AvoyeDesign

Thanks Chopsaw, I'll look into it. But that is discouraging as it is amlost every texture on some raytraces. Also, I did a quick raytrace in X4 and X8, and no issues. This is definitely an X10 issue for me.

The only other thing I can think about is that when I installed the NVMe drive, I imaged my SATA SSD over to it. But I also seem to think I might have seen some purple before I did this upgrade and never gave it much thought. It was probably in the DBX of a library item, and I had switched to raytrace view, figured the library had lost the texture, and moved on with what I was doing. Like I said before, I hardly do raytraces. Also of note is that when Cinebench does its CPU rendering the image comes out fine, which has me more convinced its a chief thing not hardware/bios configuration thing.

It doesn't make sense though that chief can't find image files, because the textures show fine on standard renderings. They just go purple on a raytrace.

Great, someone else with the same problem, but I see no solution. I'm not using a network, everything is on one PC.

As stated earlier in this thread, when raytracing a model in Chief's OOB template file, it is only the background that is purple. When raytracing a model from my own template file, most textures are purple. I've checked and my MOBO is compatible with Kaby Lake with a bios update, but requires a skylake cpu to perform the bios update. I did update the bios shortly after building the system, and when I built it kaby lake was already out, so that bios likely works with kaby lake. Now I just have the most recent bios. The bios update happened in BIOS, it was just the window's app that set it up; i.e. caused the computer to restart into bios and do the update. I've done it before, never a hitch.

The name isn't the problem, I can update bios from a Windows app without renaming the file. There is actually a different bios for each MOBO, and the windows app was saying that the BIOS file I was trying to use didn't match the BIOS image on the system. Going to the PRO GAMING/AURA page to download the correct file was the right move. So my BIOS is updated successfully, and I still have purple raytrace. So that wasn't it apparently...

OK, I figured out the problem with the BIOS update: I was looking at the wrong MOBO on ASUS site. Mine has the /AURA designation. https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z170-PRO-GAMING-AURA/HelpDesk_Download/ Gonna give this one a go, it should work fine.

I've pretty much given up on it for the time being. I might call ASUS tech support and see if they can help...

I did a quick raytrace using Chief's OOB template file. I actually get textures on the grass, siding and roofing, but the background is purple.

I checked in my MOBO manual, that section you clipped for naming the file is for BIOS recovery, where they system has to find a bios file on a thumb drive to replace a corrupt bios. I still can't get m BIOS to recognize the update file.

Where did you find that? I had no idea you had to rename the file. Really stupid tbh... Yeah, I was using a fat32 flash drive.

I'm trying to update my bios... no luck. I download the bios update file from ASUS and put it on a thumb drive, and the bios updater says its not a bios file. I've tried a bunch of stuff with no luck. I'll contact asus next week. But from the sound of other comments, it doesn't seem to be a gpu issue.

Yeah, Chief preferences are showing the 1060 as the video card, not sure where else this might show differently. I updated my driver and raytraced, still purple.

OK, so it's been a while since I've played around with Chief's raytrace utility, probably a couple of years. I don't really need it for the majority of the work I do. Just last night I swapped my i5 6500 processor for an i7 7700k 4.2 ghz processor, and wanted to watch chief raytrace with blazing speed. Well, it did, but it was all purple. What gives? I don't even know where to start on this problem... I've tried many files and they all do this. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks. Griffen Drive Proposed.plan

Probably best to contact Chief Customer Service and see what they would recommend. As far as I recall, a dongle is registered to the actual license, so in theory if I sent you mine, you would have to run my license. And doing so would likely violate the terms of service as my X10 license was upgraded from X1 (through various versions in between) and is the same license.

Think of floors as another dimension of layers. What is drawn on floor 1 only shows on that floor unless you use reference sets as mentioned above.

I'm not sure that awards and accolades really matter much. One of my designs won a local award once, and it was cool for a couple of days. What matters more to me is when I walk inside the finished home and am overwhelmed be the emotion of being in that space. And when the owners tell me this and write a positive review.

Hi Jim, I did a quick video to explain my solution and attached a sample plan. Tower Railing.plan

That exterior ledge with the railing should be a balcony room. You can assign roofing layers to the finish floor. Then you can control the height of the roof and the railings as one. Railings sometimes don't play nice with roof planes.

Copy and place/hold position each roof onto an empty file. Then Import each back to the working file, and offset each by x-1000 inches from each other. Place each roof on its own layer, and create a layer set for each roof example. Create a master layer set just with the roofs, and shift them over 1000" to demonstrate each roof. I think this all depends on the complexity of the plan though. For simple plans you may get away with it, but for more complex you may need a different file. I'd suggest if you needed a separate file for each roof design, only use that file for elevations and roof plans, and maybe cross sections. Use the main plan file for all your floorplans/framing plans etc (aside from roof framing if you do that.) If the changes to the roofs are significant enough that doing it all in one plan file is impractical, I'd suggest telling your client that multiple roof options come at an extra fee for each one. If it means more work for you it means more money for him.

Is this what you mean? I've always seen this in decimal inches, not sure if there is a control for that.

I don't have any great examples, but it would be things that we just have learned to work around and patch over. Nothing that breaks your ability to put out con-docs in a reasonable amount of time or of reasonable quality. Hang around here long enough though and you will get an idea of some of these items that experienced users commonly gripe over. But this is par for the course for any software package. I know a designer using AC Lite who has similar issues there.

Any software tool is only going to produce what you put into it, so just in case you have the impression that Chief or any other program will just magically generate drawings for you, this is not the case. Some people do expect that, so if that is not the case with you, my apologies. Chief is a very capable program for producing constructin drawings, even with some significant shortcomings. Getting efficient requires a lot of training and the development of your own procedures and workflow, as well as assets like a custom user library and templates. I find it is best to develop these over time as you weed out what works and what doesn't.

To the question of the task of cleaning up cross sections each time the plan is revised, I look at it this way: When I first started I was using an off the shelf version of Turbocad, which is a very basic cad design program. It had 3D tools, but for drawing plans they were not useful, so I simply drew all my plans and elevations in 2D lines. I had libraries of window and door blocks that I would paste over the wall lines which would automatically patch. I had to project lines from a floor plan to create elevation drawings. It was very tedious and dull, but I made it work until I could scratch enough pennies to buy Chief. When I bought Chief, it was like a dream come true. However I did find it frustrating the amount of cleanup I had to do with elevations and cross sections from time to time. I really wanted a slick, fast program that didn't require those edits. I've eventually come to accept that Chief isn't perfect, but that it is much better than manulally drawing out all my plans and elevations from projected lines. I may have to spend a bit of time cleaning things up for every revision, but I've learned how to deal with that. I make sure the client has all the changes into a revision that they want before I change the elevations. My fees are structured to take into account the amount of time to revise the plan. I also use masks and CAD lines where necessary, inside the camera view, to save from repeated work cleaning up elevations and sections. But most of all, while I recognize that Cheif is a powerful tool, I also recognize that the work I do is custom, fairly comprehensive, and time consuming. I don't expect Chief to do all the work for me all the time, or for its tools to be perfect for every situation. A live cross section isn't always an ideal construction drawing, and must be adapted at times to be less busy or cluttered.

Rich text does not follow text styles or default settings in your annotation sets, because this would override all of the size formatting in a rich text object in a plan. Imagine if you had a long legal section on page 1 that had formatting of different sized text in various locations of the body of text, and you wanted to resize that according to the annotation set, default setting or text style, how would chief determine that? Everything would just become one size. I see a number of possible headaches with what you are trying to do, one which you mentioned which is the text box size adjusting or not adjusting correctly. Good luck!