TheKitchenAbode

16 hours ago, ccarpenter18 said:

No problem. I wasn't assuming you were offering macro services.  Was just trying to get a sense of the rules of the road, at least as to what one could expect on these forums.  Thanks.

When posting a question one does not "expect", what you do is "Hope" a forum member will take interest in your dilemma and offer some advice/guidance that will assist you in resolving it. Don't expect to always receive a definitive answer, this will depend upon the complexity of your issue. What you should be hoping for is some guidance as to where you should focus your own efforts to resolve the problem. There are no rules other than to be polite and appreciative to those trying to assist you. Keep-in-mind that some users have developed over time extensive skills, knowledge and techniques that they may rightfully consider to be somewhat proprietary, it's not really fair to expect them to just divulge this in an open public forum. If you need access to this depth of knowledge then it is not unreasonable for them to desire a bit of compensation. I believe you will find that those members offering paid for support services likely provide exceptional value for what they charge. I'm just guessing here but if a macro costs you $100 or $200 and saves you half an hour of work each day then your return on investment is well worth it.

I have done this within a single plan but I don't attempt to have them overlaid on top of each other. I will just place say the 3 concepts side by side. Would only recommend this if the plan is not overly complicated, otherwise I have three separate plans and use the layout to consolidate these.

One other technique, say you are doing a kitchen, your could have 3 floors, each floor has a different version. Now when you move up and down a floor level your concept changes but remains in the same position. You could also use the floor reference display to show one floor level superimposed on the other.

2 hours ago, MarkMc said:

Working on support for RTX,The rendering team all just got RTX 2070s,

Somebody is tasked with just working on performance, completely rewriting legacy sections of code. They are taking a bunch of the worst plans they can find and going at them bit by bit. Supposedly that will be their job for some time to come, sounded like more than a year (forever?)

Multi-thread performance is being worked on- unclear how many matter but...it all makes me want try to get to the user meeting this year but new machine comes first so will $ee?

Long overdue but good to hear. Hopefully they will release improvements progressively and not make us wait 1 or 2 years.

The desktop will definitely perform better than the two suggested laptops. Most laptops under heavy load can't, due to excessive heat generation, maintain their CPU speed for sustained periods of time and will throttle down. A decent Desktop system has much better cooling so their CPUs can run maxed out for extended periods of time. Also desktop CPUs have higher clock speeds and more cores than laptop CPUs. Graphics cards for laptops are not the same as those in desktop systems even though they may have the same name, so the equivalent desktop version will always be faster.

The big question concerning Chief is how much of an improvement will one actually realize. As your employer is paying for this then you might as well get as powerful a system as possible with the allocated budget. Unless there is a need for the portability of a laptop then go for the suggested desktop.

The automatic lighting mode for some reason does not include exterior lights, it only considers interior lights. Using the Light Set will use both interior and exterior lights.

Here is a chart that demonstrates the potential benefit a SolidWorks user may experience when using a Quadro card in comparison with NVidia RTX gaming card.

The article is here, worth a read.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=quadro+p4000&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=quadro+p4000&sc=8-12&sk=&cvid=C13AA4EDB2D4459E9E40FBCA91CB0852

21 minutes ago, lbuttery said:

Graham:

 

sorry, but CA has repeatedly stated time and again that Chief is gaming based and not CAD based

 

their recommendation has never been about cost 

 

CA has stated time and again that there is no benefit to Chief from a Quadro card 

since it is CAD based

 

Lew

That is what I said, Chief can't take advantage of the finely tuned drivers that are provided in the Quatro cards. However, Quadro cards have all the same graphics hardware as NVidias gaming cards, what they may lack are some of the finely tuned drivers for certain games.

The OP stated that they also use SolidWorks which is designed to be used with a workstation graphics card such as Quadro. If they use a gaming card SolidWorks performance may be reduced. As this is a laptop the OP is not going to have two discrete graphics cards, a gaming card for Chief and a Quadro for SolidWorks. The Quadro P4000 that the OP is considering is a very competent graphics card and I have heard of no technical reason why Chief would not function fully on one of these cards.

22 minutes ago, carowe said:

My plan was to use either Go to My PC or Zoom - I've used before in the past but was on another desktop and it worked extremely well -- so my question is just whether there are specifications I should look for in a laptop and whether anyone has done this?  Just looking for some tips/things to look for in the laptop.  THx

I'm just wondering why you feel there is a need for that type of setup. Seems like a lot of extra complexity when you can just run Chief directly on the laptop. I think you are underestimating how powerful today's newer laptops are. For about $1,500.00 you could get a Dell XPS 15" , discrete graphics, 16 GB ram, 6 core(12 hyperthreaded) CPU. It's unlikely you would notice the difference between this and your current desktop, especially if you factor in upload/download bandwidth limitations using a remote set-up. Also, what happens if there is a power glitch back at the office and your main desktop shuts down, you can't remotely restart the desktop if this happens.

19 minutes ago, lbuttery said:

correct, from everything I have read here over the last decade is that Chief doesn't need a Quadro 

but can use the best video card with a decent amount of video ram

 

other CAD software may benefit from the Quadro 

but Chief is gaming based - not CAD based 

 

Lew

Chief is not really gaming based, it uses Open GL, very few games use this. The reason CA recommends gaming cards is the fact that they are less expensive than Quadro cards. Both gaming and Quadro cards support Open GL, gaming cards have specialized routines that gaming developers can use to improve gaming performance while Quadro cards have specialized routines that CAD developers can utilize to improve performance. The fact that CA does not rely on either of these specialized routines is often the cause of some confusion when using video card reviews to determine CA performance benefits. What's worse is that it's almost impossible to find video card reviews that focus on Open GL performance, which is really what is needed.

Discrete memory is certainly a consideration. Most camera views and plan views do not consume much video card memory, however if you are running PBR's memory consumption can be extremely high, have had some that will eat 5GB per scene. Users must also be aware that all of their other running programs will also be taking a piece of your video cards memory so the accumulative total must be considered. Fortunately, even if this accumulative total exceeds the video cards discrete memory the card will start swapping with your system memory to compensate. Most users will not notice this unless the system has to start swapping to the disk. What's most important is to ensure that the discrete video card memory is sufficiently sized to hold the largest anticipated scene/page, really big problem if you have a single 5GB PBR scene and only 4GB of discrete video card memory. This is one of the advantages of Quadro cards as they can be obtained with discrete memory far in excess of any gaming card should one have the need for such, you will just have to pay the big bucks to get this.

As per Mick's comment. There is no real benefit concerning Chief, however some of your other programs may benefit from the exclusive features Quadro offers. Not aware of any issues using Quadro with Chief, my first workstation had a Quadro card and everything worked fine.

The other thing to consider about Remote Access is that it is not really designed for the purpose of using your desktop from a remote location to run traditional software programs. Remote access was designed to permit IT professionals the ability to control/access remote employee laptops for security purposes and troubleshooting.

If you are just doing interior kitchens and bathrooms then I really don't see the necessity to have fully remote desktop access. Any half decent laptop should be capable of handling this workload level. Just put your files in the cloud using OneDrive or Dropbox so you can remotely access those and run Chief on your laptop.

8 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

They've had the option a while now but I decided to save the 20-22% extra CA charges for "monthly payments" ..... might as well put it on the CC at those rates.

 

M.

Thanks Mick, 20% is a lot, could understand them wishing to recover the credit card processing fee but that's a bit steep.

35 minutes ago, Designer100 said:

Chief can draft $52.00 month veres paying the $500.00 subscription in one lump sum. That is what I do.

That's something I would be interested in. Did you have to talk with CA directly to make that arrangement?

You may wish to read this article.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/What-is-the-Best-CPU-for-Rendering-2019-1643/

They have many other articles covering a wide range of rendering and photo editing application performance in respect to hardware configurations.

39 minutes ago, BobBoyer said:

I'm building a new PC for Chief rendering work. I have three workstations that perform pretty well for design, but high quality renderings are painfully slow and tie up the machine they are on. With new AMD processors now coming with up to 64 cores (holy cow!) I'm wondering if there is a practical limit to how many cores/threads Chief can utilize for rendering purposes. Also, is there a sweet spot for CPU/RAM/GPU specs that people agree gives great performance/dollar with X11/12?

 

Thanks for any discussion/tips you can offer. 

If you are using CA Raytrace then the more cores the better as it is 100% CPU based and scales up according to the number of CPU cores you have. If you are planning to use CA's PBR rendering camera then your graphics card is the most important item by far, CPU cores are not as important. There are other third party renders that use both, so they will use everything you can through at them.

In general with Raytrace if you double the cores you will reduce your time in half, double it again and now it will run in 1/4 the time. Another bonus with these newer processors is that they can run their cores at higher base frequency than older CPU's, so there's another performance bonus.

6 hours ago, parkwest said:

You need to factor in the full benefit package.



Sorry about that, what tricked me up was the "getting". Yes, the average cost to the employer of an employee is in the $60/hr range. This cost includes not only the employers benefit contributions but also other administrative costs and the employee's use/consumption of corporate facilities and resources. Definitely a valid guide one can use when evaluating their desired base income needs, operational cost and desired profit contribution.

16 minutes ago, parkwest said:

Seeing how the average factory worker is getting $63/hr, you should price your services to make a profit.

I think you will find that the average factory worker wage in the US is actually around $22/hr, and that's before deductions.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages-in-manufacturing

2 minutes ago, RobUSMC said:

Automatically inserting into a base cabinet

By any chance are you modifying the base cabinet. If the cabinets kick is removed then that dish washer will extend below the floor.

Are you inserting the dishwasher into a cabinet or placing it on the floor and then moving it into an opening? If it is just placed it on the floor then you need to open up the symbol and set the Z Position to "0".

6 minutes ago, lbuttery said:

currently CA's installment plan is for 12 months aimed to smooth out the cost

the total is more than a flat out purchase

 

Lew

Yes I realize that, I'm suggesting a true subscription based program option. I understand that there are those that for their own reasons prefer 100% ownership, that's fine, but there are many that really don't care about ownership rights, they just want usage rights. Subscriptions satisfy the latter, when you compare the cost of subscription versus ownership with annual upgrading then subscription is a very valid option, and it saves the user putting in any upfront funds. Just suggesting this as an option.

My comment was not intended to imply that current users who have purchased CA be forced to convert to a subscription. This would just be an alternative CA offering that potential purchasers may find more suitable. I checked out SoftPlan and they offer 3 types of purchase options, outright purchase one single payment, outright purchase 12 equal monthly payments and a $95/month subscription program. Nothing wrong with having more choices.

Personally I would like to see CA offer a monthly subscription program. Forget the annual SSA fee, just charge say $40 per month and be done with it. I think they loose out on potential ongoing revenue as every time their SSA is due for renewal many users evaluate whether or not the new release features are worth the $550 cost. On a monthly subscription fee this yearly evaluation would be eliminated. For new potential users this would eliminate the possible price shock of $3,000, it's just say $95/month. Many software companies have realized that this is the best way to go and now focus their efforts on promoting subscription based services.

I believe it comes down to two things,

1.) What specific requirements are imposed by the State.

The State will dictate what form of licensing is required and where it is required.

and

2.) How you represent yourself/business.

This will impact on what your business activities relate to and what you may be considered as.

For example, in Georgia it would appear that they do not require a Registered Architects Stamp for residential work.

However, they do have a section that prohibits non registered Architects from performing what is defined as "Practice of Architecture".

What I believe is of importance here is that the State wants it to be clear for persons seeking design services as to whether or not they are actually dealing with an Architect. It appears that by default, if you perform duties as defined under "Practice of Architecture" then you are acting as if you are an Architect. To avoid this, one who is not an Architect but provides services that fall under "Practice of Architecture" needs to make certain that it is clear to clients that they are not an actual Architect.

3 hours ago, DG1949 said:

The elephant in the living room may be "insurance". I can't imagine operating at any level in the construction industry without liability and/or error and omissions insurance, and it's my understanding that if you don't have a "stamp" (registered, licensed architect), then the insurance companies will not cover you for any aspect of construction design, even if the plans are stamped by an engineer. That may vary from state to state, but I would check with your insurance agent before doing anything. 

Obviously, if you're "drafting" for a licensed architect and it's under HIS/HER roof, then it's a different matter. 

Excellent point, any and all insurance policies will have a number of clauses that will exclude the insurance company from any activities you do that are not legal or you do not have the required level of competency to perform that type of work.

The act of doing design work does not in itself make you a designer, when I tell or imply to someone that I'm a designer there is an implied expectation that I have a reasonable level of knowledge, qualifications and competency in the area of design I'm offering. You need to keep in mind that most descriptors such as Draftsman, Designer, Contractor, Architect, Engineer have defined meanings so you need to make sure if you use one of these terms to describe yourself that you actually conform to the defined meaning.

Don't assume that just because you are working under an Architect that you are fully protected, especially when working as an outside contractor. Though initially it is the Architect that will be sued, the Architect or the Architects insurance company could in turn sue you if it can be evidenced that you misrepresented yourself to the Architect.