GeneDavis

How might I add my voice-over to a video I did?

Well, the bug centers it, but at least it is sized right. It is a simple editing job to place it where it belongs, and edit lengths, so all looks perfect. Pic shown with edit that placed the sill to align with the wall framing line. One CAD detail drawn and saved, and you're done with it, if you want to leave the Chief 3D model as-is, with the not-quite-right placement. Some questions for you. Other than you, who does it bother that the section view, framing shown, has the mudsill misplaced? Are you producing only construction docs for your clients, or are you handing off the Chief files as well?

Of course! Thanks.

I've got a spot in this lamp and it shines right through the table as if it is not there. Table material has transparency = 0. Light data is Light = ON, Casts shadows = OFF. Attached is a screencap of the raytraced rendering.

Our problem is that Chief does not have a linear light. Only points and spots, plus of course the "general" types, neither of which will do. But since most "lineal" lighting used for coves like you show are in fact, strips of point lights closely spaced, you will get close if you try that. Use very low wattage for each point. Try making a light symbol, the light being a simple tube, maybe 1/8" diameter. Make its material clear glass, totally transparent. In the light symbol dbx, add a whole lot of point lights along its axis at 3 inch spacing. Set each to not cast shadow. Bury the light up in your cove feature. Show us your results.

You change your vertical overlap to something big, then you trick the door down by jacking up the "separation" at top of the wall cab. See the pic. Your situation may be close to this. Adjust the numbers accordingly to get what you want. I prefer this in wall cabinets and have them built with a 1-1/2" door overshoot at bottom, and a 1-1/4" tall light rail. This, with frameless cabinets. Cleaner look, and the undercabinet lighting is nicely housed behind.

Yes. A landing is just a converted p'line, and can be circular, star-shaped, anything. I don't stack them so much as place them adjacent each other in plan view. You'll have to select around the perimeter to delete (as required) railings on edges. I work a lot in Sketchup, in tandem with Chief. The pic attached is a study of a staircase which I would do in Chief by making the winders part a sequence of landings, height set appropriately, and then linking the straight runs with the Chief stair tool. Doing studies in SU lets me quickly get to the elevation data. I could probably do the workout in Chief, but I am used to SU.

I have not tried it yet, but looking at the shots, the roof texture could use some rescaling.

No need to strip it down. Put it in DropBox, give us the link. In fact, USE DropBox for storage.

And this, to demonstrate the control one has over the lines drawn over the watercolor.

Perry, that is indeed a problem, if you are unable to control line weight and line color when doing the line-drawing-over-watercolor. Here I have dialed line weight down to 5 and jacked the black color a little lighter by drawing up the lighter-darker slider adjacent the color block. And Michael, how about trying a camera view and not a vector view? Your funeral home view lacks perspective.

I've learned that photorealism can bite you when clients are looking closely at textures. That's why I prefer the NPR approach with watercolor and lines. Final view with shadows, then watercolor, then lines. As Dennis says, trees and shrubs help, too. Post processing a raytrace with something like FotoSketcher can deliver nice results.

Attempts at photorealism don't do it for me any more, and I have embraced the NPR approach. NPR = NotPhotoRealistic Watercolor with lines is a favorite, but you need to do the work to ensure your glass in windows and doors is opaque.

You can curve stair sections, and you can get the curved sections to extend out to a wall, but sometimes, to model a setup like you need to do, it is best to use landings for all the winder treads, and link them as required to straight tread runs. So the answer is no, there is no easy way, if by easy you mean just do something like draw a walk line and BOOM, the stairs build with the press of a command key.

I'll bet you want a timber truss in that porch gable, and to do this, you will need to manually build it with solids of some type. The roof trusses auto-generated by Chief are not what you want.

Right, Joe. A special pattern file or maybe not so special a one, is what I want for vector views. Now, we have patters that give us things like herringbone and hexagons. I am just looking for circles of a certain spacing relative to size.

Joe Carrick showed me the best way to do the texture, but now I need a pattern for the vector views. 1/4" diameter filled circles on 1" centers going both ways, H and V. Pegboard. Any tips or secrets are appreciated.

Thanks, Joe.

I have looked but cannot find.

I would call it "delete pork chop," because the boxed soffit extension from gable wall to rake is called a pork chop in some locales. What is being described here is a deleted one. I've built the condition in Chief using separate adjoining roof planes for the gable overhangs, as Scott describes.

PTP!

Post the plan. Close Chief, zip it, attach to a post. An easier way is to use DropBox. But until we see, we cannot comment or help.

Nice, Joe! What method would you use for the over-windows-and-doors areas?

I have achieved the look of a battered wall (battered = angled out at bottom) using straight walls and custom moldings. Having seen battered walls built, that is pretty much how they are done. A straight wall has structure hung to its outside that boosts the bottom out, tapering to less at top. When the wall must have door and window openings, you need to be really creative. Polyline solids can be used to do the over and under fills.

Zipping and posting as an attachment is so last-century. Get a free DropBox account. With DropBox or a similar cloud-storage arrangement, you can simply copy and paste a link here. No such thing as too-big a file for sharing with us at the Forum.