Christina_Girerd

Yes, I wish we had import/export capabilities for plan views also. Then it would match what we already have for layersets and annosets. I was just working with some older plans yesterday that I wanted to use as a base for a remodel and was frustrated by this. While of course we can create new plan views each time, it still takes a lot more time than a simple import would, plus with importing, you could make sure you had a consistent set of plan views in each file with all the underlying settings (floor level, save zoom or not, etc) how you expect them.

Okay - thanks.

I just ran the Chief update this morning, and this is what the help says when I select it from the Camera dbx... different than what yours says... ???

I'm trying to get the camera symbol in plan view to automatically display the camera's name. In the Camera Spec dbx, Plan Display tab, I select "Display as Callout" and according to the help file, if I have no text in the "Text Below Line" box, checking "Automatic" will populate that lower line in the callout with the camera's name. But I can't get it to work. If I unselect "automatic" and type the name in myself, it shows fine. I just can't get the Automatic part to work. Any suggestions?

Interesting seeing the "history" of people's CAD usage. Here's my little trip down the memory lane of CAD programs I used before Chief. My first CAD course was AutoCAD 2.0 in 1984, which I took as a summer course at a local junior college because Cal Poly, where I was getting my architecture degree, didn't even offer CAD yet. I quickly discovered that I loved CAD! I loved being able to have a straight line be a straight line. I loved not having to use sliding straight edges, rulers and triangles or worry about smudges. I loved being able to decide how thick a line should be and knowing that a line 7'-4 1/2" long would be scaled correctly. I loved not having to use ink on mylar or having to use electric erasers for "boo-boos." I saved up money and got a 512K MacIntosh so I could use MacPaint to help me do drawings in school. (There were only two programs then - MacWrite and MacPaint.) I'd print out 8x11 sheets on my dot-matrix printer and tape them into big drawing sheets and go to the Copy Center store to make a large print. About my 4th year at Cal Poly, the makers of "PowerDraw" (I think that was the one) started recruiting some of us architecture students to beta test it's CAD software on the MacIntosh computer. Around that time we also got MacDraw and MacDraft, and then MiniCad. I think I used all of them at one time or another. When I graduated, I got a job at a company that used McDonnell-Douglas CAD software that was the same as used to design the Space shuttles. It was run by a very expensive mainframe computer and after several weeks of training, we got to go in the freezing cold darkened room with a couple stations to do our work. The company had drafters on those stations 24 hours a day because it was so expensive. I got the 5am to 1pm shift. After about a year or two, those of us that had used Mac computers tried to convince the bosses to shift to individual computers. We finally convinced them to switch to Vectorworks, and thankfully didn't have to do round-the-clock work shifts anymore! I used that program for many years. I eventually started my own business and had a church project that was very complicated to do, and at that time it took 15-20 hours to get a single final raytrace image. I saw an ad for Chief Architect in a magazine while working on that project and decided to try the trial version. I was able to do things so much easier and more intuitively, I was amazed. I ordered Chief 9.5 that very week and haven't looked back since!

Living in the middle of Silicon Valley, I anticipate that clients will eventually insist on a VR experience of their remodel/new housing before they sign off on the design. When I started giving my clients 3D panorama views of their projects last year such that they could stand in the middle of their old kitchen and spin around and view the new design on my tablet (I remember all the VR goggles were sold out at that time around Christmas!), or stand in their backyard and view the new deck, their expectations are permanently changed and 2D drawings or even still 3D views are no longer sufficient. They want the immersive experience. In cities that are particularly picky on design and zoning requirements, I might well expect them to require submittal of a 3D view for planning that also includes 3D exterior models of neighboring houses so they can easily verify the daylight planes, setbacks, how it fits in with the neighborhood, etc. Possibly they will have you put your new 3D model somehow in a Google Maps type 3D environment with the existing streets and other houses already there.

Version 9.5

While this doesn't deal with the particular raytrace specs, here are a few tips I learned from my early raytracing that you might be able to apply. I raytrace on almost every single project I do, and I've found that I can do fewer passes with larger raytraces and get a better looking result than smaller one with more passes. I typically do raytraces of 3000 or 5000 pixels wide for my clients, normally no more than 10 passes and resize it smaller when I put it in the layout file. If I just need a little overall brightening, I have found it is far faster to just brighten it up in my paint program. I end up brightening up almost all the raytraces I do at least a little. But that only takes a minute. Since you are talking about x7, I looked for an older sample in my files and found a kitchen I did in early 2014 - prob x7 or x8? I used to always note the number of passes and the length of time on it, so this particular raytrace was 7 passes, 4000 pixels wide and took 3 hours and 12 minutes. I probably ran it over night back then since it had a lot of lights on. My hardware would have been older and slower too. In the very beginnings of raytracing, I also used to "cheat" and give the ceilings their own material that I would make slightly emissive to generate a bit of their own light since dark ceilings was always an issue. I often put in one or two "add lights" just to add overall brightness to interiors as well. While this may not be purist for getting it all exactly from the scene, it can save a bunch of time. BTW, these days my raytraces only take about 20 minutes or less - progress! Anyway, good luck!

Thanks for the tip about the room dividers Glenn. I just tried a test, and the dimension did seem to act as a maximum. Guess it was too late at night!

I don't normally check any fencing I draw to see how many panels there are of a specific size, so when I tried to do that tonight on a plan, I was surprised to find out that the dimension I enter in the Fencing spec dbx for Newels/Posts spacing is just a general guideline that for a 72" o.c. post spacing, can actually vary from 60" to 80" as drawn by Chief. Is there some check box I am missing that would keep the 72" o.c. spacing and then have the start or end panel be short if needed? Normally for a quick render, I'm happy to have Chief adjust the spacing so it looks better, but for real life, I want the 72" o.c. posts to be drawn as 72" o.c. Obviously I can figure out the panels by dealing with the dimensions and dividing, but I just assumed I'd be able to quickly count the number of panels because I had entered a specific dimension. One of those things I'm surprised I never noticed before...

Very nice - thanks! I'm always needing a nice chimney stack like that. Your fireplace insert is really well done too. All will be used a lot. Appreciate your sharing.

Chopsaw - I took your plan and saved camera and had fence gaps, as you can see in the first image. But then I tried Brad's suggestion and angled the camera toward one of the corners and that worked. I tried messing around with distances of objects behind the camera and in front, and that didn't seem to change things, but facing the farthest clipped corner worked, so all good for now. Hopefully that issue will eventually be resolved though, as when I'm showing a client a panorama, I like to control what is the first view they see. Thank you both for your help.

The default settings for the camera I was using on that last test (which was just terrain, one rectangle slab, and 2 trees, besides the fence) were: Incr. Move: 12", Incr Rotate: 10 degrees, Ht above floor: 60:, Field of View 55 degrees, tilt 0, clip Surfaces 24" and Remove Wall 48". I just tried the same square field and fencing with your camera settings and didn't notice any difference - still had stuff disappear about the 200' mark.

Thanks for the suggestion about distance. That seems to be the issue. I did try replacing the camera too. In a test file with a square terrain surrounded by a fence and the camera in the middle, I gradually increased the size of the terrain and kept the camera roughly in the middle. I started getting gaps in the fence when the camera was just over 200' from the fence corners, and the gaps increased as I increased the distance. When I increased the fence distance just on one side of the terrain and left the camera in the same spot, the gaps in the fence proportionally increased on that size. I colored each chunk of fence differently so you can see where the "corners" are in this flat pano view. When I put a tree and a building in each far corner, those didn't show either. So it appears things over 200' from the camera don't show.

I had to share a panorama with a couple clients this morning that had parts of the back fence "wiped out" by the panorama background. Fortunately it was just a rough draft for a casual meeting. I have never noticed this before on other panoramas. I did a couple tests with the file where I took off the panorama backdrop and used one of Chief's standard backdrops. Same problem. I substituted a solid color for the backdrop, same problem. I took out fences, trees and other items close to the camera, and still had the problem. I ran some quick tests on a new sample plan with a big lot and a fence all around, and no problem, so it seems to be something with this particular plan. I'm attaching the original panorama, part of the pano with the missing back fence circled, a screen shot of the starting camera view of the panorama so you can see the back fence, and an overview shot so you can see there is a basic fence that wraps around all the back of the big parking lot, and the test where I got rid of most items and there is still missing fence. Here is a link for one of the panorama views that has this problem. https://accounts.chiefarchitect.com/360/138621830714104 or here http://www.2vr.in/V-17SM Any suggestions of what might be causing this issue? Thanks. Christina

Thanks for sharing the symbols!

I've also been very frustrated by the lack of a "later" upload too. Sometimes I'm just an automatic pilot, so to speak, and save it and close the window, only to realize a second later that I needed to export it instead. So then I have to use a 3rd party upload site because I'm not going to take the time to redo a long raytraced pano. At the least, maybe they could add a "Would you like upload this?" dbx before it closes.

At the moment, it isn't worth my time to try the symbol change, but if I run across more issues with it, I might try that. I think for now I'll just assume it's a hardwired thing. I was just wondering if there was anything obvious I had missed, but I guess not. Thanks

I put an I-Beam library symbol into my plan and when taking a cross section view, noticed that when I selected it, the temp dimensions were in inches only. I want it to show as '-" format, like my default is set to be. All my Default Dimension settings are set to be '-" format. I rechecked them all. After some quick experimenting, I realized that all the symbols I had selected were from old "ChiefSymbols" symbol sets. I tried a couple other structural elements, and even an outdoor chair from those libraries, and they all had the temp dims in cross section view as inches only. Whereas other non-ChiefSymbols library symbols have the '-" format as I expected from my default settings. In plan view, I can click on those same I-Beam or other ChiefSymbol symbols, and they show temp dims as '-". Below is a section image of the I-Beam symbol selected and showing the inches temp dimensions. Any suggestions on some setting I am missing? Thanks.

As others have mentioned, I also deal with a dozen cities each with variations. Most of them use both FAR and Lot Coverage. Accessory structure calcs change things too - in a project I just worked on, if they are over 120SF, they also count towards FAR, but if less, than they don't. Roof overhangs are another variable that will count towards FAR depending on their depth. A deck might or might not count depending on whether the railing around it is open or closed... And another challenge is that the cities keep adding and changing things, so I still have to recheck all the zoning regs every time for every project to make sure I am accurate. It'd be great to have some of this be more automated, but it is certainly a challenge.

I was just catching up on all the helpful info in here - good stuff! I remembered a few things I've done regarding raytrace light issues. When "diagnosing" a raytrace that gets those funny light spots all over the place in the past, I have sometimes found that a specific light symbols will cause that problem and it is not the raytrace settings. So if I see those spots, I always do a quick check by turning off most lights and running quick raytraces to see if I can pinpoint what light or fixture causes the problem. While it may be raytrace settings, it is usually quicker to deal with a single light causing a problem, so I always check that first. Also remember you can do quick tests by changing the light color of the fixture(s) - open the light spec dbx and go to the "Light Data" tab and change the color of the light from white to pink or something really obvious. I sometimes use this to test the spread of a particular light(s) in a busy scene with a lot of lights, such as a kitchen. You usually just need to run a couple passes to see which light goes where.

In case someone is working on a remodel for a home built around 1895 in the midwest, you might find it interesting to see what the original specifications might have been. While sorting through old family letters, I found the contractor's signed specifications for a relative's home in 1895 Kenton, Ohio. What a contrast with specs for today! I'm hoping I can find a photo of the actual house to go with the specs, but haven't tracked one down yet. 1895 07 17 Specs for A Traeger house KentonOH.pdf

Yes - thanks!

The challenge is if I wake up in the middle of the night - do I run downstairs to the office to see how the raytraces are going, if I need to adjust a light or something and start over?! Hope this doesn't mess up your sleep!

Mike - The firepit is in Chief's Bonus catalog "Patio Firepits" - it is the "Tall Firepit" symbol and the fire is part of the symbol which is why it was showing even though it was daylight. Chopsaw - yes, I have noticed that turns are a bit tricky. As I continued to play with those, I realize I need to set an extra keyframe to help modulate the speed.