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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

Blake posted 5 months ago so he most likely bought something and plus technology has changed since then. Since CA's ray tracing uses CPU cores and virtual cores, then the newer i9 CPU is the way to go...for now.

I hate to admit this but I tend to do way too many project specific detailed sections cuts. I do have about 30 basic details that I can reuse, but on most of my remodel projects I just use CA to draw a section, and if I've taken the time to make a near perfect 3d model I use the live image to draft a 2d looking detail, so it is updated when the plan changes. I'll fill it with custom boxes with different fills as needed and populate it with the text needed to explain everything. I prefer custom details over the canned ones and so does every contractor that builds from my plans. Rarely have any questions or problems in the field. It just takes a lot longer to complete a set of plans as each one is very customized.

I avoided all the surgeries until my "floaters" got so bad that the (3)27" bright white Samsung LCD's were driving me crazy wiping my eyes constantly to try and get rid of something that was not on my eyeball but inside. The bright white screens made it so bad I had to tilt my head and shift it constantly to view around the floating halo inside my eyeball. My main eye doctor just said you have to learn to live with it. I tried for two years, but this floater was almost dead center in my right eye. Imagine swatting at flies in front of your computer monitor all day long! I did not give up and finally found the ONE local doctor that was doing the new YAG laser treatment for floaters. I took 3 visits and about 5000 laser zaps, but he finally got rid of 90% of the Floater giving me grief! Now I want to get a 60" 4k curved monitor, and work from about 4' away. I saw this setup at my local granite cutting company and ended up with Monitor envy!

I agree with most here. I like the idea of 50% for reuse to include redoing the site plan and all the lot coverage calculations, That one sheet can get very involved. I'm okay charging a flat square foot price fee for the first one, which in my area is between $2.00 and $3.00 per square foot depending upon the complexity of the home, and which jurisdiction it is going to be built in. Here in Western Washington, the local jurisdictions are getting Code drunk with power and making everyone's life miserable with complex requests for over reaching information. In some jurisdictions, it can take over 100 hours to create a permit set of plans!! I talked with one local Architect using Autocad that say's he is billing for 300 hours! Which is why Building Designers like myself are getting most of the work. Start to finish, including lateral and gravity engineering, the cost is around $10k for new plans that are 2,800 s.f.

Light adjustment seems to be crucial to the PBR more so than Ray Tracing. I had somehow turned shadows on and I was getting all kinds of weird shadow lines in the PBR's. But literally you need to open the lighting dialog and tweak all the lights until you get the result your after. Seems like that is the smart way to get the image you want BEFORE you spend an hour or evening, doing a high resolution Ray Trace.

Most of us have to do as-built drawings for almost any kind of remodel project and only recently has this program become easy enough to use in the field for drawing on the computer as you take measurements with your laser device. Dan Baumann has shared his tools where he shows a portable table and his laptop as his preferred method of measuring and drafting in the field. I followed that path and have successfully drafted my as-builts in the field too. BUT. It is not perfect by any means. Dragging the table around has its own limitations in small spaces. I prefer to use a mouse so the table needs to be big enough, creating another set of issues. Since we are creating a 3d model as we go, we have to spend more time on the computer tweaking the spacial information as we draft, than the actual measuring and writing down the dimensions. I think Dan even does both. Well, today I saw a more superior method. A commercial company came by my office today to measure up my space and the whole building, and I was so impressed by the tools they had developed I asked questions and asked if I could take a picture. The company is Pace Compumetrics, Inc. and the president, Jody Resnick was the one doing the measuring and her 30 year career with her company and as a BOMA official boils down to a sleek professional and expedient way to do as-builts. The pack she wears with a Surface Tablet is the key. It is made by Tablet EX Gear and is perfect for quickly moving through a space. Her software is a 3d Autocad addon more specific for what they do, but watching her input data with the tablet pen and child icons is very similar to CA. Plus her Lazer measuring device is bluetooth linked to the program like CA. That is the final piece I need to integrate to make the field work faster and more effective!!

Finally! With X10's addition of making any of the polylines sent to Layout complex shapes, I can finally create elevations in Chief Architect which combine color and black and white as a way to distinguish the existing home from the new addition!! It looks great and easily helps graphically determine what is new versus what is existing! I love this new feature so much! Thanks CA coding guru's for this fantastic change. The steps are pretty simple: 1. send the elevation to layout with color and shadows turned on 2. choose the copy in place button and make a duplicate copy right on top of the first one, while selected hit "open" 3. In the Layout Box Specification start with "Camera View" and check the "Plot Lines", but uncheck "Color Fill" as this is the Existing portion of the home. 4. Move down to the Edge Line Defaults and choose a reasonable light weight for your plots (lighter the better) 5. Go to the "Line Style" tab and move this "Existing Home" down the "Drawing Group" so it falls behind the New Colored fill group 6. Go to the "Label" tab and "suppress" the label for the existing only. Now you got a black and white line drawing UNDER the color one, so the fun begins as you start manipulating the top colored view polyline to fit snuggly around the new addition. As you do this you'll now note that the black and white version starts to appear beneath the colored version. This can take time, as you break and bend the polyline, but as you can see the effect is very attractive and easier to read. NewElevations.pdf

It is most likely the actual video card AND drivers then. I've got the MX940 card in a laptop, whereas you have the 980 card. I tried the driver dated 10/12 released on 10/23 and it did not correct the problem ( I was on the Sept driver update when this started) So I can see why software developers like CA have fits and starts when these updates occur across so many platforms, cards and systems.

I'm trying the roll back now. I did try the newest driver but that was a bust, so now the May driver as tech support suggested. Sorry I let my frustration leak out Dermot. First time I've had this kind of problem and first time I've ever had that message from the phone support line. Timing seemed odd, since the Nvidia driver was working fine for several months and magically stopped work today, just when I really need to get a bunch of things done. The my dishwasher leaked out onto my hardwood floors, followed by my wifes car glitching and requiring a new car, then my Aunt died, and on and on, all in one week! Looks like the roll back to the late May 64 bit driver work! *****sigh******

I just uninstalled X9 and reinstalled the older version, open a blank file, inserted a cabinet, open it and tried the "Fill Style" and "Label" option and same problem. That is very bizarre. Now I have to wait for the Tech support to stop training and answer their f****** phones!

Wow. I tried the simplest fix which was to use the last CA X9 update to do a "repair" installation and I'm still having the issue!!! That is a really oddball corruption of the program. I'll have to try uninstalling CA and start my installing an older version and see if the problem goes away and stays away with each update. Bizarre to be sure.

I just now experienced this problem with ALL the objects in X9 plan file. I go and open a specification dialog box and the left most tab that starts with "General" and had several items is now not allowing me to select the "Fill Style" option or the "Label" option. I click on it and nothing happens, but when I then close the dialog box and choose any other object in the plan file then "open" that dialog, it defaults to highlight the last selected options, which in this case was "Label" and suddenly it opens, but if I choose any other item in that dialog and then go back to "Fill style" or "Label" it will not open again. With two people experiencing this, it must be a bug. This was preceeded by a rare CA lockup where I opened a section cut at my stairs, then tried to close the window, but it would not close that window, and I could not select any other windows, but it did allow me to save and close this CA file, so not a hard lockup. Relaunched and opened, only to discover this odd ball issue. I will now reboot my computer and see what happens next. CRAP... I rebooted and relaunched CA, then just on a lark opened a previously good file and it had the same exact problem. I then tried calling a friend with the same CA file and had his try his, and it worked fine. I then called SSA tech support and for the first time ever, I got a recording saying they are in training! YIKES, I then looked out the window to make sure North Korea was not shooting missles over my state. Looks like my copy of CA is now corrupted. Might have to do a clean install. Obviously CA will not be able to solve this kind of problem.