johnny

Thanks bud!, and thanks for the shared resource...I found this very interesting.

Why does the government do this?

Wendy, your videos are so much better than what Chief produces for tutorials. I really would advise Chief to look at your approach (and even Scotts for say webinars etc) and redo their lineup. Your videos are very understandable and I can track fully. I also agree with you about the fonts....I use Arial myself. Thank you so much.

Thanks Rod. I'll try this too, but what I was really after is a way that a 3D presentation to a client can easily communicate the amount of grade changes around a building.

So you know, its not a particular request - stepped terrain models with non-stepped roads and pathways are the norm. Perhaps you didn't know that, but its probably the most common type terrain model among architects. Here are a couple examples.

So before I request this under suggestions, I wanted to ask if there is any current way to have terrain data shown on elevation models..? Meaning, you get a graphical representation of what the terrain does in CA, but if you are looking at the model there is no reference to locate actual numerical differences in the terrain. The only way I see to do that is looking at a plan view of the terrain model. Stepped topography is one way to see actual steps that relate to a specific measurement in elevation change. Another is Triangulated irregular grids/network. Here are examples of both. Stepped: Triangulated irregular grids/network: Glenn and Scott showed me a way before of getting the result of a stepped topo, but its very hard to work with other site elements (roads/walkways etc) after the method is used.

Perhaps you can illustrate with a pic or two - I read what you are saying but not fully following.

Awning

Where are they??? I dont see a link, am I missing something?

Yep - in fact here I did a quick vid on this...

Here was the final product.

Yep, I was making a Nana "type" wall - otherwise the Bi-fold option would have been good. Thanks guys!

I even tried removing the door from the wall....

I wanted to make a folding door system just placing door panels next to each-other. How can I get a door to work as a general symbol? When I create a symbol of the door it grabs the wall too. Thanks!

Kirk - is CA considering any sort of render farm in the future for clients?....perhaps part of an SSA package? Also, does the CA viewer allow Raytrace? I was thinking about getting a dedicated rendering computer for our office but was thinking about the need for additional lic.

PDF's a couple (few) years back switched from having raster images only (though broken up) to "vector" mixed with raster AND multi-layer support. I can tell you in VW we have a option to import the PDF as a bitmap or as vector - which solves this issue. I dont have CA in front of me, but perhaps that same option is on the import window..... Otherwise, if you have a copy of Acrobat Pro or Photoshop you can open the PDF and then save again as bitmap only.

Very cool - thanks for sharing.

Here is a quick concept fix if you want - I did this for my own exercise but here are the files if you want.... Obviously lots more to refine, as I was just playing around to a point, but this may help - or it might not since I have no idea what you need for the project. Doerr.plan

Here is a pic of what I am talking about -

I believe Chief is having a hard time doing this automatically since your porch width is greater than your main body house width....so you can't have the same pitch unless you wanted your front porch roof peak to extend past the main body roof, or lower the pitch and have a bastard valley. Not to mention having the garage gable is a problem for the area these 2 valleys would be - and you'd then need a cricket or something to fix the intersecting valleys. Overall what you are wanting has a lot of problems even if you did manually build it....just FYI.

I might get some flak for this, but I am not sure CA is good in a multi-person collaboration type work environment. I had a multi-person environment I tried to bring CA into and it didn't work well for many reasons. Our main application in our office is something other than CA, but perhaps the type of projects you do and your needs can work for CA....generally speaking there is no built-in support for multiple users. CA is worth having in your office though - you can quickly create presentations for clients.

Just curious, why are you selling?

Very nice Rich - well done. I'd love to know how you captured that hue....it looks great. Any chance you would share your method?

Exactly. Its almost a cost of marketing in some ways. I'll say again you can't do that for everyone or you will get burned, but clients you know are bona-fide.

For new clients I typically take a retainer to start, but for clients i've done a lot of work for they can call me up and ask me to do something like this so they can get the process started. Its not "free" but I feel my being easy to get going in a project helps me land a lot of work. I try to make myself almost an extension of their back-office. Concept work, and that process, is very important to me.