robdyck

@DH7777 tsk, tsk, tsk. You gotta learn about layer set and saved plan views. It'll make things much easier!

Start with getting rid of the hole in your floor and specifying the room as open below.

Labels, NO. Object, Yes.

Of course there's a learning curve with PBR but I really don't have any 'setup' time anymore. Almost everything just got 'dropped in'. All my settings, and scene conditions are saved either in defaults or in my library. I didn't spend even 15 minutes on this; the only things not part of the actual plan are the plants, the car, the fence. Those 3 things took less than 2 minutes to add. Interestingly enough, I find PBR more predictable that RT. If I were being paid extra for a rendering for a home, I'd use RT or outsource to someone proficient with Lumion, or Twinmotion or Thea. However, in my market, my clients don't want to spend anything extra on 3d. That leaves me with a choice: I could tell them that I can't deliver any renderings without additional fees, or I can learn how to deliver (what I think are better than acceptable) renderings for virtually no additional time and exceed their expectations. And I'll point out that visualization is the claim, not photorealism. I'm in Alberta so photorealism would require a jacked up F350 and I haven't yet found a 3d model of a truck that truly meets my redneck expectations! Perhaps you should post an example of an exterior RT that one could be proud of and elaborate on the camera, lighting and RT settings you use.

Forgiveness has been granted! Physically Based Rendering is a rendering technique. It's built-in to Chief and available for most camera types.

There is no terrain in that interior render. Same home, but 2 separate files for interior and exterior to help reduce file size, surface count, and lighting confusion (both mine and the computer's). Sunlight set to 500 Lumens.

That blueness is caused by the color of my backdrop, mostly a blue sky with a few clouds. If I change it to a sunset type of backdrop for example, it would be a bit pinkish or orange. I'd be all over Lumion if I had paying customers!

As a matter of fact I do!

PBR exterior. Time to render: 3 seconds. This is the real advantage. Great results for almost no effort which is needed for customers who won't pay for renderings. Small tip / note: the 'color' of the backdrop will affect the 'tone' of the shadows and materials slightly.

Both have pros and cons. That being said, IMO nothing outweighs the speed of PBR. Raytraces can produce great results, but getting there is very slow. All the lighting will need to be different than in a PBR which can make it confusing, and you'll need to wait a fairly long time to see the effect of any change. Then, if the change is not desirable, you'll need to repeat the waiting process. So, separate lighting scenes are critical for separate saved cameras.

Aonther option is to connect a short invisible wall segment using a 'room divider' wall type perpendicular to the railing. Then reverse the layer direction of one side of the railing. It should create a newel at that junction. Simply center that wall segment in the room, or dimension it for a more specific placement. The newel would be placed without the invisible wall segment, just by reversing the layer direction, but the invisible wall segment gives you a simple 'slide' to move that connection where you'd like it. Of course, your railing must be reversible! Chief_Architect_Premier_X11_2019-10-26_08-31-56.mp4

And you are so kind!

Have you tried making your offending wall a 'through wall' at both its start and end?

I don't know...and that's why I don't like it in this instance. In the example above, I have 2 soffits to create the lowered ceiling, because it needs to wrap around the corner and a soffit can't have a break. On the short side, the soffit isn't being cut by the wall, but on the door side, the soffits are being cut by the wall, even though they're touching in plan view. I have no issue with the soffit tool, but its behavior here suggest to me it's not quite right for this application. I just like using the tools where I know what's drawn in plan view will give me the desired result. It skips the messing around. I'm not saying it can't be done with a soffit, but why hunt for all the various checkboxes until you get the desired result, when there's quicker, simpler, more predictable options. I just like the quickness of creating a room polyline, convert to psolid, open and define, done. For the bath, create room molding for the crown, and perfect, predictable edge control.

It's weird...that works if the material region is created in the attic, but not on the actual floor! At least that's what I found. Good to know, another tool in the tool box.

You can do both, just create copies of the perimeter and new layers to help you separate some of those lines, and use the drawing order tools to help with display. Reference layers in your saved plan view are also available to help manage display.

And here's why I don't like soffits for this application. I'd rather use a psolid for the ceiling, and make a room molding for the crown. A light still works, you just need to offset it. These items are faster IMO than messing around with soffits, material regions, etc. But as mentioned, there's often many ways to skin a cat!

Here's why I lean towards p solids over material regions. The material region is slower, and that's without cutting the finish layer. Chief_Architect_Premier_X11_2019-10-23_12-35-17.mp4

Not to be contradictory, but in my experience material regions generate quite a bit slower than p-solids. Both objects have their pros and cons, but I find material regions to cause a fair amount of slowness. Cheryl makes a great point if you're planning to develop your design with even more detail.

Simple question: is there a way to get an object to automatically assume the drawing group of the layer it's placed on? For example: if I need to draw a couple of CAD lines to show a footing, I'll place them on the footing layer. But I also need to choose the drawing group. It would be handy if when I choose the footing layer, it automatically adjusted the drawing group. It also seems like it might be kind of handy for the drawing group to be available in Layer Display Options.

That works. Why do you know that?! Also, it appears as though the arc needs to be broken to become a polyline.

That makes sense. I can't see myself using a CAD detail for a site plan so I'll carry along until number styles become available like text styles!

Thanks for the advice Michael! Of course it takes a bit of exploration to decide what method works best in each situation, so I'll definitely be exploring these further. The one thing about referenced text macros and arrows is that I find the the arrow connection to be unstable if there are multiple objects, in this case, lines, in the same place. Meaning that I feel I can't have confidence that it will remain connected to the initial object and subsequently may 'grab' a different object and then of course it would report unintended info. Also, I did just notice that the referenced macro doesn't want to report the length of another arrow or an arc. Chief_Architect_Premier_X11_2019-10-22_13-44-00.mp4

The latter.

My active cad layers are different for almost every layer set, and certainly for the views I mentioned. Yet when I changed the number style for my 'Site Cad' layer, it affected both views. Here's a screenshot of a polyline in my site plan view showing the default number style. Polyline showing metric lengths. and here's a screenshot showing that the default cad layer was affected. A separate polyline now show metric lengths. I'm not sure if that made sense but the number style change for the Site, CAD layer affected the DEFAULT CAD LAYER.