para-CAD

I expect that we will need an AI to check the designer AI because there will be so much information and awesome presentation fluff that a human might miss something, and down the road, you might be facing a liability lawsuit. So it will be AIs drawing and AIs checking. What a wonderful world!

I saw Rene's video and he was kind of giddy at how cool it was to have the machine doing some of the work. So, when I had a chance, I fired up Claude and started trying it. I had no idea that I needed to upgrade and turn on the MCP server because Claude took over my computer, with my permission and actually drew an 80' x 40' pole building with living space, 32' x 40' on the right side. It put in windows, doors, and I told it to make some rooms and it did, but it failed at the bathroom and the bedrooms. It had the doors in weird places, but it put in a set of stairs and then it stalled. I'm doubly excited to try it now that I've updated Chief and I've placed the checkbox in the MCP tool. exciting times are ahead.

My advice is to hire somebody from Florida. And if you're close to the ocean, there's all kinds of requirements. So if any of these people that are responding are not from Florida, I would put them on tier two until you've spoken with some people that actually are licensed to get you plans for a permit in Florida.

Wow AI can be an extremely powerful tool. As I looked at the framing, I realized, first of all, it’s a four-person bunk bed, so it’s going to need plywood shearing because if it’s kids, it’s going to rock around as they all wrestle and fight and play. I subscribe to Claude, so I’m going to play around with this on the next smaller project I do. Having interactive models to share with clients or builders is next level.

I'm still finding things like note callouts not being located where they should be in the reversed plan. Also, the cameras don't rotate, although maybe they were outside the box. The problem was the customer wasn't able to make a decision early enough, so the plan was pretty much complete and then they wanted it mirrored. Chief doesn't like that.

Steve I labeled every chief hotkey starting at the number 5000 and going up into the 6000 range, and then I started analyzing my workflow to see where I wanted things I too use stream deck. specifically the + XL I have the pie option using a Logitech mouse, but I don’t find it as easy as configuring my stream deck to put the buttons I use most close together in the lower left area for precedence. My system has evolved to where hot keys that manipulate something are on my primary screen, and then I use folders with auto snapback to go into doors, windows, objects, and other things. The nice thing is Stream Deck works with any application, so as soon as I open up sketch up, all my tool buttons reflect sketch up hot keys. I like that you’ve shared your process because that inspires me to constantly improve

Be careful trusting anything auto framed. It's not always accurate.

Post police? Ease up, Francis. makes me wonder why I ever sent you $50 for something you gave away for free. silly me. I’ll never make that mistake again.

I would like a blank schedule that acted exactly like a spreadsheet table. I should be able to format each cell, and I should be able to add columns or rows of any items I choose. It’s 2026

https://www.loom.com/share/767b3fa505ad4c8289706eec783f41a2

What if you have project A and project B both open in chief and you're working in project A? Because you're in chief working, does project B's timer also run even though it's minimized and you're not directly in it and working? It's just in chief in one of the tabs at the top?

I can look at it later tonight. Send your plan. I'm using X18.

I would bet that Nathaniel Wilkerson of @Medeek Engineering could probably figure something out and write the code to make it work if Chief would enter into some kind of coding contractual agreement with him to make it happen.

Yes......copy an object and paste in same plan view. My workaround is to use the shortcut for Copy and Paste Hold in Place, and then drag that new copied version to where I need it. But if I do Command or Control-C and then Command or Control-V, I often end up with a different result. I will fire up the screen recording and see if I can capture this. When it happens again, I will reset and screen record it for you.

Many times when I copy an object and I want to paste it in the same saved plan view, just to have two instead of one, when I right click paste and then click where I want it, a warning message pops up and says that layer is not displayed. Do you want to display it? Why would it do that if I’m copying something that already exists and is visible and somehow when I hit paste it changes the layer that it’s on? this is odd behavior because then I have to hit escape and then open the object properties and change whatever I’m pasting to the layer that it was copied from. I’m on a Mac, so who knows if that has anything to do with this, but I have witnessed this for years and just recently realized I need to find out what’s going on.

Thank you so much. Just knowing that it’s possible is half the battle. Go, Joe

I’ve never been able to get this to successfully work, and I end up cheating by making the room ceiling height tall enough that regular trusses will set on these higher walls. No cheating allowed on this one this time. Can someone explain in simple terms how I can have a wall that is 9’-1 1/8” tall and a 1’-4 7/8” tall heel on an attic truss? This will be a bonus room over the garage, and the rest of the house is all 10 foot plate height when I cut a section view, the truss just looks like a standard truss, so I must be doing something wrong. I would expect the bottom of the truss to be set at the 9 foot plate height with a 2 x 10 bottom cord in the middle, and then the top cord would start at the heel height from the bottom of the truss to the top of the top cord along the outside of framing. I will add a picture when I get home, but I’m waiting for Chinese food right now in my truck, so this is all text

I don’t think anyone who is doing 3-D renders in any platform will have much success when they try to submit that render for a permit. There is so much involved in each local jurisdiction that AI cannot compete. Maybe in a few years, but for now, human beings are still required. The pretty picture might get you the client’s signature on a contract, but the plan for permit still needs human input. As far as specifications go, that’s always text-based in my world. When it comes to hardware in a kitchen, my plans never have that stuff, but that could be put into a schedule, I suppose, with vendor specific language

Michael Gia wins the "Spits drink out" funny award. Damn bro.......tru-dat. The power of competing AIs will provide all the wonderful rendering that one would ever need. Chief should incorporate plugins to these different AIs or maybe Blender and some other 3D tools instead of trying to in-house build their own system. I agree with the other comments. Chief should focus on what Chief does better than anyone else and refine those tools.

Scott and his awesome dog.

About two years ago on this forum, someone suggested using rich text and you can bold and underline the top line at say 8 inches. And then underneath you can add other information all based on macros so it reads the room if you make modifications. And then you can just copy and paste that text into each room and even have its own layer if that's something you want. So that's what I do now. There are tons of macros that already exist and probably some cool custom ones you could make to tweak this into exactly what you want it. There's even one that does the ceiling height rounded to the nearest foot so that it's not scaring people who don't understand the inch and an eighth part.

Looks dark and hidden back there. I’m from the Pacific Northwest, and the look we would do is 12 or 15 feet high timber where the tall new entry timber roof sheds down onto the two side roofs and projects out to give you a covered porch entry. I don’t wanna model in X11, but I’ll definitely share my thoughts. The house could stay at 4:12, but a dramatic entry like that would look better if it was 10:12 or 12:12 framed as a cathedral sloped ceiling. T&G pine soffit. no charge for just sharing ideas

Very nice! I have seen a de facto standard arise in some people's dimensioning where the outermost line is for overall. Then the next line closer to the building is for wall offsets. And then the third line is for the center of openings. So they use a three-line dimension system. I'm sure there's people that would use four lines, so even though automatic dimensions may not be needed, it would be nice if there were user set distances away from the house that you could snap these different types of dimensions to so that they look as good as the ones in your example images.

3D \ Camera View Options \ Denoise When you choose the PBR rendering technique, then you can have your Mac denoise the pixelated image.

It’s not automatic like the PBR that is done by the Nvidia graphics cards, so once you get your PBR focused and it ends up that pixelated view, you can go 3D \ Camera View Options and there is a function that says Denoise View . I created a shortcut key to it and then put that in my stream deck, so when I’m rendering and I get to that point, I just push one button and it clears the picture up quite nicely. Give me a few minutes to go track down that information for you.