TheKitchenAbode

You're Welcome. Just a warning when using the 3D molding polyline, it's fairly straight forward when you are just extending it in two planes but gets very tricky when you off into the 3rd plane, if you are not in the right view when dragging it will seem to go off into nowhere land. You need to keep in mind that depending on it's angle and direction it is actually changing in two planes at the same time as you are dragging it, as such you must make sure that the view you are using can show this properly, often it is necessary to have several views open so you can see what's going on. It's a bit like manipulating roofing planes in plan view, as you extend the roof plane it is also increasing in height according to the slope but you can't see that in the plan view.

They will look the same, the difference is that you can drag the 3D molding polyline in the X,Y & Z planes. The regular molding polyline can only be manipulated in 2 planes.

You can also use a standard floor camera, open the camera DBX and set the Tilt to -90 and Camera Angle to -90. Zoom and pan as needed.

Hi Rocky - Here is an example using a door with the type of arch you desire. The door uses what is called a Broken Arch and the DBX allows you to set the height of the arch. You will also notice that with this the arch is nice and smooth. The 3D molding polyline is under "Build", "Trim". The 3D polyline like the 3D molding polyline are special in the fact that they can be manipulated in the X,Y and Z planes. The additional Z plane is what makes them more challenging to manipulate.

This may help, it's my way of visualizing how textures work. When you apply a texture it's not actually contained with the boundaries of the surface you applied it to. The texture is applied like a layer to the entire plan and the boundary of the surface you applied it to is like a window that allows you to see that specific portion of the texture layer. As Mick mentions the texture layer is based on the 0,0 origin, when you change the texture x,y offsets it shifts the texture on it's layer relative to the 0,0 origin, it is not shifting the texture according to the boundaries of the applied surface, it just looks as if it is. As such, if you use the same texture on another surface then it's window is just allowing you to see the same texture layer but at a different location within that texture layer. This is why if one wishes the texture to have a different position on two different surfaces then you must make a copy to create a separate texture layer and then apply this to the other surface and manipulate it.

Rocky - It seems to me that your overall approach, though valid, is preventing you from taking full advantage of the predefined tools in CA and is resulting in unnecessary complexity and plans that do not conform to practical construction techniques. I understand that your focus is primarily on the visual but this should not detract you from designing within the context of how CA was designed to work. For example, to create the arched front entrance you went through the process of building an arched section, converted it to a symbol and then manually positioned it. This however could have been accomplished by inserting a door into the wall and using the Arch function, now your arched opening can be full controlled, should changes need to be made you can simply open up the DBX and adjust it's sizing and arch. This would have taken maybe 15 seconds to accomplish versus the likely hours it took to do it the other way. Concerning the 3D molding polyline. Why not use it to start with versus a standard polyline and then having to go through the conversion process? You should take the time to explore the tools, yes some take a bit time to understand but once realized you will see the benefit many times over. Here is an example of what can be done with the 3D modeling polyline tool. Other than the base walls, floors and cars just about every other element was created using the 3D modeling polyline tool, this includes the kiosks, railings, trusses, sprinklers, ducting and column wraps. Try to understand how CA was designed to function and take advantage of that. It's why you paid $2,700.00, otherwise you could have saved all of this money and just used the free version of SketchUp.

Another thing that would help when doing this type of drawing is to go to defaults, select plan, and set the snap grid/snap units to the accuracy you desire, say 1/32". Now when you drag and move items they will snap according to this increment, will help to eliminate drawing/moving lines to some ridiculous fraction. You should then set your dimension defaults to display the same accuracy as the grid snap, If not you could be tricked up by rounding.

Your overall width of 9' 3/4" is not exact. You can display 1/32" if you double click on the dimension, in the DBX select primary format, under Accuracy change smallest dimension to 1/32".

You can use the start & end handles to drag the polyline or open up the polylines DBX and directly enter the exact length you desire. This DBX provides full control over all aspects of the polyline. Might not seem as intuitive as being able to just click the displayed dimension but it accomplishes the same action. Personally for the object you are attempting to create I would have started with a Polyline Solid versus individual lines. You can dimension polyline solids and then click on them to make certain dimensional changes.

If you are referring to the background assigned to a camera view then yes providing you save that camera in your plan. When you have a camera view open there is a save to camera icon on the main upper menu bar.

Try drawing your shape using a polyline solid and then open up the DBX and set the depth, it will extrude the shape to that depth.

Looks to me as if the bright white door casing might have emissive set in the material properties.

All of the above either singular or in combination. There could also be issues concerning wall specifications and how they are located, for instance there's an exterior wall in front of another exterior wall that is not returned back to the main wall. Though I'm far from a roofing expert I have always found that when results are not as expected it is usually due to the fact that it is related to an inconsistency in something I have set either knowingly or inadvertently. Resolving such issues requires one to take a systematic approach going through the plan and checking each wall and roof section to ensure the correct settings. In the plan in question there are many inconsistencies such as differing baseline heights, differing overhang distances from the baseline, there is also a mix of different exterior wall types, some as per default settings and others set differently such as balloon through ceiling and more. Also, when laying out exterior walls one should always keep in mind how such a layout can be roofed, incorporating all kinds of in's and out's may appear to look cool but it will lead to a roofing nightmare not only for CA but also in reality if the structure was ever intended to be built. As has been stated, there is a wealth of information in the reference manual, knowledge base and online tutorials that should first be researched. There are very few other software packages that provide as comprehensive support resources as CA. When exploring things it's best to do this with a very simple model, for example a simple square 4 wall room will allow you to explore roof types and planes, once you grasp that you can then add another element to this model and explore how one roof type interconnects with another. Keep in mind that if something goes amiss it is much easier to track the problem down when your model is not highly complex. Also, if the problem persists it will be much easier for someone else to assist should you post this in the forum, much better than posting a problematic plan with 20 or more roof planes and expecting someone to go through and check every conceivable setting.

looks to me that your assessment as to what is going on is good. Yes the model rebuild starts to rear it's ugly side when models become very complex and as you have observed this rebuild function is primarily CPU based. As such you need to get the fastest CPU you can afford. Strongly recommend a true desktop CPU as they will run at higher base frequencies and boost rates versus laptop CPU's. Unfortunately in the majority of laptops they just can't cram in a cooling system big enough to allow the CPU's to run at their highest rate for more than a few seconds, maybe 10 at best, they then throttle back to a lower frequency to reduce the heat output. One thing that can help is to turn off as many display layer sets as possible, the less complex the less time it will take to rebuild the model. For example, if you are working on roofs then turn of all unrelated display layers like landscaping, interior furnishing, architectural blocks, etc.

I will take a look. Yes, the camera angle and more importantly the direction that light is hitting the glass makes a difference. That was why on one of those wine glasses I turned it into a light fixtures and added a light source. That way if I moved the glass around it would still show half decent.

Always pleased to assist. Yes there are days when my eyes get very fatigued. Always amazes me that the answer is staring right at me and I don't see it. To demonstrate how bad it can get, not long ago I had to reactivate a software package, entered the product key more than 15 times and it would keep rejecting it. I then noticed that in all 15 attempts I had interpreted an "S" as a "3". Good thing no one was watching. I noticed the glass, was wondering if you used that texture technique. Looks good. You can also change the effect by altering the textures X & Y scale.

Hi Cheryl, it's the Traditional light fixture over the island closest to the camera. The spot light is aimed that way and it has a very narrow spread angle. Kind of like a flash light.

Mark - By any chance, would you have a cabinet solution for staircases? If so please share, I don't do many staircases but when I do I'm about ready to throw my computer out the window and go into full retirement.

When Ray Tracing the look of stainless steel is highly dependent upon how it is lit by your lighting. Point type lights work best. It would be more helpful if you posted an example of your output so it would be easier to identify what might be going on.

Thanks Mark, I thought there may be a way to control this, it just never bothered me enough to hunt it down.

Rocky, are you talking about a situation where say you have one wall and then you added another wall at the end of the first wall running in another direction, say perpendicular and the first wall will shorten 1/2 the thickness of the just added second wall. If so, as far as I know CA uses the wall centers when making connections so this effect is understandable. When I do an initial wall layout I never try to accurately set walls one at a time. I just rough in the walls, then manually dimension them and then make the final adjustments.

It's important to keep in mind that the graphics card is only part of the equation. The CPU is also involved in PBR'ing. What's important is to ensure that the CPU and GPU are appropriately matched. No point in having the fastest GPU on the market if the CPU can't keep up with it. That GPU will just be sitting idle while it waits for the CPU to send it the next instruction set.

Concerning PBR I doubt if it would be worth the expense. I'm running with a 1060 and it only takes about 3 seconds to run a fairly complex scene. Not worth spending $1,000 or more to gain maybe 1 second of PBR time. Also, it's my understanding that SLI may improve gamming performance but generating static images is a different process and SLI may not provide much improvement.

As Steve states, it really depends on how much detail and control one needs. For myself, I require full control over every element and the ability to fully dimension these, Like Mark I need to obtain very accurate quotations, nothing worse than having to go back to the client to tell them it's going to cost more because when they came in to do the actual site measures things varied or were not clearly indicated or shown in the original quote drawings.

My preference has been to do showers using individual poly-line solids, slabs, partitions and the likes. This provides full control over every element and everything can be dimensioned. The other aspect when doing it this way is you are designing it the way it would be done on-site and as such you can identify and evaluate any potential instillation issues.