AvoyeDesign

I've never had an owner bring me their own design.  They've given me sketches and ideas, but it takes a lot of work on my part for it to become a design, which makes it my design.  I've never sold rights back to a client, but I absolutely will not use the same design anywhere near their property.

1 hour ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

And to comment on your quote of my suggestion, repeat several times for the same cad block when you realize you missed something.  

Some things I've learned over the years:

Every time I take a design in a significant new direction, I create my own "archive" folder in the client's project folder and do a "save as" of the previous version.  Then I carry on with the new design idea using the active file.  If it doesn't pan out, I save it, close it, and move it to the archive folder and go back to the last iteration.  It is easier to keep track of this then to go into chief's autosaves.

For remodels and additions:  I begin by creating a full as-built model in chief.  I don't half ass this part either; I make sure it has everything that is of interest to the design and eventual drawings, including windows, doors and features that will appear on as-built elevations, even in areas that aren't going to change.  I save this file with the description "as-built."  I then do a save-as with this file and rename it with the descriotion "proposed."  Now I am free to fly away with all the changes.  It can take an hour or two to set all this up before I even start designing a remodel, not to mention the time on site, but it saves me headache in the long run.  I always run separate "as built" and "proposed" files for every remodel.  If needed, I will convert the "as built" plan to cad lines and import it into the "proposed" plan file to show demolished walls, etc.

Organization:

I have created a number of tools to help me work, and they all started as simple Excel spreadsheets that I've added to and have made more complex over the years.

I use a project worksheet template that I copy and save-as for each new project.  It has about 4 tabs of code and bylaw review information, a tab for notes, a tab for my timesheet, an analytics tab that tracks productivity, and the most powerful tab, the checklists.  This tab has ~150 lines of items to check over as I do various drawings in a set.  That sounds like a lot, but it is organized very efficiently for the work flow that I prefer, and follows in a logical order to prevent reduncancy and errors.  It ensures that my drawings are consistant from project to project, and helps me to attack a project small pieces at a time, instead of being overwhelmed by it.

I use another template spreadsheet for each project to manage assemblies.  Before I copy and save-as, I add new assemblies that I need, so that they are available for the next project.  After it is saved for a specific project, I remove those I don't need.

Another tool I have is a project scheduler.  It pulls data from all my active projects, right off their spreadsheets, and puts up a sort of dashboard of my workload.  When projects are complete, I remove them from this tool and add them to a metrics spreadsheet.  I track all my time for specific stages of a project, and sort projects by size.  This allows me to see how efficient I am, and gives me a powerful data set to estimate future projects.

After many years of using Chief, I find that I don't make significant mistakes or have to spend a lot of time fixing things.  When I do, it is usually a very marginal amount of time for each project.  So unless I find myself putting in an hour or more at one time fixing a mistake, I don't turn off the clock.  I am human, and I bill for my time, mistakes or not.  I spoke with a designer a few weeks back that was putting in twice the number of hours into the average project than me, and probably spent 35% or more on average fixing mistakes.  He would only bill for the time he determined he was not fixing his mistakes, and would end up making on an hourly basis only about 65% of what I make.  Something that took me a while to value, is to really pay attention to how much time you are wasting on errors, and find ways to fix them permanently.  Learn better methods, adjust your habits, create workarounds, add things to library that you find yourself creating from scratch every time.  Pay attention to where you waste time.

Another thing that is very important is to manage your energy.  The human brain has a limited time each day to be able to focus on work that is highly creative or requires a lot of problem solving.  Once you surpass that capacity, productivity will take a sharp nose dive.  This designer was working 8-12 hour days producing plans, was making much less than me, and was spending significant time fixing errors.  I work no more than 3-5 hours per day in front of Chief.  Then I allow for 1 client meeting, and about 30 minutes of business administration.  It is a very short work day indeed, but I find I get more done than if I strap myself in for a gruelling 8+ hour day, and I'm prone to far fewer errors.  Also important is to take regular breaks.  Get up from your chair (i use a standing desk) stretch, go for a short walk, and only work in 30-45 minute segments.

Well, that kinda went beyond the scope of Chief, but just figured I'd share some of what keeps me from going insane.

On 3/10/2018 at 11:09 AM, Joe_Carrick said:

MIchael,

 

I think you misunderstood what Marc is wanting.  He wants the Callout he places in the Elevation View to automatically reflect the Camera Callout in the Plan View.  That isn't possible with the current implementation of Cameras & Callouts.

 

It's something that's been asked for several times but currently can only be done manually - easy to make a mistake.

Not to mention a long and labourius process.  I spent 3 hours yesterday on a plan, adding callout references and checking, double checking and triple checking all this work.  I still found one error on the triple check.  Another designer showed me this in Revit Lite the other day, and it is all automatic.  I don't particularly care for using 3D glasses to naviage my designs if I need to spend hours on this type of work to ensure accuracy.

I'm not certain, but it may work the same as deck framing, and reference to 0,0 unless you use a framing reference marker though.  I've never paid too much attention to planking though.

When I create a drawing sheet of that size, it also appears in the paper size for the Print to PDF.  Is your layout sheet set to 24x30?  And which version of Chief are you using?  I'm not sure which one introduced Print to PDF, so I don't want to assume you are in X9.

1 hour ago, NRST8TRKR said:

Hey guys,

 

I downloaded the update yesterday and noticed the update notes were still for 19.3.7.

Did the update and have had no problems today.

 

 Have a great weekend all,Ken

 

1 hour ago, Richard_Morrison said:

When you go to "download program updates" from your Help menu, there will a link for the notes (I believe on the lower right, if I remember correctly.) If you don't see them at that point, I have no idea how to get back to them after you install the update.

Ken is correct, there are no notes for this update available, at least at the time I downloaded.  Per Derek's post:

"The update version is 19.3.1.8 and includes a simple wording change in the "Help" menu."

The word "includes" leads me to believe that wasn't the only thing in the update.  Would be nice if that was more clear.

Saw this update today.  Was hoping someone from Chief could see this post and advise when the update notes will be released for this update.  Curious to know what has changed.

Thanks.

On 9/7/2017 at 9:31 AM, Renerabbitt said:

I'll do the i7 a bit later, and post...these Xeons are a steal on ebay, they pull them out of servers and sell them for 1/5th the market price. Next step was going to be buying another and putting it on a multi mobo like you said. I run it in a mini itx, its an ASRock X99E-ITX/ac LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard.

Curious as to why my 1070 8gb was so much slower than your 1060 6gb...I am pushing 4k resolutions, maybe that has something to do with it?

Yeah, I'm at 1080p max with my 32" monitor.  I am planning to get a 44" or larger TV running at 4K, that will benchmark a lot different I'm sure.

3 hours ago, JonBDesigns said:

I have attached my shopping cart from Microcenter--they no longer have my motherboard in stock so I had to substitute it with something else. 

 

Peace, 

 

Jon

Yikes!  I gotta start saving pennies.

57 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

Here are mine, about what I thought:

 

6 hours ago, JonBDesigns said:

I personally like to use PassMark--it is very extensive and very fun to watch. Attached are my results.

Here is mine.  I don't think this puts the CPU through a rendering task like cinebench does, but I don't think cinebench puts the cpu through a more comprehensive set of tasks like this does.  So while your CPU's may be rated 5 times as well as mine on a cinebnech rendering, they are only about 1.5 to 2.5 times on this test.

On 9/4/2017 at 1:31 PM, Renerabbitt said:

If you would like to just pick out a sample plan from chief architects site and run the same settings I would sample it for you, I have a single xeon 14 core 

How does that Xeon 14 core stack up against your i7?  I assume you get 14 cores, 28 threads?  Xeon is more of a server/workstation CPU if I'm not mistaken?  What is your MOBO?  I've been curious for a while about building a system around one of those xeon multi core beasts, perhaps even on a dual cpu motherboard.  

6 hours ago, JonBDesigns said:

Here are my Cinebench scores. I am unsure if the leader board on the left of the screen is correct, but if it is I am leading in both categories. I ran two CPU tests and one was considerably higher after I shut down almost every running service. 

 

Peace, 

 

Jon

Wow, that threadripper is ripped!  My cinebench CPU score for an i5 is 560.  Open GL is 118 on a GTX 1060 6ghz.  I wonder if you could get a little more out of that 1080?

I think that the scores on the left are from other systems within your range.  Although I would guess that you are pretty high up there.  Out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking what did you pay for your system?

A faster way to compare systems though would be with cinebench.

To do a proper benchmark, I think you should save the camera you used with all it's settings, and upload the plan here.  We should all be using the same camera with the exact same settings, same raytrace setup, etc.  A slightly different angle of the camera can change what chief has to render, and different raytrace settings, well, I think that goes without saying.

4 hours ago, Kelly_K said:

Could also be a problem with your truss profile having extra nodes at the heel, but most likely it is the actual depth of the heel.  I come across this problem all the time.  It could be a bug as Michael suggests.  Notice at the close up - the soffits are misaligned (eve to ceiling).

 

I also have had problems with square cut eves.

 

 

 

Good Point.  Chief usually likes to terminate the truss tail with a single node.  I think what the poster has going on is some weird geometry where the top chord is generated through based on the nodes.

Selecting "energy heel" might fix this, but sometimes it doesn't  But if you want the bottom cord to extend past the wall this won't help.

I usually draw a retaining wall on the foundation level and a railing above it on the first floor level.  Set the railing to follow terrain.  But I usually do this around exterior stairwells where there are rooms defined on both floors, with the upper room being open below.  So not sure how this would work with a retaining wall that does not define a room.

On 8/9/2017 at 2:41 PM, solver said:

An easy way is to make the lower wall a pony wall -- siding-6 over siding-6.

 

Adjust so the split is behind the band.

 

I would say that this is probably the best practice, and adjusting your attic walls should be avoided.

16 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

I'm back at the computer now and I can see that although roads and driveways do have a number of capabilities that set them apart from each other, there appears to be very little difference between a road and a driveway in this particular regard.  I thought only roads cut and filled the terrain to remain flat along their width, but my my memory/assumption was incorrect...both roads and driveways behave in the exact same way...

 

• Straight roads and driveways remain flat along their width
• Spline roads and driveways remain flat along their width
• Polyline roads and driveways conform to the terrain

 

Just use one of the first 2 and you should be good to go.  As Glenn pointed out, a spline driveway (or road) would work, but a straight driveway would have actually worked just fine for this particular instance as well.  Just draw multiple sections, fillet corners, convert lines to arcs etc.  Just edit like any CAD object to create the desired path shape.  This was drawn using the straight driveway tool...

 

 

 

 

This is good to know.  I could have saved much time for other projects by avoiding polyline roads.  Sometimes though, a driveway does not have parallel or concentric edges.  That is where things get fun.

Can you post the plan?  Better to have someone look at it.

11 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

Sounds like tech support needs a call : 

 

Well, I went back and had a second look, and it was not what I thought it was.  I went into the wrong folder and used an old set of labels that I had not fixed form the X4 to X9 upgrade.  My bad.

I store a lot of plan labels in my user library so I can drop them into the plan instead of having to create them new each time.  A typical label would read "Floor Plan" on the top line and "Scale: 1/4"=1' on the bottom line.  Standard stuff.

I've never found a way to add a stand alone text object to the library, so the technique I use is to group select the single object and make it a cad block.  A problem I encountered when upgrading from X4 to X9 was that apparently some formatting changed and the text became too big for the width of the block it was grouped into, causing many of my labels to show text wrap.  I would then have to place them, select and unblock them, and even at times open the DBX and set the width to automatic.  A real pain.  Instead, I went through all of them one by one and re-blocked them so they didn't show a text wrap.  Problem solved.

....until the update the other day.  A bunch of them are screwed up again.  SMH.  Anybody else see this behavior?

19 hours ago, NotAPro said:

@Solver,

which are the most common methods of insulation CMU perimeter walls

I would suggest building a relationship with builders in your area, who can give you the best advice on how they price their wall assemblies.  Also look into the building codes and learn a lot about local practices.  For any given application in my region, there can be many various solutions to meet code requirements for structure, sound control, fire separation, insulation, moisture/vapor/air barriers and seismic activity.  And in my province there are varying requirements for various regions, so this changes when I do work outside my region.  All of this needs to be taken into account to determine the most cost effective assembly for the application.  I don't even try to determine that myself, I rely on builder feedback.  Until you can understand the requirements of the building codes as they apply to your region, you will be shooting in the dark.

4 hours ago, BenPalmer said:

 

Rod, I respectfully disagree.  Not sure what size homes you do, or the level of detail.  But I can bring an old Chief 9, 10 or other version forward and be working full tilt on it in about 20 mintues, after cleaning things up, importing annotation sets, wall definitions, changing different defaults, settings, etc..  The only side effect is the plan can be a little sluggish when working in 3D, but I don't blame that on Chief.  I expect some hiccups going back that far, but it works pretty good.  Good enough that I keep doing it.  If I were to start over on a plan, it would take a good day to recreate floor plan and elevations (more or less depending on plan).  Not too mention all the finishing details, saving me several days into possibly a week or so.  Way faster to bring a plan forward in 20 minutes of clean up and some sluggishness then starting over.  I do this regularly, so I have a system down, and I have a huge library of plans to call from going back to 1998. (would love to record this transition process in a macro, which would make the transition even faster).  It's not an occasional thing.

 

This lost feature is a big handicap to my business.

Respectfully, I said it would be a nightmare for me.  Other users may have different results.

I started with X1, and I can tell you that bringing even an X1 file into X9 would be a nightmare for me.  So much has changed that it wouldn't even be worth the effort of using an existing plan file.  I would likely just open it as a reference, and redraw everything.  That way it is in my current template and using all my current defaults, wall styles, etc. etc. etc.