WhistlerBuilder

Getting the architects to work in chief is not really an option as they do not have the software and are used to making everyone work for them. Like I said... ego's. It is good to see that people can make it work though. I wonder why others are struggling so much with the 3ds exports. 2D exports to JPG and PDF still have the tesselated fill for solid shape issue. It is not a "them issue". It requires fixing chief plans in photoshop or other software to produce marketing ready images.

I was exporting 3d dwg's for use in 3d models by the architects so they could attempt to add stylistic elements to the designs. It has almost always been a waste of time, but when you require an architects stamp for multifamily part 3 buildings you need to waste time and money massaging their ego. If it was just for an engineer of course 2D dwg's work. Yes, chief has wonderful 3d rendering capacity. It is the main reason we went with chief originally over other options. However, tesselating 3D exports and 2D fills is annoying and I would love to see this addressed in a meaningful way. In regards to .3ds exports not working. I was never provided clarity by either rendering subcontractors or any of the architects I shared the files with. Merely that it did not work in any software or application. Not using 3d studio myself... I never had the opportunity to test it to figure out why. I would love to hear from anyone who has been on the other side of chief exports to see if all software importing chief 3dDWG exports has the tesselation issue. Because that would be a pretty large defect in my opinion.

@Renerabbitt I exported in a variety of formats and my collaborators were using Sketchup, archicad, and Revit. 3DS exports appeared to not work across most platforms, and 3D DWG's had the tesselation issue. (As reported by others) I would use 3rd party rendering services to create marketing images most of the time and they never complained. It has mostly been issues collaborating with Architects or other drafting firms where this issue is reported. When I work on producing marketing plans I would have to adjust in Photoshop to create smoothed 2D images with proper fills. I find that annoying, but I guess its a common issue?

Hello Chiefers, I have been trying to export 3D models for some collaboration with people working in other software platforms. All my models are getting tesselated (see images). I have noticed that chief also does this with 2D fills of solid colors in plans. I find it annoying in plans (particularly when trying to export for marketing purposes), but it is a real problem with 3D exports, making them pretty useless for marketing 3D's without re-skinning or re-drawing whole sections of the model. Has anyone found a way to deal with this? Cheers,

@talockSorry for the late reply. I had similar issues in the past. I have recently been using floor 0 as the footing layer, floor 1 as foundation layer including below grade parking, then the first above grade floor would be floor 2. I put the terrain on floor 1 (parkade) layer. Sorry for the slow reply. I am not on this forum often and just took a week off for summer holiday. Cheers,

So easy... now I feel silly. I did not even know there was a tool to edit that. Cheers,

Hello helpful designers, I was wondering if anyone had a clean way to deal with terrain grading for an underground parkade entrance? I have tried a variety of configurations over the years and it always ends up being a super messy process with lots of terrain points and breaks while still creating lots of visual glitches. The terrain always wants to slide up in front of the garage door, and the breaks on retaining walls always bleed through. I am looking for a way to extend the "terrain intersected by building" break to include a descending driveway "room", and then cheat the driveway with a 3d solid set at the desired grade. But I cannot figure out how to get it to apply properly. I am open to suggestions if someone else has a cleaner solution. Image and sample plan attached. Thank you in advance to anyone who might have a solution to this. Cheers, Parkade Entrance.plan

Thank you for looking into this. Quick question on your solution. Did you try "printing to pdf" with this? Do the cad overlay for hatching show up as outlined boxes or visible elements? Chief seems to have a very difficult time with shading solid shapes. It fills solid shapes with thousands of lines, and often leaves visible artifacts in what are supposed to be solid shapes. I made the assumption that doing a cad overlay of the hatching would leave visible blocks where I tried to fill the hatching tools errors.

See attached. Copy paste a portion of the plan showing multiple fails. Hatching Fail.plan

Thank you for confirming that it is in fact broken. I was hoping that I was wrong and just missing some tip or trick to make it work. How unfortunate!

The problem with adding a filled polyline to hide the glitches is... there are A LOT of glitches. I just showed one example of an intersection. The plans have dozens per floor rendering the hatching tool completely useless for this application as it requires so much correcting that you might as well just do a filled polyline over the walls as a separate layer instead of using the hatching tool at all. I tried the wall intersection tool. It does not effect the hatching tool. There appears to be no way to manually correct the hatching tools failures inside the tool.

@BryceEngstrom A "Save as" solution is a work around that could happen. It becomes less effective the more wall types you have, and the more layers each type has. The triangles form with the hatching tool. Changing the wall layers to solid black fill does not generate the same problem. Which is why the title of my post is in reference to the hatching tool being broken. I would really like to use the hatching tool, because it is actually designed to do what I am trying to do, it just seems to have a glitch on wall junctions.

I have a project where the marketing team is requesting a plan set where I have all the walls displaying in solid black. This is a fairly commonly requested feature, but my standard practice is to have the wall layers with different hatching and textures so its clear on technical drawings what the different materials are. This creates a problem when the hatching tool in Chief cannot completely fill wall intersections, and does not appear to have a system where I can correct the tools automatic mistakes. (See attached wall juncture issue). Short of going through the plan, and changing every single material fill option in every single wall type to black, thereby screwing up all my details and technical drawings... What are my options for achieving the solid black marketing drawing request?

Yes, the version they have under that name does not even remotely match what exists here on the West Coast.

Do any plant packages have the correct graphic for the "Western Red Cedar"? They only seem to have some weird incorrect variety of cedar. It's kind of bizzare that they do not have one of the most common trees on the west coast of north America.

Is there a way to move the background image further away from the camera in the 3D renders? The image I have is showing the trees practically at the end of the deck and I would like them to be further away. I have tried up scaling and down scaling the image with no results. Any suggestions?

This is pretty frustrating. This project was 100% complete and I was trying to send it out for rendering subcontractor today. Now its messed up just because I upgraded to x14

It is on in 3d. I checked everything for layers to turn on and off. I rebuilt it a few times and even had the camera layer set turn every layer on and it still doesnt show up.

Updated signature as requested, Yes I rebuilt roof framing in x14. See attached file. https://www.dropbox.com/s/l22popbij52iw0e/Marine 1.plan?dl=0

They are present in the roof options. See attached. They did not transfer as polyline solids, nor where they polyline solids before.

Hello everyone, I recently upgraded to x14 and suddenly my custom shadow boards are missing in 3D. I cant find a layer to turn on for them in the 3D view settings and they are still physically in the plans. Any suggestions?

Anyone else have issues with the update? I installed the update and now all my toolbars are missing and I cannot get them back. Tool palette is always empty and wont load any tools.

Whistler BC here.

Anyone else having the problem where the software freezes at the load screen on startup? This happened to x12 for me, then I upgraded to x13 because I had not done it yet and x13 worked for about a week and a half before the problem started. Re-installing does nothing.

Thanks. Turning off "Connect Island Rooms" allows me to delete these. Cheers,