jtcapa1

I have some random crashes of X17 recently that gave and error message about disk space!

Really!

I have CA running on its on 1 TB SD drive. Nothing else.

And now it has filled up?

Crap.

X17 has a lot of redundant bloat.  Library files, backup files, archive files and duplicates of same.

Sure, I got lazy and sloppy when it comes to managing all these folders and backups thinking I had plenty of space.

I was wrong.

Anybody else have this issue?

Like many of you, I've been taking advantage of CA's growing ability to accurately display building elements in 3d, and have moved away from Textures when I need that extra detail in a 3d rendering. 

I'm wondering if there are any simpler ways to achieve this look of a standing seam roof without inserting 3d models from sketchup, stretch them, rotate, space, rinse and repeat.

This looks great, but takes far to much time.

1 hour ago, mtldesigns said:

I think your right on this John, esp. on the trades side.  Where I worked before (day job) was Newport News Shipbuilding, working on the Ford Class.  That big bada$$ ship was design in a 3D model, down to the screws on the light covers.. the trades use a little of the 2D stuff, but now they are equipped with a notepad and they are in the model, taking their measurements from that model.  I left before this was fully implemented, and this ships are being built.  So must be working ok.   We are slowly getting our shop to load the model (read only) here at GD (day job) and provide just enough docs more for engineering sign off.  

That is very interesting Michael,

I didn't think anybody was actually doing that.  I've been offering 3d framing models to all my GC's or their guys in the field, but very few have used it.  Partly because of the poorly written CA cloud viewer.  I understand it evolved from a different idea, but if you have the right kind of viewing software and a powerful enough notepad, then it would be a great tool in the field.  There is so much more information I've crammed into my models that never gets into the "clean" 2d documents.

I'm convinced that as portable VR merges with AI very soon that is the only way they will be viewing our drawings and models.  It is not quite there yet, but I'd love to see CA at the front of that technology line.

It depends on what your background is.

I came from an old school Architectural office where all the documents were tightly controlled and scripted, back in the days of hand drafting ink on mylar.

It was very tedious and often frustrating.

Many old architects are rolling over in their graves at the sight of COLOR in permit and construction documents! *gasp*

It took me a few years of working in Autocad once it started using color as a visual tool to distinguish line weights, when I started to wonder 'why not use color in my documents'?

might help the permit reviewer's and contractors see things more clearly.

It worked well and I never looked back.  I really don't give a damn if someone thinks my drawings are cartoonish. Color brings a lot more information to the documents when combined with textures and materials. I stopped designing on paper and switched to designing using 3d models, as CA is fast and easy when it comes to playing around with ideas.

Companies like CA and ACAD have worked hard to force the computer to look less like a computer rendered and more human, but I don't really think that is necessary.

We need to evolve with the technology, and I honestly believe that the future of our work will not be ported down into 'dumb' 2d documents.  Those will soon become a thing of the past.

Keep an open mind and look forward, not backward.

Cheers,

-=JT=- 

Rendr just put out another promo, that makes it sound great, even for clients to walk around the house.

This came out today:

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

sounds like you did not explode them as architectural blocks. are they regions or blocks of regions?

Dang, I did explode the blocks, but not all of them exploded. Not sure why.

But I group selected them and exploded all the unexploded ones.

Presto Chango.  Magically I finally pulled that Rabbitt out of your hat.

Thank buddy.

On 5/2/2025 at 7:18 AM, Joe_Carrick said:

I use another wall framing Layer (extreme exterior Layer) with 2.5" width x 3/4" thickness.  It will frame with a bottom plate \ double top plate, as well as headers an sill plates.  It actually creates very manageable edits - but works pretty well.

 

I've also used Wall Material Regions but there are edits needed with that method as well.

Joe can you elaborate a bit more on how you made a Wall Type with "extreme exterior Layer"... what the heck is that? and your width x thickness methodology? Sounds almost like you are drawing another wall right next to the existing, Whereas Rene's secret, magic, version is an actual wall type with the upper trim and lower trim.

Rene,

I have been using your material region batten method from your video. Thank you.

Works great at first.

After massaging the plan, it will act up in that the material regions keep vanishing.

I have to turn off, then on, the material region for it to reappear again.

I have to do this every  time I make any change, or open or close any dialog while in 3d.

Is that just me?

I like the built in wall type with battens Rene.

How did you do that magic?

I already use your material region method but when I do, it gets messy with changes.

5 hours ago, Builder921 said:

MiTek's library is well over 2,000 training vids.

I'm wondering if you can help educate us and improve CA over time?

btw, welcome to the forum Builder921.

I've been pushing CA truss framing program to its limits on recent projects. Many parts of the county are requiring us designer to provide truss drawings at the permit stage, which is both good and bad.

Bad, in that was rarely required of us, when we drew our single line truss drawing layouts. As we left that to the GC to sub out to guys like you.

No doubt you have many horror stories about those 2d, dumb, line drawings as near impossible to make work.

CA, bless their 3d hearts, has been improving and adding onto our parametric truss layout dialogs, but they are still very primitive compared to the MiTek Sofware.

The good, is this is forcing us Designers, to think hard about how this will be built and installed. So many things to actually consider that we kindof ignored in the past.

Now, CA will auto generate these nice looking layouts, but both the roof and floor trusses are still not detailed enough.

For example, I'm now using floor trusses more often in many of my projects where I've got the height to allow 16"+ member depths.  BUT something I never had to think about before was running ductwork inside the truss system Perpendicular.  How the heck does that poor HVAC guy get his ducts in the remaining voids, and rigid ducts longer than 2' cannot be wrangled into place!

There are many, many rules that you and MiTek abide by when converting our drawings to production shop drawings, and we would all benefit knowing more about those rules.

Like top chord or bottom cord bearing, flat cords, edge cords, how much usable space is there really with different designs. What are the rules surrounding manufactured gaps for HVAC?

I would certainly like to know more, as I try and force CA's 3d modeling features beyond its design limits.

Cheers,

-=JT=-

68B1B6B4-C508-456D-A25A-C0411E748508.SNAG

Thanks for this topic and discussion. There are so many folders and projects associated with CA I can understand why CA does not want to support "networks" and cloud storage. The potential slow downs are user dependent. OneDrive only seems to conflict with CA, plus things are ending up in the cloud that shouldn't end up in the cloud. Microsoft embedded OneDrive into their operating system to make the concept super simple. Implementation, exposure, and avoiding OneDrive? Not simple at all.

I suspect that CA will figure out a way to make cloud storage work, since many larger firms need it, but in the mean time it seems best to avoid using it for CA.

Does anybody know an easy way to get this check box into a toolbar?

I love all these new cool lighting tools CA has provide, but when it comes down to creating Construction Documents with an electrical plan, I've got one question:

Where the bleep do we show power outlets or j-boxes for a bank of uppers that have lights inside them??

Sure Rene,

It's a quick tip for you, but damn you, I spent the next 2 hours I did not have watching your video, and then playing around with my logo, over and over till I got it right, then it had to go onto a wall in just the right way, highlighted just right.... Then I had to redo my logo! OMG!

It looks great, but man I have to stop watching your quick tips!                 

s

Then I could not leave well enough alone, I had to populate my fictious office

On 11/20/2024 at 4:04 PM, TeaTime said:

You could make the Music Note out of 3D Solids, save it as a Symbol, Hardware specifically

then apply it to the door as a Lock and adjust the symbol's Offset to move it around

That is a clever work-around.  Never would have thought of that in a million years.

Always more than one way to skin a rabb... er.. Cat. :-)

On 11/20/2024 at 9:52 AM, westvale said:

This is great Rene!  Thanks!  Now, it is possible to get a decal on a door?  I want to put a giant music note on this door. 

Good job. How the heck did you do that ceiling? It looks crazy.

Hi Lisa,

If you don't mind me asking? 

32 minutes ago, DefinedDesign said:

I often spend a lot of time searching for the same videos on YouTube to take advantage of the arrow keys for easier navigation, and I typically speed up the video to match my preferred listening pace.

Not sure what you are trying to do. I spend way too much time on YouTube's blackhole, so what or how are you doing to speed this up? And how do arrow keys make things easier?

Not thousands.  But, on custom homes I may have up to 100 hyperlinks.

On 8/22/2024 at 9:17 AM, BenMerritt said:

The default behavior is to reference the PDF as an external file rather than embedding it in the plan file. This has relatively little effect on how quickly the PDF draws in a plan view, but it does affect the plan file's size and the speed of some other operations (e.g. undo/redo). For those operations, referring to an external file should generally be faster.

I've enjoyed these improvements since PDF's are such a standard.

I wanted to ask you Ben, do you think that providing hyperlinks in my .plan files will slow things down?

I really like the embedded links that are part of exported PDF's that contractors, plan reviewers, clients and others, can access for say full specifications on various items.

Lots of Photoshop work. A really good image is critical, then it means playing around with it to get it to line up on all 4 sides without any shade or shadow variations.

This pattern breakup has been happening on and off in CA for quite some time.

It appears to be back again in X16.  I called SAS support and they see and noted it also...

Since CA has worked hard on giving us a better pattern creation tool, I cannot imagine it is too difficult to create our own?

I agree with Joe.

Coming from an Architectural firm that was a big 'no-no'.

As a small business man with my own design firm, I did this twice when I was young and it came back to bite me.

I did have one contractor just take it and run. Building the plan several times until I threaten to sue him, along with an invoice for "re-use" fee.

This inability for CA to consistently "manage archive folder" when the number of plan or layout files exceeds the variable number we set, is frustrating at best.

Since it is not consistent for everyone and each OS, I suspect it is a subtle setting in Windows or Chief that brings this up time and time again.

As a Beta tester I get used to these quirks, but this one is never fun.  Like most people I just ignore the issue and move on until something tells me I need to delete a few hundred giga-bytes of archived files.

The last X16b version was working well and did call up the windows folder dialog box, allowing me to then "manage" those archives.

Now the most recent update did something to cause this error to pop back up again.

So I called into the SAS support and was surprised that the helpful Expert was able to recreate this problem.

I'm just surprised nobody else brought this up?  Or did I miss that post?

I've got two questions that have vexed me for years.

1.)Is there a way to get wall trim similar to the stairs to display automatically?

2.) Is there a way to nip off the exposed wall trim at it hits a landing like this?

My client has these beautiful mahogany louvered sidelights from someplace tropical, and he wants them to be mounted horizontally inside a wide doorway opening.

But I'm tired and stump on how best to do this.

I can make a narrow (18") fixed louvered door, but can it be turned into a symbol and then rotated 90 degrees?