GeneDavis

I've a file populated with symbols. The usual appliances and plumbing fixtures, all from the libraries including some from bonus libraries. Furniture in rooms. I take a camera shot of a room, the cursor is in the orbit mode, I do the slightest move, and BOOM, the scene goes into some kind of mode, spin-stop, each stop going "shadowing," then "rendering, " and I cannot stop it. I have to use CONTROL-EDIT-DELETE to bring up the task manager and do a hard exit from Chief. Why is this?

It did for me. Thanks, Dan. Laptop, Windows, Chrome.

Heck, all I wanted was the option to put the starting newel on step 2 instead of step 1.

I ganged these windows and blocked them, but used the factory-mull spacer distance (1/2") Pella will use when making them. See the picture. We've no way to control the material for such a mull-joint part, with Chief assigning it the same material as the casings. I know I can make it go away by unblocking the windows and resizing so there is no more half-inch space, but I'm a purist when it comes to millwork, and want the windows to be true-size as they will be ordered. Others rant here about insignificant elements of 3D, so consider this mine for the day. I'll go to the Suggestions section and ask for a future mod. And for this job, we'll just live with it.

A material region will work. You'll need X8, though. P-line solids work just fine. Have you figured out your framing details?

You might try working on the over-mirror light fixture, which apparently has one point light. Place three more, dial all down as low as you can (I wish Chief would let us go even lower), edit placement to get them about one inch below each shade, edit the shades to be one of the "lighting" textures (try white first), dial up the emissivity to 40 or higher, and see what you get.

Creating your own is not difficult. Fixed windows mulled to a door. Problem is that yes, you won't get an item in your door schedule that calls out the shop-built door unit. And you won't get, if you are wanting 3D realism, a single frame that has 4-inch-depth mull posts. But hey, Chief gives us all the CAD and text tools needed to get the job done.

Light bulbs are not "lit." They are a solid object, the surface of which is "painted" with a material called LIGHTING WHITE. Go and locate this material in your Chief library. Now create a new solid object in a room. An easy thing to do is just use the slab tool and draw a quick slab. Open the slab for specification and change its material to LIGHTING WHITE. Now take a camera shot and render it. Shoot us a screencap of what you get.

I am happy to use out-of-the-box Chief to do the walls of screened porches, doing them as railing walls, post to beam, adjusting the specs so I get the middle and shoe rails as I want. One can use the post spacing to get the bay sizes one needs. It would be nice if Chief allowed a way to do a screened porch door in a chosen bay, the door going between posts without a door frame, the door auto-sized by width to fit the bay. I draw the doors using CAD in plan view to show their location and swing, and use CAD in elevation to patch one into the chosen bay or bays. My doors do not appear in the door schedule, and I have a CAD detail in my library that I use in con docs to show door construction. How do you do a screened porch door? Mine are simple stile and rail affairs, one middle rail, all parts 1" x 3-1/4" with a 1" x 6-1/2" bottom rail.

Duh. Thanks, Joe.

I run into this when drawing screened porches. I use a railing wall, post to beam, and cannot resize the beam. It's been requested in SUGGESTIONS that Chief give us control over this, but we're not there yet. So what do you do it you want a specific size?

Lessen the pitch to get it down from the window, so you don't have water problems there. Lower roofs often have lesser pitches than the primary roofs, above. It's good architectural practice.

And here is a comparison, done with the elevation camera. Left to right, a CAD 2D, an image that rotates to the camera, and a solid silhouette.

Thanks, Joe. I see that now. Since we're talking about people images, how does one best use the silhouettes and CAD images of people, the ones available now as bonus content?

What happened to the people we had in whenever, X5? The kind that you placed in planview and were 2D, but the image always rotated to face the camera?

Wow! Michael! What a great tutorial! Very interesting uses of symbol make and use, and CAD DETAIL FROM VIEW use. Super helpful. Thank you.

I think most of us know what a curved mansard roof is. I asked the question because I could not envision one, over this porch in question, and be in keeping with the gable end above. A mansard roof, to me, is an arrangement of steeply-pitched roof planes around the perimeter, their crests all the same elevation, with an almost-flat roof crowning the whole thing. The O.P. has not returned to comment, and the solution with curved planes is not my idea of a mansard. I think there is information missing.

Give us an example please of a mansard curved roof.

One word, son. Photons.

And that is the answer, Mark. But let me clarify for our readers, particularly the Chiefer that got this started in an earlier thread. You must save the resized symbol to the library. You must then open a new Chief file, and place the symbol you created and put in the library, placing it into 3D space. That means there are no walls, no floors, nothing in 3D space except this symbol. Now go to File>Export>Export 3D Model (STL, ) and send it off. This is what is meant by convert to symbol. Now, in a Chief file, doesn't matter if you have walls, etc., IMPORT that file as a symbol, be sure to make it an Electrical type, and import it. One can now make whatever adjustments in the Symbol dialog to place a stretch plane, and have it operate as one wants. Note in the attachment, I have already stretched it after placement and locating a stretch plane at z = -9". The shade and canopy have not stretched, only the downrod.

Do it with this one. The attached file has the infamous "barn pendant" symbol, in its resized form. The goal is to put a stretch plane in the downrod so it can be lowered. I saved it to Library and brought it in, but it still acts wrong. BarnPendantResized.plan

Show us how to "save as symbol." Thanks.

This is a new thread to discuss what was embedded in the previous thread about stretch planes and zones. In that topic, a Chiefer had taken a symbol, resized it to about 50 percent of original, and then wished to set a stretch plane for using it above a counter. I found it impossible to do because I could not figure out how to export the resized symbol. Try it with any pendant light in the Chief libraries. Take the symbol, let's say it is 20 x 20 inches x 40 inches high, resize it maintaining its aspect ratio to 10 x 10 x whatever, and try resetting a stretch plane so its stem will stretch. Would not work for me. You can succeed with the symbol at original size, but not after resizing. So how do you export one that has been resized, and then turn around and import it back so Chief now has a fresh look at it?

Go into your interior wall specification, and change how the wall picks up dimensions.

Go to YouTube. Many more videos there.