robdyck

Fellow Canuck available with experience in your neck of the woods and knowledge of Canadian building codes! I'll send an email!

Yes!! Now we will all sleep soundly tonight knowing that those decks will remain up!

like...kid rock?

No, I wouldn't. In the elevation vector view, I'd just drag in the image file and move it to that location. You'll need to re-size it and adjust the drawing order as dragged-in images are in the back.

I hear you. Just trying my best to work with the tools Chief has available!

This is one example I made awhile back for a different project. It's not as nice as your example, but this is just to show some of the principles that can be achieved with Chief. This was made to a specific style requested by the client. I think you could get pretty close to you example, but I agree with you; gradient fill and image transparency settings would be fantastic. The contrast shading below was done using Sketchbook to edit the image created in Chief using cad tools.

You could also use png image files, but in Chief they will cover each other. You may find that looks acceptable. To some, it might even look better. Obviously it would be a slightly different style. https://pngtree.com/freepng/top-view-tree--color_5517322.html

Not for a transparent image, but you can create a replica of gradient fill using CAD tools. This is a crude example using the same cad block, copied 4 times, and cut to different sizes with same fill overlaying each other. I used 4 so the shade variance is obvious. This could be enhanced using more than 4 and would be somewhat dependent on the type of media being presented.

These types of cad blocks for trees are easy to create. For an image like the one above, I don't think you'd need more than 10 different ones and some could be the same, just sized differently with different fill shades and transparencies.

Michael, not to be contradictory, but when I look closely at that image, I don't see any gradient fills, only transparent fills, perhaps with the exception of those yellow trees. That image looks like a sat photo with a transparent white fill covering it to provide white shading. The site elements can 'easily' be recreated in Chief using CAD tools and blocks. With a bit of planning and setup I think you could get very close to that result. Special consideration to the use of layers and drawing orders and CAD block names would be important.

Draw a cad or construction line to represent the center line of the building. Use the edit area polyline tool to copy the plan and reflect it about that center line. During that process you can also easily relocate the new side forwards or backwards to create an offset (if needed) using the transform / replicate tool.

If you are using a vector view, simply adjust the material pattern to account for the tile size plus the grout size. I'm not aware of any tile pattern that provides 2 lines to represent the actual grout width, rather the pattern accounts for same edge to same edge distancing. If you need to show dimensions to the pattern lines, then make a cad detail from the view after you've made all your pattern adjustments.

You just need to open the window first. Then you have a window seat.