jtcapa1

I got lucky and managed to swap out my old 1080ti GTX card for the 3060Ti RTX card, which took less power than my GTX did. The only thing I was not aware of until I completed my install, is that the GPU ray tracing ONLY works in the Physically Based mode. You can still do a classic ray trace, but it will use your CPU which is much slower. The PBR is very fast, as it seems to fill in the scene pixel by pixel versus the CPU version of setting the number of passes then watching the clock to see how long each pass is taking. I would only ask for some indication of what the render scene is doing. Seems the longer you leave it the better it can look, but it is subtle.

Has CA let us do these now?? I still cannot get it right.

Thank you. I knew you guys could see the pathway I was looking for but could not find. I think this heat is getting to me.

Thanks Chopsaw! I was working till 10pm yesterday due to the heat outside, and my brain was not working right! So that was a blonde moment. Thankfully you saw the simple and obvious solution. I owe you a coffee!

Is there any way to make the railing to beam height lower? For the life of me I cannot find a way to drop the beam below the adjacent roof eave

I have a client with a specific cabinet they want in their nook and I thought I could draft it easy enough with the door hardware, but quickly found that CA seems to have a limit to how cabinet door handles are located. It seems to be global to the specific cabinet, so even though I can have a top or bottom hinge cabinet door, or two banks of double doors, the handle locator is off. I've had this issue for years with pantry cabinets when I want the handles close to each other, but this is the first time I've tried a combo unit with two different style of doors. The main issue is that CA does not want to display the handle for the top hinged door at the top or bottom but defaults to the side??

I'm hoping to get some help in puzzling out if I should upgrade my existing system, or cash out my IRA to buy a top of the line system? Real world RT time test would be very helpful for us. The only way I can think to do this is by rendering a file that has some preset lighting and have everyone with a GPU capable system render the same camera setting for a specific number of passes. Just turn all all the lights and see how long it takes to do 10 passes.

Does it matter for the graphic rendering in X13 if the CPU is a Razen versus an Intel i7? Most of the specs tout the Razen as blowing the intel cpu's out of the water for graphic renderings, but I got confused in that AMD cpu's don't have a built in graphic card. Right now, I've got a 1080Ti GTX card that won't RT any faster than X12 because it must use the CPU to do RT'ing. So as I look to update my rig, I'm wondering if I'm better served in RT scenes (I do a lot of very complex interiors) if I went with a complete AMD chip set and CPU with a 3060 RTX instead of intel. Any thoughts or comments or comparisons?

Looks like the technology is improving and dropping in price. I've just watched a Dot3d presentation for doing indoor scanning using existing mobile devices. BUT it does not look like CA yet supports importing these files like ACAD can. Is that a feature CA will be supporting soon? 6 Bedroom House - 3D Scanned with Dot3D™ Pro & Intel® RealSense™ D455 (dotproduct3d.com) Ideally, if CA could import the native *.dp format, these files are small! E57 format is the next best.

I've asked CA to correct this before. I think you need to post that ask in the suggestions forum and get it on their short list. There are many issues with the tails as they extend past the walls and join up with fascia, subfascia and soffits.

Well I guess we did not rate highly enough with CA for the "private invite". Public beta testing is mostly in name only while they work out the final bugs before release.

As long as you can import the detail and then make those changes, it would save time. This assumes some level of knowledge of your own market. You cannot be concerned about what the less experienced user might do with them. I do love the 3d cut-aways, as I've been putting 3d framing perspectives on my construction documents for years now. What I love about CA is that I can basically put every single stick of framing in any project, manipulate them, colorize them and then create a great 3d framing perspective like this: My structural engineer now has to spend less time load tracing, since I've not only done it, I've made it easy to see. I even upload these 3d models to the CA cloud viewer so the engineers can see it in detail. I honestly spend way too much time completing these 3d models, by including all those great 3d Simpson hangers and fasteners.

Even though this is from the UK, many of the details are useful, including the 3d cut away sections: Detail Library

I like the ease at which this can be done for sure. We already take copious photographs of the existing home, so this is a small step in a slightly different direction. I like the "augmenting" the flow by taking some critical measurements, so that the 3d scan becomes more accurate. Just a couple of quick X,Y & Z measurements of some of the rooms could get the accuracy much closer. But right now you've got a disconnect that could easily be overcome: I've seen other recent software measuring tools that incorporate inputting on the fly measurements while you take those Lidar images. See the new Houzz Pro 3d App That would put those critical measurements into the scan, saving time and money on your end. Question: Is there another device one could buy that is not an iPad or iPhone? Some kind of handheld Lidar attachment?

That is why we come here to pick the brains of all these experts that have been making CA do what it was never designed to do, since it was first created. I love and hate 3d CAD; in that I love the visual end results but hate the amount of time I spend monkeying around with it. Or as Glenn might say: "it was a dog's guts of a problem, brought in by a chap that's Few roos loose in the top paddock, but with a little encouragement and a zoom lesson, he'd have a go, ya mug, who in the end was a fair dinkem Shark biscuit, and went straight to the pool room" So in the end Glenn helped me suss it out, and he's a top bloke in my book. :-)

Sure. I've played with that and you can if you want to spend more time. It is a fun exercise in geometry to get everything lined up.

With Glenn's help I created a video tutorial on how to do a spiral stair, or at least the one I'm showing. Due to size limits here on chieftalk, I'll host this on my drop box account so this link should get you to the video How to draw a spiral stair

Thanks Glen, I struggled with CA and could not get what you did. Any chance you can either do a quick video of the steps you took? Or at least a description? Maybe a Zoom call. I could not get a smooth rail, nor glass. I've got some banana's I had to grab a model off of the sketchup warehouse to do this, but it is limited to the model created.

I agree, CA should have a better spiral stair tool. Can you do this one Glennw?

I too noticed a new library called Chief Gear, and it made me think I should buy some of that swag. Guess what? They don't sell any Chief Gear, just reserved for their design competitions.

You might update your codec also. I remember having a similar issue that was solved by doing that. I also changed the video format I saved to, so you have a few options.

Your welcome Perry. I have always included as much 3d information as possible on my permit documents for the benefit of the Contractors and subs. I've actually had one building official ask me to take it off because it confused her?!* I know it is not to any kind of AIA standard but in this brave new digital world it is just another small step in the direction of clarity of intent and purpose. I spend so much time making accurate 3d model's it is a shame not to show. Now we can also distinguish between existing and new! Love it.

Thanks Doug, I finally got serious about making video tutorials for CA as a very fast and informative way to show what I'm trying say with words. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a video is worth much more. :-)

Thanks for that simple set of solutions. I create and use terrains and often generate them before I do a foundation plan, so pushing it down is more trouble than I usually want to undertake. So I made a quick and dirty video of my preferred solution. TerrainClipping.mp4

Okay. I am basically just putting out a thank you to CA for adding more flexibility of the object boxes we send to layout. Instead of just being a 4 sided box, we can now break them into any shape we want. Why is that so COOL you ask? Let me show you via a video tutorial I made for my draftsman. MultiColor3dIsoNew_Existing.m4v