jtcapa1

I was drawing a pretty simple custom rail using the current toolset, but when I drew a section cut of the railing I kept noticing that the balusters were sunk into the raised bottom rail.

Any idea why that happened?

I was trying to insert a custom baluster that had a small decorative cap and base, but the base was always hidden inside the bottom rail.

Thank you Yusuf.  That feature request has been around so long, I suspect CA will get it in one of the next updates.  Meanwhile that is a great work-around.

I know we can force a deck railing outside the deck rim and mount it to the rim or fascia, extending it down below the level of the deck but how can this be done with stairs?

On 10/8/2022 at 7:16 AM, robdyck said:

This requires creating a symbol for the pickets and handrail and is a brutal process of guessing and checking with symbol offsets, stretch planes and bounding boxes.

I agree this was brutal, but it did allow me to create a symbol with 4 different objects which can be painted 4 different ways.

Yes. It can be done in one step if you first create a symbol, but the railing is then a polyline.  It can be done with more work using CA railing and a molding polyline.  But the ASK for CA is to give us more controls in the railing dialogs to make this possible to do as shown.

This is odd, but I cannot find an easy fix to this issue.

The old cheapo deck railing on the outside of the rim using basic 2x2 pickets.

This means we use a 2X4 or 2X6 top rail and a 2X4 or 1x4 vertical inside top rail piece.

So since CA does not allow any offsetting of the middle rail  to create this vertical piece I had to draw a custom top rail, as shown in the picture.

Unfortunately, the balusters will only go up to the bottom of this custom shape, leaving a gap.

I know there are many ways to get this to work, maybe with a 3d molding top rail over the same railing with no top rail, but you guys might have a better suggestion?

This is how I want it to look without having to monkey around with all the various settings and work-arounds.

Just getting those balusters tight to the rim joists was a real pain of incremental dragging.

There are many threads here that brush through this process in Photoshop, but not in much detail.

Can anybody provide a more step by step process?

I think I puzzled it out myself by using the tool "Filter" and "3d",  But the first time I tried it told me to turn on my graphics processor, which I guess was off by default.

It took me a while to find that setting in PS.

I'm just not clear on the various option settings for "Generate Bump Map".  So I just used the default setting and got reasonable results.

I was trying to get a better looking Board & Batten siding than those I could find in CA, so I took a decent image off Google and generated a much better result in Standard View.  PBR tends to show a bright line where the shadows are.

I'm looking for feedback.

During the supply chain delays, I had one contractor request I provide the truss layout and show the revised shape so he could build them by hand.

The local truss shops were so far behind it did not make sense to wait on a small remodel.

Great way to solve the problem!!  Thanks so much for finding that Glenn

I always seem to bump up against CA's limited plan fill patterns, and CA says there is no way to make a custom fill pattern in plan view, even though we can make a custom fill pattern in vector view using the texture file.  It would be nice to export that pattern into the pattern library and use it in plan view also.   Or even import new patterns from other sources.

Anybody have a workaround for this?

My two structural engineers are overloaded also.  For now. I suspect that the coming downturn will change all of that for everyone.

Thanks Eric.  Those are great video's on how to work around these column, newel problems.  That will save me so much time on future projects until CA listens to what you've asked for!

I'm sorry if this has been asked and answered already, or if I'm missing something obvious,  But does CA allow us to adjust the newels and post to beam spacing so that I can have wider spacing on the posts and tighter spacing on the newels??

I followed Rene's tutorial on making a symbol.  It took me half a day, but I finally got a good symbol that gives me decent results.

The frame cuts the wall nicely and has stretch planes that work well with 2x6 walls.

Now that it is done, I can insert much faster than the above work-arounds.

Okay. But making a spherical backdrop should be easy, when we are at the clients home most cell phones will do panorama shots.  Any idea what settings will work best?

DH7777 is correct about the limits of what CA offers, but every 3d image I've seen Rene create has very nice spherical backdrops.  It cannot be too hard to make the right edits in PS if we know what the rules are.

21 hours ago, Michael_Gia said:

Here is what the reference display approach, the sales rep was probably referring to…

(not sure this is enough for what you’re looking for, though)

 

 

Wow.  How did I miss this powerful reference tool??!!  I'd created so many work-arounds for showing the remodel views with the existing construction and there was now a tool inside CA that did that same thing!  Thanks so much Michael

5 hours ago, robdyck said:

Single click on the property line, then click Object Layer Properties. You can then select or edit the Text Style.

That was helpful.  That little box for OLP I kept missing.  But I still could not get the azimuth settings and decimal settings to display, even though when I clicked the "define" button, then edited the 'Saved Text Style' to be the size, type and height, I could not get azimuth even though 4 popups into this change, I got to 'Number Style' and the final 'Dialog Number/Angle Style' popped up and I changed to 'Decimal Feet' for number style and 'Quadrant Bearing' for Angle style.  That last one would not take on the selected polyline for the lot. 

I'll call SSA and see what they can help me with.

I was going about this wrong.  I needed to go into the 'Default Settings', 'CAD', 'General CAD' and then tweak the CAD default settings for that particular layer.

That was it.

I thought I'd try and use the more of the features of CA in creating my site plans.

One I like is the ability to show the length and angle of the lot lines just like the surveyor does

in degree's minutes and seconds, along with the length.

Sounds simple and I'm sure it is, but for some reason I'm hitting a wall in getting them to display

as expected.  It has to do with making a setting for the right size of text and then getting it to

display the surveyors notation correctly.   For some reason I cannot find that setting.

This is as close as I've gotten, if I keep forcing it, I'm going to screw up all the other settings.

I noticed that after working on the interior of the kitchen, I lost that invisible corner and the corner came back.  Very frustrating.

Turns out that the "pass-thru" window vanished and I had to reinsert it again, but this time I just made it really small with "no corner" checked

and then dragged them both to the corner and beyond.  Then dropped in the NanaWall door and dragged it into the corner overlapping the 

pass-thru.  That seemed to work.

Now I just need some of Rene's PBR magic and Chad's landscaping mastery to make these pop.

20 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

I'm not sure if I am one of those users you mention, but will say that my toolbars are setup so elaborately for the purpose of training. Otherwise I work with nearly no toolbars cept for custom tools I've created which cannot be bound to hotkeys in a traditional way. Other than that I use hotkeys for everything.

Hot Keys for everything? Wow. I don't use a single hot key.  Odd, considering that was the only way I drafted back in the days of AutoCad or early CAD software.

I really hate to admit this, but I'm still using CA's plain vanilla toolbar setup, and after watching a few video's from power CA users, I can clearly see the advantage and time savings in setting up a very custom set of tool bars that would save time over time.

Can you guys point me in the right direction of CA tut's or share images of your best toolbars?

I got it to work with some fussing from 2-d to 3d.  Seems a bit easier to make the final adjustments in 3-d.

Such an odd work-around, but it does work to insert a pocket door into a window pass-thru.  Who'd have thunk that?

Supporting the roof with steel beams is pretty easy on new construction, but much harder on existing with an expansion.

That was it. But it only works when you have two in place.  When you place one and go to that tab the corner post check box is greyed out.  Not till you add a second one is it available to uncheck.  Work great.

What doesn't work is trying to insert the Cero door.

What do you mean by "turn everything off?"

That NanaWall door wants a full wall to insert, so how do you "drag it into position"?

It is a thing.  Thanks Chopsaw.  I just wish your answer was a bit more verbose.

I tried several things and almost got it looking right.  Almost.

So basically here are the steps:

1. you cannot use ANY type of door opening tool, Use the Window Pass-Thru to generate and opening ( I can get very close using a pocket door and tweaking the settings)
2. Modify the height of the pass thru to mirror the type and style of NanaWall you want to use
3. Then try like hell to drag the ends of the two openings past the corner...
4. turn off all casings inside and out
5. turn off window frame
6. grab center of opening and pull past corner for both openings

Then if your lucky, there will be no corner?

I still get a tiny corner, and I'm stuck on how to now get the Cero door by NanaWall to insert into that opening.

What steps am I missing??

I cannot find a good way to make an invisible corner NanaWall where the two meet and close in that corner, with no structural corner post.

Any ideas?

My structural engineer likes to use odd characters to represent the various hold downs and straps, and I've always drawn them, saved them as a symbol, then notated them using a note and arrow.

Would it not make more sense to simply add the feature of creating a custom shape for the "arrow head" that we could use instead of a custom symbol?

All I want is the ability to insert an alpha-numeric character on the end of a leader line.  Too much to ask for?