WhistlerBuilder
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Everything posted by WhistlerBuilder
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I have a project where I have some plants displaying improperly. Plants that are physically behind another plant are showing in front of it. The plants that are having the problem are all elevated off the "terrain" and in planter boxes. Originally I had them located in a different floor, then moved them to the layer with all the other plants and the clipping issue went away. Then a few days later I opened the project back up and the problem was back. I had the plants listed in a separate layer origionally as well. I switched them back to the basic "plant" layer and I am still getting the problem. Has anyone else encountered this? Any tips for fixing it? I have a presentation to give soon on this project and I am severely limited in the camera angles I can show because of this problem.
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From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Our most recent project - Orion. This is a 45 unit apartment complex being built in Pemberton BC Canada. -
Projects by Innovation Building Group
WhistlerBuilder added images to a gallery album in Members Albums
Various Projects designed by Innovation Building Group Chief for Structure and 3D export 3DS Max for render Photoshop for touch ups -
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Hi Robdyck, It depends on the project. Some of the interior renders I had them do most of the "extra" modelling for small details to make the renders "lived in". For exteriors and large projects they mostly use the plants and landscaping I provide them with chief and imports to chief from sketchup online library - sometimes modified additionally by me in sketchup / photoshop. They also appear to have a large library of 3D objects they maintain for their use. They are also able to add in background images or landscaping touch ups with photoshop after the 3D is done. I found they are very good at taking items or textures I find in images through google image search and working them into the models. Attached is a sample draft I send to them. I number each item on the draft image and then send them a numbered work order via email. I find it takes between 3 and 7 drafts, with the average around 5 for a fully polished image. 1st Draft Changes.pdf
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One thing I found for doing marketing grade 3D's with chief is to just do the design in chief and then farm out the final render to a specialized rendering company. I use New Visual 3D in China (http://www.newvisual3d.com/). I found you cannot beat the price performance of doing it this way vs doing it yourself. With the cost of labour in North America, and the cost in time to yourself, plus the cost of specialized lighting or rendering software... it is easier to just export your 3D file and send it to the rendering company. You then do a few draft revisions with them and supply some textures or backgrounds you want. There is the added benefit of the time difference. You submit your draft revisions at the end of the work day, they start their work day roughly when you finish and you have the next draft in your inbox in the morning. I have done several large scale projects this way. The best part about this method for you designers who subcontract to developers... you can charge North American pricing for the render - I have seen $3k+ per image for medium to large buildings, and it only costs you $350ish US plus your time with the drafts. Good luck!
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Mark 3D. Thank you for the suggestions! The main trick of making the parking lot as a room absolutely clears up all the problems generated by the elevation change on either side of the surrounding retaining walls. This makes the walkways actually work properly with the use of evenly spaced terrain lines. I had tried them before and it was just a mess. This seems to be one of the best solutions so far. Unfortunately it has the issue of not being accurate when it comes to the final construction set of plans because the "room" has a flat floor elevation. This looks nice and clean, but when you need to set drain heights, parking lot gradients for drainage, and sub surface pipe elevations etc this information will all be missing. I suppose you could have it as a layer that is just the text information instead of trying to get chief to accurately do it in 3d. In my last project we did this whole system in sketchup so that our site super could show all our workers exactly where each pipe and drain element went on the site in 3D in the site office. Something that was well worth the time to setup. I just wish I could do this within chief instead of having to use two different softwares and re draw everything.
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Thank you for your help with this! I will take a look Monday, just out and about right now. Interesting approach!
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The terrain points and elevation region in the same place were a half finished project. The points were part of a grade calculation, and the terrain region was a quick cheat to correct the horrendous peak/valley problem you get without terrain regions. It was basically a quick fix to export an image to my boss to show the basic look of the area after changes to the parking. Reducing the terrain lines from the survey is an interesting idea, also manually drawing over them with less points. It does not sound time efficient unfortunately. I wish chief could handle more data with its terrain calculations. Sketchup seems to do a much better job of this.
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Hi Glenn, I tried to follow your advice with the terrain retaining walls vs normal walls, and using terrain breaks. I am still getting the same problem that I had originally of terrain lines and elevation data bleeding through the terrain break to effect elevations and terrain lines on the other side of it. The terrain elevation lines I am using are from a topographic survey of the area. I need the accuracy on most of it and have no way of reducing the spline calculations. Apparently chief just cannot process the amount of information supplied in a regular survey document. This is disappointing!
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Hi Glenn, I am aware of much of what you said. However, I always welcome help when I am stuck here so thank you very much for your reply. As I mentioned in my post my problem is very specific. The sidewalk at the top of the retaining wall goes absolutely crazy unless I have a flat terrain area specified, which is a problem because I need the sidewalk to slope down to a point then back up again to the entrance of the building. This is a very specific problem with terrain breaks and retaining walls. That said, I have always had a problem getting chief to make terrain breaks work properly.
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Hi everyone, I am stuck on a tricky terrain issue. I am designing a multi family building site that has some relatively simple grading required for the parking lot and pedestrian access which chief cannot seem to accurately process. Perhaps I am missing a trick? I have uploaded the relevant portion of my plan so you can take a look. Basically I have a pedestrian access "sidewalk" coming on the property at a higher elevation, and a driveway leading to a parking lot at a lower elevation. The driveway and parking lot all have carefully calculated grades leading to the elevation I have set as top of parking slab (2159.00 ft). After days of messing with the retaining walls and terrain breaks I finally got the parking lot to work. Now the problem is that chief cannot seem to handle terrain topographic lines intersecting the top of a retaining wall / terrain break without creating absolutely batshit crazy peaks and valleys everywhere. Since the site requires that I have a sidewalk pedestrian access at the top of one of these retaining walls with a maximum slope of 2%, these crazy variations are screwing up my plan. I cannot seem to get rid of them except with flat terrain areas, which of course screw up the pedestrian access elevations. I can't just cheat and do stairs because this building needs to be handicap accessible. Chief cannot do terrain area's with a slope... something they should absolutely add!!!!! How do I fix this problem? I would really appreciate some help here as I have spent the last few days really struggling with the terrain features of chief and I am at my wits end trying to figure out this issue. Help_Plan.plan
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My surveyor is using civil 3D 2016. The backwards saved Autocad 2010 file broke the topographic elevation lines into sections which had to be connected manually. The version saved as the most current Civil 3D 2016 saved the elevation data and "terrain perimeter" into a "0" layer when imported to Chief. This layer needed to be saved as a separate entity and broken up, then the original component layers showed up. Chief still cannot add the actual elevation values, but at least the lines are not thousands of separate entities that need to be manually connected now. The layers for reference are: DB_C-TINN-BNDY = terrain perimiter DB_C-TOPO-MINR = topo minor DB_C-TOPO-MAJR = topo major Scale is in ft. I would love it if someone from chief technical support could look at this. I am going to open a ticket. ACAD 2010.dwg Civil 3D 2016.dwg Topo success.plan
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Thanks David, For some reason I have never, not once, ever been able to properly import topo lines into chief. I hate the solution you proposed because it is SOOOOOO time consuming and tedious. However, it is a solution that I have used before and was trying to avoid. Thank you very much for the help! I appreciate it. Cheers,
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I have been trying to import terrain data from a dwg. I can get the terrain perimeter to work but the topo lines will not convert to polylines even though they have shared endings. I attached both the original dwg, and the topo layers isolated as their own file. This has been very frustrating as I have followed all the steps in the online knowledge base but the lines will never convert to polylines when imported. Any suggestions? Topo Layers isolated.dwg 18046D_ACAD 2010_TOPO IMPERIAL.dwg
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Just a little fun for today. Check out the pic and have a laugh.
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From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
8-plex -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Multi-Family Apartments -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Duplex -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Multi-Family + Commercial -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Duplex -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Multi-Family + Commercial -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Multi-Family + Commercial -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Interior shot -
From the album: Projects by Innovation Building Group
Duplex -
Hi Chiefers, I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make the railings on decks attach to the fascia instead of have posts sitting on the decking. I live and work in mountain country / temperate rain forest and we have major issues with water up here. The standard chief design with the posts sitting on the deck surface wont work for some of the sealed decks I do, and I have also run into an issue where the edge of a deck terminates in a tight door to window junction. This means that for my deck location to be accurate in the plans it would be really helpful if I could have a fascia mounted railing to plan where that railing meets the exterior wall in order to avoid an adjacent window. I have attached two images showing the two configurations I am talking about. Any help would be appreciated! Cheers,
