TheKitchenAbode

This lack of GPU Raytracing on Macs has been known and discussed for at least 6 months. Also, as Macs use AMD GPU's the only AMD card designed to support Raytracing is their most current RX6000 series which was only introduced about 6 months ago.

Hi Julia, Welcome to our group. Always a pleasure to have other's with similar interest and concerns. Yes, the catalogs are certainly limited if you are looking for more modern contemporary designed models. CA has been making some improvements in their lighting catalogs but not much when it comes to furnishings. For free models you should look at 3D Warehouse. otherwise you may need to look at paid(tariff) sites if you need models of the highest quality. Another option is to modify existing models by deleting surfaces, adding components that you have created or taking components from other models and combining them to make a new model/symbol. Can be a bit fidgety but with a bit of practice it will become easier. For general questions you may wish to consider posting it separately in the forum, this will likely draw in more commentary from other forum members who are not within this user groups local. Cheers, Graham

My apologies but I'm having some difficulty in understanding what you are saying here. The two posted pics demonstrate that colours are depicted fairly accurately between the STD camera and the PBR camera. The caveat here is that lighting and material properties need to be properly set, which often involves more than just dropping in a few default lights. Personally, if your ultimate goal is to produce a decent PBR then all of your adjustments need to be done in the PBR camera view, once it looks the way you wish then it's most likely that if you change the camera type to STD view then things will look proper. STD view is too basic and making your changes in STD view will likely result in poor or unexpected PBR results.

Here is a STD view and PBR view on a project I ran the other day. As you can see the colours are fairly close between the two views. However you will see for example that the white on the ceiling and the white on the cabinetry is slightly different, this is as would be expected as when PBR'ing the light processing is more complex and things like colour casting will be taken into account. STD View PBR View

I've done a lot of PBR's and have not experienced the issue you describe. Without having your plan to see your settings it's difficult to determine what is going on. If you could post it I or someone else can check it out, I'm certain it can be resolved.

Getting colours and textures to match between two different rendering techniques will be a challenge, the standard view uses a simplified lighting technique compared to PBR. A materials colour is the result of the material colour property settings and the properties of the light striking it and reflecting back to the observer. I think it would be best to decide on one or the other rendering techniques and adjust the material colour properties and light settings to achieve the desired look.

The glowing lights when the sun is off is not because they are on, it's due to the light bulb material having an emissive setting which makes a material glow as if it is a light source. To get your lights to show properly when the sun is turned on will likely require you to increase the lights intensity, which will vary depending on how intense the sun is. Make sure that the lights are actually on in the camera view and then go into the light DBX and increase the lights intensity, if the sun intensity is very high then you may need to increase the light intensity quite a bit.

I also question the stated RayTrace performance gain. If I access the theoretical gains based on comparing the old CPU and the new one I would anticipate that a 54 minute Raytrace would now run in about 18 minutes, not the stated 2.46 minutes. Seems to me that there might have been some differences in the Raytrace settings. The new system is powerful and a solid upgrade but not sure it's that fast.

Just to help clarify this Raytracing concern. If you are going to upgrade to X13, Chief is adding an additional Raytracing feature called Real-time Raytracing. The original CPU based Raytracer will still be available and does not require any additional hardware. The new real-time Raytracer will however require a graphics card that supports this function, currently the Nvidia RTX 3000 series cards support this. If you don't mind waiting then you don't need to purchase one of these more expensive graphics cards. If you are purchasing a desktop then you can always upgrade the graphics card later on if you decide to use the real-time Raytracer

Are you certain that it's an error message? There is a message that can pop up when it takes longer than a certain period of time for CA to rebuild a model. This one is just for information purposes so you know why things might be taking longer than expected.

I think you are failing to see beyond the surface, it's a beginner overview so yes the structure is going to be simple. There's a reason programs like Revit are used to design the most complex projects constructed to date. Personally if I was just starting out and had a serious interest in architecture I would focus my time and effort on learning a truly professional level program. This is not to put Chief down but Chief is focused on and serves a very specific type of user, it's good but there are limits to what it is designed to do.

You may wish to watch this vid on Revit. Worth watching the whole vid, even this basic overview should give a good sense as to the power of this level of software, especially if you are interested in organic architecture. Revit Modern House - Autodesk Revit Architecture 2019 Demonstration - YouTube

It might be worthwhile touching base with @Renerabbitt. This is what he does and I'm certain he would be pleased to extend you some guidance on this.

To start with I would just like to first say that your design work is definitely deserving of improved presentation, those renderings are just not doing justice to your work. Like many CA users you are now faced with the predicament of deciding the best course of action. Do you spend more time and effort trying to improve your CA output or do you spend time and effort plus potentially additional cost to adopt a third party rendering engine and if so, which one do you choose. First you will need to establish the degree of realism required. This requires a bit of thought, it's important to identify what your business model/client base requires which is different than just a personal desire. For myself I personally would like to generate the most spectacular photo realistic renderings however, from a business/client perspective this is not a requirement as clients only need renderings as an aid to help them visualize their project, my fees are justified on designing a functional space that is visually pleasing and within their available budget. As time is money I need to ensure the balance between designing and rendering is correct. As you are likely aware, clients expect fast turnaround and become frustrated if it takes too long for change requests to be processed. On a typical kitchen design I will have 4-6 camera views, all which will need to be updated every time we make a change; even if the change only takes 1 minute to do in the plan all the camera views need to be updated. If to you the above makes sense then we can deduce that just looking at gallery samples of differing renderers does not really fully answer the question. Also, when viewing those sample renderings you need to keep in mind that they are most likely created by highly skilled professionals and therefore are not necessarily representative of what a novice could produce. They also rarely indicate the creation time or what other programs were involved in the workflow process. Their tutorial videos can be helpful, but again these are most often highly choregraphed so it always looks easy and quick. On the other hand you have Chiefs sample render gallery, but this is in my opinion misleading as they tend to be very conservative, CA can produce much better renders than they show so you are not really seeing the full potential like you do in other renderers. For myself I always go into their forums and check out what their users are posting, often they will mention the creation time and workflow and you will often gain some sense as to their level of professionalism. Another important consideration relates to workflow. As you are aware, with Chief there is no direct integrated way to link your model directly to another renderer. You must always export your model first and then import it into the other renderer. On the surface this seems like no big deal just export, import and render: however, it's most likely going to be far more complex as those renderers will not recognize the CA lighting and many of the imbedded CA materials/textures will likely need to be replaced. Keep this in mind especially if you intend to provide high end renderings at the beginning of your design process as this will likely need to be done each and every time a change to the base CA model is made. As a note to this, there are some renderers that will maintain a live link to the exported CA model file, this means that your model in the renderer will reflect your CA changes while maintaining your prior changes/alterations made in the renderer. It can be a somewhat daunting decision, especially when you start accessing all of the pro's and con's, and especially for an experienced Chief user where you can quickly put together complex designs but are now struggling to present it as best as possible. I can't close without including a bit of a plug for Chief. As mentioned earlier, Chief does not properly demonstrate the full potential of it's rendering capabilities. As an example I downloaded the Chic Cottage sample plan, opened their exterior camera and ran a Ray Trace, default Outdoor High Quality. Ray Trace after 5 minutes, 10 passes. Above scene. Just adjusted the Image Properties available in the Ray Trace Window, time 15 seconds. Above scene. Saved image, opened in a photo editor, adjusted saturation, shadows & highlights, 2 minutes. I realize this is not at the level of a dedicated renderer, but keep in mind this was completed within 7 minutes and no material or lighting alterations were made, everything just default. Only made a few simple image property adjustments. Hope this helps.

It's unclear as to what type of assembly (wall or ceiling) you are referring to and what if any fire resistance rating is required. In general, a UL listed assembly must be constructed according to the description outlined in the UL Handbook. If the gypsumboard was tapped when it was tested then you must tape it which will be described as such. For listed assemblies, such as those tested by UL, it is their description that must be followed and should always be referenced regardless of the manufacturers description. Obviously an occupancy certificate is much more involved and the requirements will likely vary according to your local. The other consideration is if there is a mortgage involved and if so what % value of the home is being mortgaged. Mortgage holders will have their own requirements as an incomplete home is of less value than a completed home.

Thanks Chopsaw, missed that one.

What are the specs of your graphics card? When a change is made these changes will need to be reflected in all active views, each view will take some amount of time so there will become a point that the totality of updating these views could result in a noticeable slowing down. Also, certain changes, typically primary structural changes take longer to process than some other types of changes. This is also impacted by your auto-build settings, the more CA has to build the longer it takes.

I really don't think increasing your RAM to 64GB will make any difference, CA is not overly demanding on RAM and your 32GB is more than adequate. I think you should check to make sure you don't have some extremely high face count items in there. If for example you have many 3D plants in your plan things will slow down. What type of camera view are you using when making the change? The slowest view type is the PBR camera, standard view can slow down if you have lots of lights turned on, sun follows camera, reflections, etc, try turning these off as they are not really needed when working on your structure. The other thing to check is the camera type being used to display items in their Dialog DBX or when selecting library objects, this is dictated by the default settings for the floor camera. These views are just small camera views and are also affected by settings such as mentioned in the previous sentence. To check basic system performance you can open up the Windows Task Manger and click on the Performance Tab. This will show you things concerning CPU usage & speed, Drive usage, Memory usage and Graphics usage. See if something in there seems odd. Also, in Task Manager, click the Processes Tab, Click on CPU, this will show you all the processes according to %CPU usage, check to make sure there is not some other process/program running that is eating up your CPU. Typically if you are not doing anything the CPU usage should be only be 2 - 4 percent. If significantly higher look to see the program/process that's causing the increase, antivirus/security programs or auto-backup programs can impact on CPU usage. The other thing to check is to make certain your system is using it's dedicated graphics card all of the time. In the Task Manager, Processes Tab, scroll to the right and you will see a heading GPU Engine, do some activities on your system and watch this column, your dedicated graphics card will be identified as GPU 1, if there are times when you see GPU 0 showing up or it only shows GPU 0 then your system is not fully recognizing the discrete graphics card. This will result in slower performance as the integrated graphics with your I9-9900k is slower than the dedicated graphics, especially in 3D camera views.

Would it be possible to expand a bit on this? The reason I ask is I'm not really aware of any low spec Graphics Cards with 10GB of RAM and from testing reviews the only time RAM has an impact is if the scene being generated exceeds the cards on board RAM. This of course would be applicable to any card regardless of the GPU Spec.

The level of graphics card you need is highly dependent upon one consideration, do you need or want the ability to Real Time Ray Trace in the upcoming X13. If so then an RTX 3070 or even better an RTX 3080 is likely what you will need, if not then your choice is much broader. From my recollection this is the first time that a single feature dictate's a very specific hardware choice. If possible I would wait a while to see how this pans out, especially considering the supply situation where you are likely going to pay a premium if you want one right away.

It was also mentioned that the water heater and heat pump are electrical. The only thing that I can see in the new layout with the utility room accessed via the laundry room is whether or not there are any code related egress issues. Here in the UK there are very strict limitations on this to minimize being trapped in the event of a fire in another area of the home. In general a room without a means of direct egress can only egress to another room with direct egress or a protected hall with direct egress.

You are welcome. Just make certain you know the exact files to copy over. Likely the main ones will be stored under the Documents directory, there should be a folder named Chief Architect. This will contain your personal settings, user library files, custom textures, templates, etc.

Are you saying that you have just installed CA on a new computer? If so you will need to go back to your old computer and copy over all of your relevant files.

Would not surprise me. In Ontario Canada a permit would be required to remove that non -Loadbearing wall. All walls are now considered as part of the structure and any modification to the structure requires a permit. Though the wall is non-loadbearing it does contribute to the rigidity of the structure which is extremely important under high wind loads.

Though codes will be different in your region I have not found anything in the codes I have access to that would preclude the mechanical room from being off of a bedroom. However I do agree that it may not be ideal, mainly from an access perspective for servicing the equipment. Is there no way to have the access off of a hallway?