VHampton

Thank you. At the risk of sounding like one of those power users who makes up work-arounds, the program can make pretty much any shape you can think of. I still don't what a Ruby is though, so I guess I'm safe.

Looks great. I was going to suggest making this thing by using the roof tool, using uneven hips, 1 inch thick rafters (no ridge caps and no gutters of course) Place the flue pipe ontop, and convert the whole thing into a symbol. You got it though. Nicely done.

I make yearly Desktop folders for "Chief Drawing files". It's easy to navigate from year to year on various projects this way. The "Archive" folder is intended for resurrecting an old file in case you need to open up a drawing from a previous save. You'll see a whole bunch of both plan files and layout files stored in here. They are basically your safety net in the event of a crash. Archived plans are saved in your Documents folder (Chief Architect X8) along with the core libraries, textures, patterns and everything else. There's really no need to go poking through there unless you have to. Regarding embedded images in your plans...you can make a project folder for each drawing file, and save your information there. Just a thought... It's easy to keep things simple with a basic organizational method.

Agreed with Johnny's method. Case the window as usual, and place a rosette with enough thickness to cover the molding. You can get many things at the 3d warehouse.... Just download the object, and the drag it into you floor plan. (If you have two screens this is a very easy process to drag from your desktop monitor straight into you chief monitor). https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=u1965f32a-e608-477e-9e9f-dec95d9fbddc

Awesome work. Thank you for sharing! I've been using slabs (with a mirrored property texture) on top of the pool terracing. (X8 now allows for mirrors to show up in non RayTrace views.) It looks very nice for renderings, but yours is over the top!

Use a polyline solid with a custom molding polyline for the parapet wall. (set it ontop of your exterior walls) Build the roof with a a very small thickness. (Build the roof inside the exterior walls and with the low elevation as shown) Use trusses from the library, or create your own with molding poly-lines. Steel bar joists from the Sketch-up 3D Warehouse.... https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/search.html?q=steel+bar+joists&backendClass=entity

If the z fighting isn't too bad, you can also click on every roof surface, and thicken them from the default 1/8th inch to 1". This is quick fix rather than shifting the model over. By default I keep all of the roof surfaces 1" thick anyway. They print better in 2D layouts even if asphalt shingles are indeed quite thin.

Thank you. It never occurred to me that you could run A Ray Trace it in less than a dozen passes. After reading your post, I let it run a dozen passes, and hit the export image tab. Presto. Ray Trace in under a minute. Prior to your message, I watched it run pass after pass for over 30 minutes with no end in sight, and finally shut it down. Quite frankly the jiffy method looks not too different than the one that that was taking an eternity. Thanks again. And thanks for the very articulate response regarding the screen captures and resolution. It makes a lot of sense now.

Good question Jon. I only export views from Chief as the highest quality jpeg. Both tiff and png formats are known to provide lower resolution. Regarding my alternate method to Chiefs export tool....If I need a screen capture to better control the viewport, then I use "Snip-it". and this is where my original question comes in. Would a very high quality monitor combined with the Snip-it method provide a better quality capture? At he moment I'm using an old flat screen TV with an HDMI input as my jumbo-tron monitor. Lol It's awesome to work on, but there's some grainy-ness to the screen. On that note, Johnny's work clearly displays some awesome clarity without having to go through the Ray-Trace process. Excellent work. Lumion. Thanks for the tip on the monitor. Ratracing is awesome but the patience to make one is incredible.

I've always wondered about the very slight pixel-ation of the screen captures when you export a view as an image. (Yes there is a setting to fine tune your exported images, but the slight blurriness often occurs no matter how many pixles per inch you crank it up to). Ray-tracing seems to take quite a long time, and I prefer to generate a series of shadowed views instead of only two or three Ray-traces Here is my question(s)... Would a very high quality monitor provide a better view from Microsfot Snip-it for example? Or is the best way to achieve super crisp rendering by doing the painfully time consuming Ray Traces?

Same. Even after playing with the render settings, and camera defaults. Shouldn't be happening. Have tried on both work stations. One with a 1gb ATI graphics card. The other is a new machine with the magic 4gb Nvidia (Chiefs preferred graphics card).

Thank you again Michael. I only used one function on the mouse ever (the orbit tool) because it could do just about anything in getting the sweet spot for a screen capture. My apologies for sidetracking the thread topic, but historically the program updates have not affected the camera, and it immediately appeared as a bug. After tinkering with the render preferences, the issue is seemingly resolved. (Every video card is different and they all need to be synced accordingly). Thank you again for pointing this out! back to the thread....

Thank you Michael. It hadn't occurred to me that the camera tools are slightly different. ...Change just takes a while to adjust to. This may not be a bug. But the scroll zoom (and tilt action) in all other versions offered much better control over the camera views. Just my opinion..

Zooming in on model in Perspective Full Overview camera is too fast. There's no way to zoom in just right. It's either not close enough, or an extra toggle on the scroll wheel brings your camera right inside the building.

The new silhouette people are pretty neat. They cast shadows etc. I kind of like how they don't draw attention, but provide a great representation of scale.

Hey Larry, I'm not so certain that the zoom issue is directly related to a specific kind of mouse. ...meaning that it happens with every mouse. I went back to a usb mouse thinking that the problem would go away, but it hasn't. For now, I guess you just have to be carefully with each scroll of the wheel while zooming. This has got to be a bug. Turning the scroll a few notches in an overhead view shouldn't land the camera right inside the house!! Thanks for bringing this up. I was literally just about to post the same.

Love this feature as well. Have been waiting on this for years. Hands down Chief Architect is now by far the best drawing software on the market because of this upgrade. To answer your question Larry...you can use black and white or colored fill when sending a 2d view to layout. I have been using plants in the background as well. The elevations are amazingly good looking. One note...be sure to have your 3D background turned off in 2D views, or you will have a completely colored elevation view with clouds and sky...or whatever background you are using.

Per the post above....I had the same message, and decided to renew the SSA which still has a month to go before expiring. That's said.... There's no X8 beta download link in my digital locker just yet. Maybe later. Has anyone been able to download it yet/

I noticed the same thing too a while back. Do not return you graphics card. Turn down the undo/redo settings. ...or turn them off altogether Turning this feature off immediately stops your mouse from bogging down.

Pdf files can sometimes be too large for an import. They can bog down the plan file even when imported to a CAD detail. Try importing it as a picture. Every Adobe Reader has the ability to take a snapshot of the pdf. Click on the camera icon, and then right click on the screen after it takes a "snap shot". Then you can paste an image file into your drawing rather than the over-sized pdf file.

By default, I changed the dpi to 300 (when going to print) and any embedded images are saved as PNG files. I've had pdf files files ranging close to 15 megs which is quite largge. The method above was a big help and hang ups while printing isn't as common. Just curious if that may help speed your prints up.

Yes they need to be "blocked" to stop them from pointing every which way. I disagree about having to do them in plan view only. (Even though that's where they are known not to jump). When the program first came out, it was recommended to keep your CAD work to a minimum in plan views. After version ten and up came out, that's where the movement problem was first noticed.

- awning detail... roof awning with boxed eave and corbels.zip

Manually drawn. This should be quite easy. Just drag a small roof along the outside wall, adjust its height, and find a couple of corbels in the library. The library doesn't have anything like this in stock. I suppose you could draw one in a blank plan and turn it into a symbol if you needed multiple copies.

Window canopy or window awning.