TheKitchenAbode

Are you trying to select off of the actual raytrace image? These are just jpgs, there are no materials. You have to do this from the camera view. Graham

Ignore my comment, did not read the post fully, haven't had enough coffee yet!!! ​Graham

Did not look at the plan but you have to have at least one active light to photon map. Graham

Thanks for posting. Will discuss the differences later but it is not the number of surfaces. The sample I posted was 1200 X 612 with photon mapping turned on. If you have it turned off the exterior lights will not show properly. If you run again just do 1 pass, the time per pass is exactly the same so 10 passes = time for 1 pass X 10. Graham

I don't believe there is a difference, which ever one gives you the most bang for the dollar. In fact a number of the I7's are actually Xeon chips that do not meet the Xeon stress tests, they just tweak a few settings and label them as an I7. They do this to minimize the rejection rate, not dissimilar to sorting and grading hardwood flooring. Graham

Just checked the sample gallery, looks like it has been removed. I just downloaded the Breckenridge one and will give it a try. Graham

Yes, especially in the way you configured your system. At the time you got 12 physical cores, 24 logical cores at a great price. Your system even against the latest I7's is still in the top performance range and will likely continue to serve you well for many years to come. The lag you have in some of your plans would likely be the same no matter how much money you through at your CPU's. Keep in mind that the very top performance range is a constantly moving target, they will always come out with something faster, usually in 6 months from ones purchase date. This is now happening to SSD drives, the new PCIe ones currently entering the market makes current SSD's seem like the HDD's they only recently replaced. Graham Graham

Here is my Riverstone exterior Raytrace - 10 passes, 57 seconds = 5.7 seconds per pass. Graham

The attention on the 6700K is mainly due to it's balanced performance. As you can see there are other I7's in the 4th and 5th generations that can outperform it but they are considerably more expensive. Also, some of those performance benefits are not sufficient to warrant those extra $$. Most users would not in the real world notice a 10% or 20% CPU performance difference. If I can output an acceptable Raytrace in say 2 minutes then how much benefit do I derive by only reducing this time down by 12 or 24 seconds. As mentioned the Xeons are designed to run flat-out 24/7 in server applications, that's their primary benefit. A regular I7 is not designed to do this and will overheat and eventually fail under this type of stress, not what you want in a data bank with 100's or 1,000's of servers. Graham

Agree - this seems to be a unique situation and it would likely be pointless to spend additional $$$ for this one-off situation. Just out of interest I downloaded the test software you referenced. Ran this and set the baseline configuration to compare all the available dual Xeon L5639's. I only ran the trial version so I can't post the actual results. However if I'm interpreting the results correctly my I7 6700K was right in there with the best of them other than the over-clockers . Seems like the main key is that the 6700K is about 2 times faster on a single thread operation which means that the Xeon needs at least double the threads to match it, add to this that the 6700K runs at a higher clock rate and things start to equal out. Having said this, it does not undermine the power of these Xeons. They are designed primarily for server applications were they can run flat-out 24/7. My chip under a sever application would likely burn-up in a few days. They also are more suitable for over clocking, I could not push my 6700K the equivalent % increase as you are able to do with your Xeon. Graham

Larry - I think your configuration strategy was good. Using dual Xeons of an older generation at a lower cost per unit can deliver better performance than a new generation single higher priced chip. Your test results demonstrate this. As your Raytracing and multi-tasking is fine it appears that the issue is related to either something within those plans, your graphics card or some odd combination. When you say you can't work on them in 3D, is this lag in both vector and standard view? Graham

This will depend upon which generation of chips you choose to compare. There are consumer chips that outperform Xeons in a one on one comparison. The big advantage of the Xeon chips is the ability to have a dual configuration. I am not sure Intel will ever incorporate this feature into their consumer grade series chips as it would potentially undermine the Xeon market. I am very curious as to your comments concerning your system being "brought to it's knees". Given your systems specs I can only assume that this is something that happens when you are multi-tasking while running a Raytrace in the background. If this is the case it is not related to the Xeons power, it is a function of the chips built-in process management algorithms that control interrupts and how requests are channeled through the processor under competing situations. Older generation chips are not as efficient at this as the newer generations, they have done a lot of work on this management side of things in the 6th gen chips. To overcome this issue, especially with high core count chips, you just need to back-off the core assignment in the preferences raytrace settings. just knock it down one core at a time to find the sweet spot. Yes your Raytrace will take a bit longer but with 24 logical cores the impact of losing two or three would not be significant. This is not a work around, it is one of the advantages of having high core count chips. This capability is also built into the Windows OS and you can go into this and assign core allocation to many if not all of your running programs. Graham

The offer still stands. I will run a new series of Raytraces using the Riverstone plan and post them to see if we can get some traction. this time around. Graham

Maybe I should have said that the texture toggle may be set to off in the 3D camera view. Graham

Just a guess, looks like the 3D camera view is set to vector style versus standard view. Graham

You might wish to try the doors in the Armstrong catalog. Some of these might be void of the outer edge profile. Graham

If you open up the camera DBX is the "show shadows" box checked. I think in X8 this has to be on for the shadow toggle to function. Graham

Just above the where it says "Cabinet Side" select the face you want to work on. Right now it is set to the front face. Graham

Just made up a quick door symbol to demonstrate this. Here's a pic & file. Just moldings applied to a door symbol. You can adjust the colour & texture on each element. Graham Glazed Door.calibz

Not aware of any models in the library that will accomodate this. You can build your own door profile using different sections to create this, then each element can be assigned a different material and colour. A shaker door with a glass panel is a simple example of this technique. I did one for a beaded door a quite a while back, will see if I can find it and post. Graham

Great expansion on this topic Greg. Here's a few more bits of info. The human eye has the ability to resolve detail at the equivalent of 530 DPI at about a 7" focal distance. 35mm film has a resolution compared with a digital camera of approximately 187 mega pixels. Large format film resolution would require a 2 giga pixel digital camera. Pantone colour system provides highly standardized spot colours for print media. For really top notch print media a post print process referred to as varnishing is done. Best print media is still done on a traditional press, Heidelberg type. Graham

As Glenn points out, you can have Chief functional on more than one device for a certain amount of time without having to purchase an additional license. When I originally investigated Chief as my primary work platform I did compare others in respect to their front end cost, annual maintenance and additional user licensing fees. I certainly found Chief to be more than competitive in all three categories. In fact in comparison to 2020 Chief beat them hands down. With the online activation/deactivation it only takes a click or two to switch from one computer to another and it can be done from any location. If there is no WIFI I just tether to my phone. Use a cloud service like OneDrive or DropBox and all your files are available anywhere on any device, no need for USB sticks or portable hard drives; these are for all intent obsolete. I fully understand that Chief has to place some limitation on the number of devices that the software can be run on concurrently. The current 7-10 day option is more than generous, don't know of any other licensed software that permits this without the purchase of an additional user license. Graham

The media/graphic design industry is very interesting and there are many skills that are relevant if a Chief user is involved in architectural or interior design; such as proportions, balance, visual weight, colour and many more. I was involved in this industry for many years and really enjoyed it. Depending upon how involved you intend to get you may need to expand on your software. Photoshop and Illustrator to name a few are commonly used for pic and graphics. Not sure about today but QuarkExpress was the must have publishing software during my involvement. There are special software packages used in website design & layout. If your focus is on the Web side then some understanding of HTML5 markup language can prove to be helpful. There's a real opportunity to be creative, have fun. Graham

Rob - that will resolve the issue but it overrides an important secruity warning feature in Windows. The purpose of this is to warn users when a program is attempting to access something in your system that the User Account permissions settings do not grant access to. For software you trust this is not an issue but should you mistakenly down load something you will not be warned/asked if it is ok to install/make system changes. Really best to hunt down the conflict between what Chief wants to do and why your User Account permissions is flagging this. Graham

Printers use many DPI levels according to the desired output print quality for a given physical print size. A pixel is a pixel, the print quality is determined by how closely(the density) you pack the pixels into each square inch of print surface. As mentioned, to get this correct you need to know the printers DPI requirement for the intended media quality. This plus the physical media print size determines the height and width of your pic in pixels that you need to Raytrace. Graham