TheKitchenAbode

Yes, the CA Team did a great job on this upgrade. No issues bringing plans forward, have not encountered any crashes or error warnings. Some very useful improvements, stacked molding control and visualization in DBX and symbol stretch zone visualization in DBX are huge time savers for me. Definitely a positive step forward.

You can just copy over the entire folder that contains the catalogs. However, if you have some of your textures in other folders and on other drives outside of the official CA directories then issues could arise if you move/copy those to a different directory, folder or driver. Older plans brought forward may come up with a missing texture warning as their reference for the texture will be invalid.

Yes, PBR deals with light intensities differently. It can be done but you will need to adjust the DBX camera exposure and brightness levels to get things to work. The setting for standard view and the default light intensity lumen settings are more aligned to Ray Tracing.

This new rope light is no different than any other light, it's just a bunch of point lights spaced say 6" apart. Keep in mind that the lumen setting is not for the fixture but for each individual light in the rope. If the rope is 10 feet then there are 20 lights spaced 6" apart at say 1200 lumens each, that's a total of 24,000 lumens being pumped into the room. A typical purchased rope or tape light would only put out say 100 lumens per foot at best so on 10 feet the total is 1,000 lumens. You need to turn down the lumens. Any light, point or spot, will blow your scene apart if you give it enough lumens.

Thanks for your sense of humor. By the way, you are really putting in a lot of time and effort towards this. Hope you have some kind of deal with CA for some official recognition or compensation. Would be great if CA put up a new Bonus catalog, "Rene Models & Textures" and consolidated all of this.

Rene - Your efforts in this endeavor are greatly appreciated. Excellent textures, additional models and very informative instructional support vids. Just a thought as I was watching your latest vid(s). As they cover an extensive array of techniques within each just wondering if the vids should be shorter single subject focused. Say something like PBR & Glass, PBR & Spot Lights, PBR & Point Lights, PBR & Reflections, etc. If a user is struggling with a particular item then they could just jump directly to the applicable instructional vid. Also, as additional techniques evolve it would be much easier to update a shorter specific vid to reflect this. Many Thanks, Graham

The other consideration when using the 3D molding polyline is that CA can only do miter type joints(one angle), it can't do two angles like a compound miter saw. If you are transitioning around the corner of a wall into say a gabled wall you need one or more transitional pieces before angling up into the gable.

Essentially the new rope light is nothing more than a string of individual lights and as such controlling those lights is no different than controlling any other light. It's more about the convenience of having the ability to just define the number of lights and their spacing along a path. One thing to keep in mind is that when PBR'ing the more lights the longer it takes. You can see that with the rope light you could easily be adding 100's of lights just going around one room.

I run a PC and it does seem more snappier/slick.

Though the answers may be the same I believe that there are those that learn better in a more interactive environment while some of us just like to hunker down with the reference manual and screen in front and work through these things in isolation. The forum provides for greater interaction and can create an atmosphere that can help some maintain a higher level of interest.

Every purchaser of CA has the same right to access and use the forum. I'm not aware of any means test one needs to pass before being able to pose a question or attempt to answer one. Yes, topics can get bumped down, but you have the option to follow specific users and topics so you are notified when something that's of interest to you comes up.

Well said. Everyone's learning style is different. Some are great readers with a high level of retention and others are hands-on, they need to physically do it. Rocky has always been polite and grateful for the help he receives. He never makes any derogatory statements or personal insults. Keep posting Rocky, there are many of us who like to help without passing judgment about the one we are helping.

That's the problem, I believe that most of the light intensities have been set to accommodate Ray Tracing. PBR seems to handle the light intensities differently. I adjust my lights for PBR and ignore the standard camera view look.

You will need to turn up the Lumens. Standard camera view does not do well with lights at very low lumen settings.

I really like that. Great Job. I'm amazed at fast you are creating and posting those. One might think you were waiting for the countdown clock to hit 00:00:00.

There has and always will be differences in permit requirements and oversite due to regional economic and demographic variances. High density urban areas require far more oversite than low density rural areas. A significant concern in the code is not just related to the homeowners safety but also the safety of others. In high density urban areas should your tar paper shack home catch on fire it could also burn down your neighbors home. We all know from history that many cities have had disastrous fires that spread for block after block. There is also the economic issues where areas of low prosperity will relax requirements in order to attract development. This can also be applicable in low income rural areas where the additional cost is considered an unnecessary financial burden.

In an elevation view you can snap vertical cad lines to the cabinet bank abutments. They snap at the very top of the cabinet, for base units with a counter top this snap point is the very top of the counter top. Would look like this.

Not likely, CA only auto archives(saves) once a new plan file has first been manually saved.

I suspect that the reason the eye-dropper is not working is that in your plan materials list you likely have more than 1 material named "Mirror". Open up the mirror object DBX, select Materials Tab, click on the material for the mirror part of the object, choose Select and then Plan. Two things can happen, it will either highlight the actual material or just stay at the top of the list. If it stays at the top of the list then there is most likely more than 1 material with the same name, CA does not know which one to select. Scroll down to find the material(s) named "Mirror", now you have to find the right one and at the same time change the name of the others so they are unique, Mirror 1, Mirror 2, etc. This tends to happen when you do the following, you select the material "Mirror" from the library, you then change/modify one of the properties, it's still called "Mirror". You then select "Mirror" from the library again and apply it to another object, it will be saved in the plan materials with the same name "Mirror". Now you have two materials in the plan material list named "Mirror" but with different properties. From what I can deduce is that when you use the eye-dropper CA only looks at the Name so when you select one or the other mirror materials and try to apply it to the other CA say's it already has the material "mirror" assigned and therefore it does nothing.

You need to look at it from a business perspective. The software does not deteriorate so the initial purchase of say $2,700 will last the lifetime of your business. To keep the software up to date the annual cost is about $500. Now if your business will be in operation for say 20 years then form an accounting perspective the cost per month is approximately $60. I spend more than that on my monthly cell phone charges.

You are more than welcome. Just an additional note, there are times when I do this under a flat rate program, it depends upon my sense as to the clients needs and how many changes I believe they will want. A lot depends on how extensive a model they need and the degree of accuracy. Working on two right now where they want the entire home modeled in exacting detail so they can explore future remodeling ideas. In this case the project was broken down into several flat rate fee programs, this way they could control how far they wished to go as it was impossible to predict in advance the number of iterations needed before they settle down on a particular design. I do very little work for firms, always client direct. The few times that I have been approached by a firm costs have been a real stumbling block, I find that many do not fully understand what is involved in the creation of a 3D model and they work/skill to generate decent renders. I think they watch too many demo vids and think it's a 5 minute job.

The way I deal with this type of situation is to have an initial setup fee and then a per render fee. The initial setup fee covers the time to build the model, say for a kitchen this might take 1-2 hours. Then the render fee kicks in, the thing to consider though are potential client requested changes, usually after they see the render they want to change things, another type of tile, different paint color or cabinet finish/style. You may need to have an hourly rate to handle this type of request.

Hopefully Mark will chime in on this as he is highly experienced with both CA and 2020. If there is a way I'm certain he will know about it.