AvoyeDesign

55 minutes ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

What browser is your client using? 3D Viewer models viewed in Safari (OOB Apple browser) do not show a Full Screen button, but Chrome does. 

 

In fact Safari is very buggy for 3D Viewer. I use Chrome to preview my models and it works fine.

Thanks for your responses, I will forward this information to the client.

Rod

My client sent me this email this morning:

Quote

Hello Rod,  received your three emails.   Im using a Macbook air laptop.   A little different moving around the rendering.  Im figuring it out but cannot make the image go full screen as your tutorial says to click bottom right.  There are no icons in the bottom right of my screen.

I'm a PC user, so I can't go and investigate this.  Can anyone help me out here?

Thanks!

On 3/23/2023 at 9:38 AM, Gawdzira said:

The only room names that matter: Kitchen, Ballroom, Conservatory, Billiard Room, Library, Study, Hall, Lounge and Dining Room

I swear it was Professor Plum in the Hall with the candlestick!

Personally though, I think "bowling alley" needs to be in the default rooms list.  Because reasons.

And because my dream home that I will never build will have a bowling alley.  Don't judge!

I got the release email and I'm not on the public beta.  I was wanting to download the trial version and kick the tires, but it sent me X14.  Weird.

You can edit a truss profile in a cross section view.  Draw the truss, create a cross section, and then pull the bottom cord of the truss down to the top of the jack stud.

1 hour ago, Kiwideziner said:

Rod

I just purchased Revit lite bundled with Acad lite last week.

It seems like this is an actual comparable programme with CA, except CA has more automated tools eg framing. However Revit seems to have much more control of every item. There are heaps of you tube training videos available, I have watched about 20 hours so far.

Also plenty of country specific fixtures etc ( families) available for free.

My plan was to get Revit LT to evaluate and learn, while still working in CA for the time being, until my SSA expires in July. This was done before the announcement by CA as like you our exchange rate is similar( really bad). Then if I find lt insufficient I can go to full Revit or stick with CA. This also gets me trained on the industry std for this country.

 

Curious why Acad lite?  Is it for something else or is Revit not enough?

17 hours ago, Bondbuilding said:

Hello Friends and Chief Sales!

24 year user here... I have recommended and gotten more friends using this software than I can remember.

This is interesting news from Chief. For me personally it has provoked a lot of thought about my personal situation and relationship with Chief going forward.  I have read the entirety of the comments which mainly seem focused on the SSA relationship in the future.  The comments are interesting and I get that Chief needs to make a profit!  I think the issue with me is that not one size fits all, and It seems that the new pricing program is geared towards a "Heavy User", someone making a living drawing plans.  I want to make some comments that don't seem to factor in to Chiefs thinking about the purchase model going forward.  I totally get that all the big players have gone to the subscription model. 

 

I started with Chief 6.. 22 some years ago ...upgraded to 8...then to V10 ...then to X7 Premier which is where I am now. I want to say Chief 6 was $1400 all those years ago. (which seemed like a lot!) I have seen the software evolve quite a bit over the years.  I have never had SSA other than the original purchase included. (this was generally offered/presented as Customer Product Assistance/Service which I very rarely if ever needed)  

I am a Home Builder/General Contractor and I only use the program to design homes that I personally speculatively build or custom design for clients to custom build. This amounts to probably an average of 2-3 plans a year. I am getting near the back end of my career and it makes absolutely no sense that I would need to or want to pay in perpetuity $2000 a year or $200 a month just to use the work already created, or draw a handful of additional plans per year.  Obviously I can always open the files with the original program......but we all know that once you open a file with the new version you can't go back. The situation does present some concern if the program fails or ceases working will a new future operating system. This could put me in a situation where I really don't have a lot of options.  I feel pressured now to buy an owned version of X14 before Jan 9th...or use what I have until it dies.  If I buy X14, how long will it be supported as an owned version?....

Then what?

I go stints where I don't use the software for months..maybe as long as a year and then may draft 3 home plans with it. I had a fairly significant run in the 2009 bust where I didn't use it at all for a couple of years.

The software is an absolute marvel, ...but the fact is it does about twice as much stuff as I could actually care about.  I'm not trying to create perfect 3D houses with perfect renderings and imaginary accoutrements. I am drawing 2D house plans.  Obviously the function of drawing and creating in the program is in 3D, but the end goal for me is to have some 2D plans. It's is, and was, a brilliant concept. A person composes a a 2D drawing dictating its 3D properties and can see and take views of it. A person can draw an awesome 3D house if they want to put the time in!  One of the things I say to my customers is that "while we are going to have some 3D modeling, the focus here is to complete a set of 2D plans to build a Real House ...not create a perfect "virtual one"".

Other features the software does, again, are not super useful to me, (estimating, generated materials list, intricate framing diagrams etc) ...because they require too much time perfecting the "virtual home" to use. For me the time effort for me as a Builder is better spent doing it old school...labeling the 2D plans with the methods and features... "floor trusses 16" OC" etc   and then sitting down and figuring it out.  (This is just me...to each his own)

Lastly... My younger brother who does remodeling uses Home Designer Pro. He doesn't typically do whole homes and does not want to pay big money for software for a handful of remodels per year.  I have helped him finish some plans in Home Designer is not significantly different or better than my X7 as far as functional modeling...but it does kind of stink as far as the restricted feature set...(no preset plan views, inability to change views on the Layout Page, only 5 Layout pages...and a few other things). Honestly, if Home Designer Pro did just a few more things it would work for me perfect.  

 

If the whole method is going to subscription, then it seems that Chief should have some sort of cheaper subscription for a light or intermittent and Long Time User.. like me....or .....something a little better than Home Designer but not quite as full fledged as Premier 14.  I'm sure it's a fine line to determine the feature set of Home Designer Pro so a person will buy Chief Premier....but $60 a month going to $200 a month with nothing in between is a big leap when there are a significant amount of features in the step up software that a Builder Type or Remodeler Person could care less about.  Maybe a light user lease or legacy plan.  ( I get this would be super hard to administer but might be worth retaining some users).

It's been a long ride ...hopefully its not over for me.  ✌️

 

 

 

 

I completely understand your sentiment but from somewhat of a different perspective.

I an 15 years into my business and career, and I'm currently using X10.  The SSA renewals have simply been problematic for me because they are due near each new release, which is in the winter, which is a slow season for me.  As much as I have tried to budget for it through the busy times, it always seemed that I needed the money elsewhere more urgently.

So every year a new release went from a $595 SSA renewal, to an $800 upgrade, to a $1200 upgrade, to a $1700 upgrade, to now a $2200 upgrade.  Plus exchange to CAD.  I'm doing fine on X10, and I learn to be efficient and effective with the tools I have.  But I want to expand my team, and I now have one license at X10 and can only get a 2nd license at X14/X15 at FULL COST unless I upgrade X10 first.

Ok, so that's a cost of doing business, but I can make it work.  If I were to upgrade middle of 2023, I'd have two versions of X15 and I could chose whether or not to upgrade them later.

But now, once I do this, I only have one fallback license of X10 I can use, as the rest are subscription based and I really don't own anything.  I'm in for the ride.  I can make that work, although I don't consider it ideal.  But this presents me an opportunity:  If I am now faced with a new pricing and licensing scheme, then now is the time to shop around other programs.  What else is out there?  I haven't looked at SoftPlan since 2007, I'm sure they are much better than they were back then.

Or how about Revit Lite at $500 a year?

What I'm saying is that in their bid to get new customers, they are really forcing legacy customers into an uncomfortable shift, where their only option to keep the status quo was to have been diligent all these years with renewing their SSA.

I would need to pay $3,100 by the deadline to get the "grandfathering" scheme.  What else could I buy with $3,100 today?  Everyone's on subscription now?  Oh, look!  Softplan is $95 per month!  I wonder if they will do?

I would happily pay Chief $3,100 for 3 licenses of X10, based on what their upgrade path values my license at, so I could have 4 software packages that are compatible.  I'm in for a LOT more if I want 4 compatible versions of X15 one day.

So... I'm going to shop around.  See what I find.  Weigh my options.

On 11/29/2022 at 6:31 PM, Kiwideziner said:

at $1995 per year that makes CA dearer than Revit LT bundled with acad LT.

I just yesterday paid US$424 for a yearly licence of the above. I am yet to make a judgement as to which is better.

Right.

At $1995 per year, we better see much more regular improvements to the software than we are seeing now at $595 per year for SSA.

On 8/25/2017 at 3:52 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

As many of you already know, energy heels do not automatically generate properly for some of the most standard truss configurations.  Here's something I would definitely consider a workaround but its a lot quicker than what I think most of us have been doing...

 

• Build all your trusses as usual setting the appropriate trusses to be Energy Heels...

• Group select at least all the energy heel trusses, change top and bottom chords to a very small dimension (1" should probably do it), check Force Truss Rebuild, and click Okay...

• With the trusses still selected, open them right back up, check Lock Truss Envelope, change your top and bottom chord back to what they should be, and click Okay...

 

Again, it would be nice if energy heels behaved properly on their own, but until they do, I think this is the best we can do.  If anyone knows of a more effective solution I'd love to know it.

Well this is gonna be faster than manually editing the truss polyline in a section view.  Thanks!

On 8/31/2022 at 5:49 PM, SHCanada2 said:

almost looks like it is a bug

I'm not so sure of that.  The leader is attached to a specific point along the boundary of the text object, and when you mirror the text like that it remains attached to the same point.  This is how text leaders work. so that they stay properly attached no matter where you move the text.

Video explains it best.  This would only work if the text body was an even number of lines.  But I think if you flip it with two lines of text and then stretch it to 3 lines, the leader line will underscore the top line. Nope.  This messes up the leader line.

Nice!

Say you want a dimension default for a task you do repeatedly where a dimension requires the same exact trailing text.

Go into Preferences>Units.  Create a custom unit as follows:  [unit] [trailing text]

Where Unit is the actual unit of measure you want displayed ( '  "  '-"  m  mm) and Trailing Text is the common text you would use in this application.

This only works for trailing text as units only trail dimensions, not lead them.

On 8/26/2022 at 9:06 PM, jasonn1234 said:

this is interesting. I've been playing around, and if you turn off the terrain perimeter layer and just leave the terrain feature layer, you can compensate for undesired/wild contours near buildings, or anywhere actually, as long as there is "somewhere" you can cut a line through where you have the desired elevations

 

And if you make the material glass, you can make below grade a little bit translucent, not quite the dashed line for foundation that everyone would like, but not too bad.

 

too bad one cannot copy and paste the terrain feature polyline, and then apply the white fill line to get the dashes. ... CAD detail from view..I suppose would be the answer there

 

 

or the ugly case. instead of trying to fix the contours one can turn:

 

into

 

nice technique @AvoyeDesign

 

Wow, you just improved on what I've done, kudos!  Never even occurred to met to turn off terrain.  That looks super clean!

On 8/10/2022 at 9:52 AM, DRAWZILLA said:

for me, I just move the camera outside of the terrain, and add a dirt material to the skirt. unless the terrain is all over the place

So I explained in my video that there are cases where doing this isn't practical.  In my case, one of the elevations would have a second building obstructing the 1st.  In another example, the curvature of the terrain hides part of the building and I need to show the conditions where the grade meets the foundation wall.

Details in the video

I just use an "ALL ON" layer set and go to the floor where the zoom extends is furthest out.  From there I send to layout, and chief centers the layout box on the drawing sheet.  I then do this for every floor and default set without changing my zoom level.  Works for me anyway.

On 5/9/2022 at 1:00 AM, Rich_Winsor said:

When you're done using a tool, return it to it's proper place.

 

Why can't these clowns grasp the concept that it is far more

efficient to take a few seconds or a minute or two to put the

damn thing back where it belongs than to have to whole crew

standing around looking at each other when the guy who used

it last didn't come in today and no one knows where he put it.

 

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. 

Don't look in my garage.

I've built 2 computers so far, my latest is starting to show its age.  Rule of thumb; do your research and then do it again.  Watch videos like Linus Tech Tips to get a comprehensive understanding of all the parts, what works well together, and how to assemble it trouble free.

You need to know things like the differences between memory generations:  DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5(not yet out) are NOT compatable with a board that doesn't support that EXACT generation.  PCIe on the other hand is backwards compatable.  The CPU you choose has to be matched with a board that has the correct socket and chipset.

My tips for sourcing the components are to start with the CPU, ALWAYS.  Start with the minimum specs and look for one that has higher core counts and higher clock speeds that is within your budget.  And remember that the motherboard's price could be impacted by a pricier CPU.

Motherboard:  Unless you plan to overclock your CPU, don't pay top dollar.  Get a well reviewed board that has the socket/chipset combo for your CPU, and enough memory capacity and PCIe slots for the memory sticks, video cards you need to add.  If you are adding 2 video cards ($$$$) make sure the board has two PCIe x16 slots where the 2nd slot runs in x8 mode minimum.  Also be aware that running two video cards may obstruct one or more PCIe x1 slot for plugging in WIFI cards, USB cards, etc.  Ideally you want a board with as much of that built in as possible, but price point will dictate that.  You should aslo make sure the board has a NVMe M.2 connector for your hard drive, and get a 2tb NVMe drive to run the OS and programs including chief.  This option is all about speed.  I would not buy any SATA SSDs.  For bulk storage that you don't need to access on the fly go with SATA HDD drives.  They are pretty cheap these days.  If you need storage that is quicker than the HDD's but you don't have room on the M.2, go ahead and get a SATA SSD.

Video cards; I don't know enough about them to recommend one or the other, but stay away from bleeding edge cards if you don't have the $$$.  A decent floor model 3080 or 3070 should do fine.  

Power supply:  Use a power supply calculator to determine your needs.  If you plan to add a 2nd video card or more memory in the future, calculate that now.  And it never hurts to go up one level just to be sure you have the headroom.  If it says you need a 750 watt, get a 900 watt.  Get a modular power supply.  Routing cables is a PITA and if the ones you don't need are not detachable you are going to be frustrated by the 3rd hour of getting everything in order.  Cable management is important as it keeps airflow from being restricted, cuts down on dust and just looks better.

Cooling:  Don't use the stock cooler that comes with your CPU.  Invest in a good tower air cooler or a closed system liquid cooling loop, at least for the CPU.  Water cooling a GPU is not for the amateur, and custom water cooling systems are for the extreme enthusiest who wants his PC to be the equivalant of a muscle car.

Assembly:

Use a shock grounding collar.  Learn how to install your specific CPU type by watching a youtube video.  Learn about LGA and PGA sockets and CPUs, and how to handle them with care.  Learn how to troubleshoot and about common mistakes.  Be prepared to be at it for most of the day.

On 5/3/2022 at 9:47 AM, robdyck said:

I've had no issues with pdf file sizes. I've also been printing at 144 DPI in order to reduce file sizes. 

At 144 DPI the clarity is more than satisfactory (in my experience).

In 15 years using Chief I have never actually considered lowering the DPI.  I'll actually give this a try, thanks for commenting.

On 3/31/2022 at 9:52 AM, AndrewSopher said:

Did you ever get an answer on how to do a reverse ledge for the foundation? I am trying to do this, and have not been successful thus far. Thanks. 

If you want help with your specific problem, you should post in the General Q&A forum.  The Tips & Tricks forum is for offering solutions you have found that you want to share with others.

17 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

I would ignore the layout time tracker as time is often redundant, unless you export to CSV and write a comparator for both for overlapping times.
Timeout is based on idle, meaning triggerable actions in plan. Doesnt matter that you change to a layout window

Interestingly, I would often use the layout time tracker as the only tracker.  I would create a layout file immediately when starting the design, and as I work would populated it with cross sections.  I often times would end up saving a backup of a design so that I could branch off on another idea that would massively alter the buliding, but later abandon it and return to the first one.  How do I easily account for this when some time entrys are redundant and some are not?  Use the layout time tracker only.

Now I am using BQE core for time tracking as it automatically creates time entries that go straight to invoicing.  BQE is quite a bloated and cumbersome package so I don't recommend it for small firms especially with no payroll, but there are others out there that are just as good if not better.

19 hours ago, Bob-Roraback said:

Just a word of caution. When I upgraded to X13 I too thought that real time ray tracing was something I could do without but learned quickly that I could not even do a cross section or see library previews with the video card that I had. The only thing that would function was floor plans. No 3d views of any kind, perspective or orthographic. I would download the trial before upgrading to see if you have the same results.

I have been toying with the trial for almost a year.  No problems with camera views thanks.

On 2/27/2022 at 8:38 PM, Kbird1 said:

 

So do I but currently the cost of a GPU can be almost the same as a whole Prebuilt, certainly no GPUs are MSRP these days,

and since you are still on a 4-5yr old ? Z170 it maybe time anyway...... was just a thought.

 

M.

Thanks.  Not ready for full upgrade yet.

On 2/26/2022 at 11:06 AM, builtright3 said:

Going from 10 to 13 is a pretty serious upgrade. There are definatley features that would help you but if it were me I never make a change just before I go into a big project if I'm on time restraint. You will need time to adjust to the new upgrade.
On the other hand, Im a slow learner and need the time and you may not if your a quick study.

For whatever its worth, thats my thought

That's not going to be a problem.  I'm only going to be leaning on X13 for one or two features that will be critical for time saving, and I already have a good handle on how they work from using the demo version.

I also taught myself to use X1 back in the day, and was putting out permit drawings within the 1st week.  I've beta tested a few releases in the years past.  I think I can handle it.