Charles

"Mahalo" to everyone for your input. I know there is a lot of info about this in chieftalk, but with the incredible advances in tech, things change so rapidly and I just cannot keep up. Everyone's input is valuable!!!

Thanks guys, the reason for asking is because I, somewhat recently, (1 1/2 years ago) drank the "microsoft coolaid" and purchased a surface book (expensive $2,500) which during the keynote address was touted a laptop geared toward designers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLwhZwbKYj4 Unfortunately, two warranty laptops later and seriously under powered, I have decided that I need a desktop. Yes I have searched all the forum discussions about the ideal system and have decided on a dell, which in the past, has proven as a stable and reliable system. This is what I have decided on: Alienware Aurora R6 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700 Processor (4-Cores, 8MB Cache, Turbo Boost 2.0, up to 4.2GHz) NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB GDDR5X 16GB DDR4 at 2400MHz; up to 64GB (additional memory sold separately) 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD (Boot) + 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage) Any input or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Charles

Aloha All, Has anyone recently purchased (within the last two months) a desktop system from Dell (Alienware included)? If yes, then please share your spec's. Thanks, Charles

I want to find out the area of a polyline using the area macro in the label dialog. The default rounding is out to five decimal places. How do I set it to round up to one or two decimal places?? Thanks in advance, Charles

Hmmmm, seems like we have more Hawaii user chiming in. How many of you are on Oahu? How many would like to have a get together? Thanks, Charles

I had a similar problem today and called Chief Support. No easy solution and they recommended using a polyline solid for my fire wall and then manually framing it from there. It would be nice if Chief added a true fire wall that balloon frames through all the floor platforms and through the roof.

That did the trick!! Thank You

Hi everyone, This "seemed" like a no brainer, but I have a room named open to below that keeps popping up in all my schedules that I cannot locate and has a very small square footage. Is there a way to search for a room name in chief? Thanks in advance, -Charles

Aloha, I'm an architect in Honolulu that uses chief. I tried to start a user group several years ago, but there were not takers. -Charles

Thanks Michael, that makes sooooo much sense. -Charles

Anyone know how to add the wall niches to a schedule? Mine are usually framed and the cabinet guy fabricates them prior to inserting in the wall. I would be great if it could show up in the cabinet schedule. Thanks, -Charles

Re ArchiCAD Thanks for the reminder...... It's been 18 years since I switched from ArchiCad and I was recently lamenting over it's superior terrain mesh, but completely forgot about the negative side!!

@Chopsaw.... sorry for the confusion, but I'm trying to simulate an as-built, no insulation. @David....Thanks for the video!

@chopsaw, yes the key in your response is "insulated separation" which we don't do much here in Hawaii. Condensation is not a huge issue, but vapor permeation and ground water penetration is (thanks to my degree from the school of hard knocks).

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your efforts and i got a lot of additional ideas on how to approach this. @David, would you mind uploading your .plan file so I can check out your approach? @Chopsaw... this is an as built.... not my design.... you are right, not the proper way to build it.

Split Level Test.plan Aloha all, I'm trying to recreate an as-built with a split level as shown in the sketch. I tried doing a simple model and can't do it, see attached. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!

Thanks, everyone..... that's what I figured, but wanted to be sure there wasn't a trick that I missed!

How would you do a shutter with an angled top like the one in the photo? Thanks in advance.

I couldn't find a solution on chief talk so after figuring this out I thought others might benefit from my solution. https://youtu.be/otvjaC2bzN8

I had trouble with my new Disto, but eventually got it to work. Here is my solution, but if anyone has a better way, please post it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNqbEAOGmXI&feature=youtu.be Thanks, Charles

Thanks for sharing Mark!!!!!

Thanks everyone, great suggestions, but unfortunately I tried most of them an have not gotten good results. (Scott, I will use your suggestion for the water) Normally photo shopping would not be a big deal, but I have 6 apartment models to do and was hoping for something right out of Chief.

I have been tasked to produce an apartment orthographic view that is cut horizontally about 5' from the floor. It works well with the cross section slider but the walls, doors and windows are all hollow and they need to be solid. Any advise on how to achieve this..... (see image) Thanks!