TheKitchenAbode

What is the fixtures name? I will try it out. Graham

Open the DBX on the pendant light, it is probably set to a point light, change to spot light and your problem should be resolved. Graham

The settings under pattern effect the vector view display and the settings under texture effect the camera view normal display. Best to set both so it shows correctly in all views and renders. Graham

Just open the cabinet DBX and uncheck diagonal front. This will change the diagonal front corner cabinet into the style you are looking for. Graham

Agree with others, especially on the SSD. 128 is not much, you'll be lucky to have 1/2 of this available by the time you load Windows and all of your other programs. Graham

Hi Scott - Here are the two files I downloaded for the stainless steel. Can't remember if I used the one provided by Kirk or Mick. Graham S.Steel_Metal_Material_Kirk.calibz Stainless Steel Library_Mick.calibz

The files are in your "My Documents" directory under Chief Architect. Just copy to the same location on your new drive. Graham

Hi Mick, By changing the screen size you have demonstrated another factor that is highly impactful on Raytrace times. Just upping from 1781 x 805 to 1920 x 1080 increased the time to Raytrace 55%. This was mentioned by Doug earlier on. As you do I usually run the size according to my Window Size. The size in the plan file was suggested by Jon so we have kept this in order to have comparable Raytrace times. On this note, I found that the ppi had no impact on times for a given screen size. This setting determines the actual output image print size in inches, 1920/300ppi X 1080/300ppi. Given this the Raytrace engine is processing the same number of pixels regardless of the ppi setting. The built-in adjustments for contrast and the such are very basic but they do allow you to tweak the image a bit without outputting to another image editor. There are no fixed rules here, just adjust according to your personal preference. Some of those sliders are a bit over responsive so you need to be careful not to overdue it. Also need to keep in mind that if you are sending these renders to clients that their monitors may be way out of wack concerning color calibration. What looks great on your screen may be way overblown on theirs, especially if you are really upping the saturation which is often done to punch the image up. I personally prefer a more natural look but again this is just my preference. Getting that clarity, reducing that muddy look, is the most difficult thing to rectify. Definitely running more passes will help but at the expense of time. As the number of passes increase the visual impact lessens. Have had times when 50 or more passes are needed to really clean it up. On my system that's just to much waiting. Graham

Mick, The settings for contrast and the such are just what I used for this scene. Usually play with them a bit just to give the scene a bit more pop. If it needs more I will use Photoscape or PhotoShop. As far as I am aware the Raytrace settings are plan associated only. They are saved with the plan. Looks like you are getting some decent times. I am compiling these results in a spreadsheet and will post them shortly. Hoping more members will post. Graham

Here is the plan it saved during Backup Entire Plan. Graham Abode_Riverstone_Plan.zip

Had to strip down the file as it was to large to upload. Here is the texture file. Graham Abode_Riverstone_Textures.zip

Thanks for the reminder Mick. Here is the plan, textures should be in there now. Graham Riverstone_Abode.zip

Here are my results on the Riverstone Bathroom for my ThinkPad T420s. Intel I5 vPro 2540M CPU 2.6 GHz, 8 GB Ram, Integrated Graphics HD3000 10 Passes 4 Cores - 8 minutes 23 seconds 3 Cores - 9 minutes 16 seconds 2 Cores - 10 minutes 38 seconds 1 Core - 19 minutes 45 seconds Not much difference between 2, 3 or 4 active core/threading. Definite penalty with only 1 core/thread assignment. Graham

Today's processing bang for the dollar is well represented when you look at what $2,600 buys today versus 8 years ago. Especially when you consider the other system components Drives, Graphics Boards, Memory and so on. I believe Scott put his recent build together for about the same money. As this industry goes there will always be something faster tomorrow but with systems like yours or Scott's you'll likely have to wait 3-5 years before the gain will be worth the expenditure. Especially now as it appears that chip manufactures are putting most of their efforts into the laptop/netbook/mobile chip market. Graham

Hi Larry, Bought this back in 2006, Dell Precision T3400 workstation. Paid about $2,600 at the time. Not the fastest compared to what I could get today for the same money but have to admit it's been real solid, all original except for the graphics board which is now a GTX 650Ti. I'm definitely envious of you Xeoner's but if I maintain a reasonable perspective the Raytrace times from my old hoarse & buggy aren't too embarrassing. Especially if I avoid those point lights. Please keep posting those results, I know these will be very useful to others when the time comes to figure out what system to purchase and what one can expect for the money spent. Many Thanks, Graham

Agree with other posters that overclocking is a real mixed bag of results and you may end up frying your chip. Also, from my investigation into this it appears to be a very poor return on investment. The problem is that it is not as simple as just increasing the processors clock rate. The other components in your system also have to be able to handle this increased input/output capability of the processor. Is the memory fast enough, can your graphics board keep-up, I/O controllers, etc.. The cost can really add up by the time you spend money on fixing all of these things and in many cases it's all for a 10% or less performance improvement. Graham

Here are my core numbers for 10 passes. Intel 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz 4 Cores - 9 minutes 30 sec 3 Cores - 12 minutes 23 sec 2 Cores - 18 minutes 27 sec On my system if I reduce the available cores to half my Raytrace time doubles. Graham

Nice job Jon. By any chance, if I were to zoom in does each bottle have a different label. I'm thinking a nice Bordeaux !! for tonight's dinner would work well. Graham

Absolutely Larry - Those chips are designed to run flat out 24/7/365. That's what they do in those servers and that's what you paid for. Otherwise you might as well have saved some bucks and put in an I7 if your not going to let them run. Graham

Scott - I would first let it have all the cores and see how things go. If when running other applications you notice some lag then you can start reducing the cores one at time until you find that sweet spot. Don't worry about the 100% these processors are designed to run flat out all the time. When you assign all of the cores what you are really telling the processor is, if there is available power then use it. The internals will take care of the interrupt management when other programs require some of the processor resources. Most of the lag occurs when two many programs are sending two many interrupts and the processors has to spend too much time reorganizing the flow of instructions through the cores. However, as said before those Xeons are designed specifically to handle this type of situation. As my friends & I always said back in the 70's "put the pedal to the metal". Graham

Hi Scott - Those great numbers are very likely a very good indicator of the multi-tasking capability of your system. Not much degradation even though you have halved the core usage. This is one of the major features of the Xeon processor family, they are designed for use in servers. With that level of headroom you would be able to run some other heavy-duty applications with a Raytrace running in the background without any sense of lag at all. Graham

In addition to my above suggestions you could also use the Sides/Back finish in the Cabinet DBX to apply side panels to the cabinet. Use a slab and set the thickness to 1/16". It's like applying a skin panel. Make the box material the interior color and set the panel color to the exterior finish. For the top & bottom just float a thin shelf to the underside and top. Graham

Concerning all those missing textures from the plan I uploaded. Was an error on my part when downloading the original plan. For some reason the texture.zip file ended up in another download folder. I will resend the plan with all of the textures file included. Mick - Thank you for sharing those stainless steel textures. They work very well. Graham

If you can find a suitable model, as suggested by Jon, will most likely be your easiest route. Getting an object such as a shelf in Chief to be on an angle is a bit tricky to do. For this you could save a shelf as a symbol and then use the symbol DBX and adjust the angle with the x,y,z rotate options. In camera views you need to aim at the right face of the symbol to get the desired axis rotation handle. Once you have the shelf properly sloped you can then just float it into an open cabinet that the auto shelving has be set to Manual Zero shelves. Graham

Never looked at Ruby but from the example above it is not dissimilar from the functions within Excel, just slightly different syntax. All of those text string manipulations and if statements are essentially the same. In Excel the Ruby variables x,y, etc.are the cell coordinates such as A1, B1, etc. If you enter the text string "My Text String" into say cell A1 you have actually made the statement A1="My Text String". For the length you could in cell B1 enter =LEN(A1) which makes the statement B1=LEN(A1). The displayed result in B1 would be the value 14. =UPPER(A1) converts the text string into uppercase. =LOWER(A1) converts the text string into lowercase. It may be useful for those wishing to understand Ruby to take a close look at the Excel functions. Graham