kylejmarsh

100% of the time it's faster to update your elevation views directly in Layout, as opposed to when you're updating the view. Always say no and you will save a lot of time.

I've observed that this dialog is missing the 'hide for this session' like many of the others do, and therefore it seems like the Most Annoying Dialog that I Never Want To Say Yes To - therefore possibly making it the most useless thing in Chief. Actually a pretty good find now that I think of it. 

Anyway here is a graphic which explains it all. Enjoy!

I've never been able to get sequential hotkeys to work. I'm on Mac so maybe that has something to do with it. Mine are all key or  modifier+key

Yes I find that turning down the Diffuse is the key to getting things to look a lot better. It's always set to 100% and that's almost never correct - I ususally bounce between 75-85% on most things as it looks better.

9 hours ago, Christina_Girerd said:

es, helpful detail to make sure the grass is "matte" and adjust diffuse.  I do this too, forgot to mention it. 

Not perfect, but it's an improvement. Use a bump map (can just use the same texture image for 2048 grass) and reduce the 'diffuse' on the material.

On 2/27/2021 at 2:45 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

You shouldn't need to do that if you have Chief's out of the box Toggle Modes toolbar turned on...

I did not realize that changing those snaps has an effect on the temp dimensions. I turn them off usually but that's becaune I find them too busy - this may be a solution. Thanks

On 10/9/2021 at 4:48 PM, Ebb001 said:

In Layer Display Options....

1. Switch Layer Set to All Layers OFF
2. Check the box to View Walls
3. Check the box to Lock Walls (this makes walls un-selectable)
4. Check the box to View Doors or Windows (Do not lock!)
5. Now drag cursor or ctrl-A to select the doors or windows.
6. Edit, Move or Delete or whatever you need to do..
7. Viola! Unlock and uncheck walls and doors/windows and go back to Working Plan View

This works but it is a PITA - when your model gets larger it takes a minute to have everything cycle off, then you have to do the selecting, etc etc. it's typical Chief because it takes seven steps to do what should be a keystroke or single click.

EDIT: I would respectfully add that this feature which is requested, to me, seems like it gets to basic functionality and user interface design. This is not the only issue, only the 'canary in the coal mine' - and speaks to a deeper requirement of updating the User Interface. Now that the stability and rendering are there, in my humble opinion if the interface could be upgraded I think Chief could compete with the big guys. But right now new people and prospective chief users open up the program and think 'what decade am I in' and they run the other direction - not knowing that under the hood is a LS1 running 24lb boost, it's just hidden inside an old fox-body mustang

Thanks great suggestion.

I've long been a proponent for 'left-hand only' hotkeys for the most part - placing all the most-used tools in the easiest keys. So my index finger 'F' opens up whatever is selected and brings up the dialog box. All home-row on left hand is most useful stuff. I never make any crazy reaches or hard combinations it's all there on my left hand, so I can keep the right hand on the mouse. Hope that makes sense.

Related Issue: 

Applying a white background image solves both from what I have found today

It has something to do with the 'transparent' background. For many mac users the pdf export for view cameras with transparent backgrounds end up printing as 'black' when printed from pdf, even though you don't see the black background in the pdf itself. The white background seems to solve this - I also noticed that it stopped the black 'flicker' described here as well.

Cheers

Kyle

This is good news. I'm thinking of picking up a small mbp 13 with the M1 chip just to have for client meetings and on the road - so glad to hear it works well!

Thanks for posting. Just a word of caution, this isn't accurate for Michigan either. 

These are our code requirements, which I think are consistent with the IRC but may be state specific:

I take exception to their suggestion to use 32 wide doors minimum, and suggesting 36" wide doors to bathrooms. Unless the person is going to end up needing a wheelchair soon, this door will seem way out of scale for a bathroom and force you to build a bigger room than you need. I almost always use 28" wide doors to bathrooms.

I don't think it's the end of the world if the cabinet door and the door opening have a collision point, though I agree with the toilet one:

There ya go, my 2¢ for what it's worth

Have some pre-set cameras in my template for basic b/w exterior linework views that then sync to the .layout file cover sheet  - which is great in theory but my cameras don't seem to want to behave:

Of course sending to layout as an 'image' solves this - but I wonder why the cropping changes when using the live camera?

I tried a second camera view and it seemed to work more closely to how you would expect. Nearly identical cropping on these two:

Kyle

I know this issue well, though I haven't seen it much in X13. If I'm not mistaken, I was able to trace it back to a specific tool in one of my custom toolbars that didn't exist anymore. Or perhaps it was a single tool which appeared in two different toolbars? I do remember it was some flaw in my toolbar arrangement.

Other steps I took before figuring it out: 

1) Kept all toolbars in the same position and turned on for all views - 3d, cad, 2d, layout, rendering, all of them. This keeps them from flickering around when you switch back and fourth and they just turn on/off as they are enabled. Someone above mentioned that.

2) I organized everything just how I wanted it, and then saved that whole toolbar to the toolbar menu as the 'master' layout. Then I would copy that and only work from the copy - that way if it did become corrupted you could reset it. To reset it, you would have to right click 'customize toolbar' then drag some of the stacked items out of the corner, making a mess. Then you'd have to switch back to the 'master' and make a new copy, deleting the old. But wait! Make sure you don't just try to reboot from the master without clearing some of the stack out of the corner, because if you do it will corrupt your master that you've just tried to switch to. It's a lot but it beats reorganizing things.

Good luck

Kyle

 Here in Michigan you can meet your compliance one of two ways: Prescriptive, or Performance. With the Performance method you have to calculate all surfaces with glass, R-value, etc. just like they do in California. But with Prescriptive you just have to make sure your assemblies meet code insulation values R-21 walls R-38 Roof etc. and windows need to meet a specific U factor - but there's no limit to how much glazing you can have as long as it meets the U-factor. Too bad we don't have any killer mountain views! Guess we have these pretty lakes though

100% I have been spoiled by TM it's amazing software - For modeling Chief all the way but for rendering I just can't afford to use anything else but TM now it's that good.

Mark I'm sorry to hear about it.

I personally have had a great experience with X13 on my mac mini - it runs much smoother than x12 not just in camera views but even floor plan views and layout sheets as well. However check my setup below - I'm running an 8GB Radeon RX 580 which was supposed to be pretty good/stable when I got it. It didn't do anything for X12 because it didn't use the GPU at all. But X13 seems to make pretty good utilization of the graphics card I can fire up the monitor and see it's working pretty hard.

I have noticed occasional crashes and I'd say maybe every other day or so. Hoping this new update will have some effect.

Anyway I do really like the exterior gpu running over thunberbolt (lightning? whatever the new cord is) except when I kick the cord by accident and it crashes. But the Mini + graphics card seemed the best way to do a cheap 'custom' mac without having to get the imac or the really expensive mac pro. Plus I can get other egpus or exterior hard drives and with the new cord it's like having them plugged right into the board on a tower.

My 2¢

Just realized why I missed it - it was also assigned to another hotkey for end to end dimensions. Since that is a plan-only tool, and the perspective crop is a 3d only tool, it had both of them in there under the P. That's why I never caught it. 

You genius! Absolute madman. How did I not see that it was a hotkey?! Not only that but I'm on Dvorak layout so my P is located where your R key is so i'm always using literally every other key in that area. Wow.

Thank you so much. Nailed it.

Kyle

I've noticed this for a while - my exterior camera get's messed up at a certain point so when I try to zoom out with my scroll wheel instead of the camera moving it seems to change the perspective angle - though when I check the camera dialogue box it's still set at 35-degrees.

What gives? Not a big deal I just reboot the camera view but still is odd. Anybody solve this or is it a bug?

Also I noticed you have a mac mini - you might look at getting an egpu (external graphics card) for that - with the new x13 update it runs really really well for both raytracing as well as CD/Layouts.

Wow that does look pretty excellent. Did you set-up a transparency layer as well?

I was able to create a new roof label style in text defaults and force it to have a transparent background - this worked well enough so I'm calling it fixed for now.

Reminds me of the old 'there I fixed it' blog https://failblog.cheezburger.com/thereifixedit

centered well enough, anyway. you can see it hiding there behind the label

Yeah the trick was to add an extra \n before everything else.

Sauce:

indx = $tree['roofplanes'].keys.find_index(id)

result = "\n"

result += areasq.to_s + " sq" +"\n"

result += pitch + "\n"

result += "\n"

result += "Eave: " + eave_fascia_length.to_s + "' " +"\n"

result += "Gable: " + gable_fascia_length.to_s + "' "

result

Thank you thank you for sending the link to that other conversation - maybe I'll delete this one and jump in over there. I am on a Mac yes - I've been using the \n stack to get it just right - had it before so that the arrow was right smack in the middle of the text! looked so sweet. Ok I will check out that other discussion thanks again