and there are certainly things it excels at. I just feel that when you really get down to the nitty gritty of it, Sketchup is nowhere near as simple, free, or even as cheap as it seems on the surface.

The trifecta!!! Hmmmm...not much of a salesman there Perry Seriously though, I'll keep her in mind if I can't find someone else. Thanks : )

I'm looking for an architect licensed and willing to do work for a potential upcoming project in Anchorage, AK. This particular project is a pretty basic addition. We're adding a garage between the 2 structures in this picture... There was a very rickety garage there already but it was questionable at best. That gap between the 2 buildings is a utility easement and recently the Municipality had to make some utility upgrades so the old garage had to be torn down. There's now a load bearing utilidor underground so we should be good to go for building a new structure. The commercial requirements and considerations are just a little outside my wheelhouse so I'm thinking I'm going to need to hire a suitable professional to help us out with this one. Anyway, it would be sweet if there was an architect here in Alaska using Chief that could help us with it. Let me know if you're out there. Thanks : )

I can't answer for Greg, but I'd say a pretty dern close to accurate chair could be modeled in Chief in about an hour or so, and a more generic version like what Greg posted could be done in half that time in Chief. It just comes down to knowing the tools and formulating a good plan of attack. Just bear in mind that the more detailed and accurate a symbol becomes, the more surfaces it has, and the slower your model becomes. Good to use rectangular profiles instead of round whenever possible, and flat surfaces instead of curved where you can get away with it.

Probably hundreds of thousands...or millions even. There are something like 17 million faces being generated by just those grass symbols, and they actually look kinds crappy to me. Sure the grass itself looks realistic, but added together and tiled like they are kinda defeats the purpose IMO. If a person wants realistic grass and can't get what they want using bump/normal maps then they should be using a different software for their rendering.

He was referring to the concrete steps at the bottom. They appear too shallow to be landings, therefore they're technically still considered part of the same run of stairs. That means you have a massive variance from one tread depth to the next right there.