DaViper

I know with the machine we are building now, it is an htpc or home theater computer,it certainly has different requirements but it also needs enough beef that if the word ends, I can grab it and make do for a week in a pinch. I was all wound up about RAM only to realize the bottle neck was the HD. It really needs an SSD, but we opted for slower/higher capacity drives because, well, that is what it is for. Who cares that you can open a movie 5 seconds faster. One thing I have learned with PCs, its all relative. Half of 5 seconds is 2.5 seconds. Is that going to improve your bottom line? Half of 30min? Maybe. Do you have something else to do in the mean time? Well, for me, I would certainly say so!

Well, this topic sort of struck a chord with me. Per my other post, I had one of my machines go down, which forced me to review my current machine list. I realized that after my last laptop died, I was not really using one so I just used a netbook for basic stuff. That thing is so slow a snail would laugh at it. I am diving into some other tech work this year. Nothing really to do with CA but I probably should not buy something that won't run it. I like to buy used because I beat stuff up and in general, we are talking in a dirt field or a shop. I don't need to impress anyone with bells/whistles. My needs are.... FAST boots so I am thinking SSD is obvious, 3D CAD/CAM work so good graphics duh, Good screen that I can actually see during the day outside. The rest like fit/finish/audio/size/etc make little difference to me. Which machines shall I look for? I know this is a stupid crawl because all the big players sort of "roll their own' so it is hard to benchmark. I think Asus has some good stuff though? Never used a Dell. Had a Sony Vaio. Ran good until it died on easy street. Gotta have HDMI out!! Actually, the more I/Os, the better. I will NOT spend $1000+ on a laptop. Just don't need it every day. Getting tired of not having a mobile machine though.

Yep, I saw it myself today when I was over there. Black screen on that view, but everything else works fine. Acts like it is working perfect, just cannot see a thing. I will certainly have them try that!

I had him check one and it is loaded with Vista. I guess the software runs on it fine, but will not kick out a 3D render. Is that possibly a setting issue? I could really make brownie points if I could help them through the issue. I think they contacted CA before and told 'it just won't work' so they gave up.

So are you thinking that the above issues are GPU related? No work arounds to just get a display for these guys? Not being a laptop guy at all, can you just buy/install a GPU for laptops or do they need a special MB design with a socket?

Sorry for the extra topic but this is sort of a different direction. I contacted a friend of mine who designs homes and I guess they have CA but indicated that when they got it, they loaded a few laptops as they wanted to be able to show customers their work remotely. He said the software ran but all that could be viewed was 2D stuff. When a 3D view was attempted, it would either error out, or just not open. This really got me wondering what the 'minimums' might be to run just basic 3D stuff on a laptop? He did not even know what version of Windows they had so that is probably the first deal but this really sounded like a video or rendering issue but maybe just the OS? from what I gathered, their laptops were not that new.

Yeah, I am not 'that guy' that spends on the absolute latest and best since it will be outdated before it even arrives. What had me interested in the Xeon is how many cores you can get with them. up to 64 with hyperthreading IIRC. However, I certainly won't write a check for $3K just for a processor, regardless. Just have to find a spot where 'good enough' is OK for me. My machine only works demanding work so many hours/mo. If I was running CA daily, I could see the investment, but it seems maybe the i7 is more for me. how about AMD? GPU or MB thoughts? What spawned all this fun was my theater build crashed after an overheat from dust. Took months after the overheat to give problems but it was a MB failure and that one was the only ASRock MB we have used, and it failed. Not sure if I can blame the MB or my error though. Asus has always been solid for me. We were going to rebuild that machine with another MB, only to realize the 775 socket and DDR3 was not common and had to rebuild it all. Somehow I have been limping along with my office machine with an OLD AMD Athalon 64 single core! I multitask a lot I guess but it is time for an upgrade. I could go to Walmart and grab the cheapest one I can find and still go faster than I have now.....But hey, this thing is solid as a ROCK! Only one PSU, that is it.

Yes, I could turn this whole convo into a comparison of the i7 and Xeon. From what I recall, the Xeon is kind of designed to handle constant heavy crunching, while the i7 might be more like a lot of power for brief periods. I was just reading that enabling all the virtual cores through hyperthreading may not really do much in terms of speed. I think what I will have to look at is if I need to back off of the absolute best CPU and focus more of the budget on the the GPU.

I am going to have to build another computer and I realized with some basic tests that Chief taxes my current system even more than any of my other softwares do so I would like to find out if there are any benchmark tests or links available to determine the best bang for the buck in my new machine build? I am still on the fence between the Intel i7 vs Xeon. Seems about all you dig up online has to do with "gaming"....Something I could care less about. I know the Xeon class seem to be built for this type of work, and can have many more virtual cores, but when looking at certain tests and reports, some feel they are kind of a waste of cash vs the best i7. I won't be taxing my system every day. Many days are nothing more than emails and basic files. I probably tax my system 3days/mo with some type of 3D work. Anyone here push their system with clocking and whatnot? I typically run a little hotter settings but stable is most important. I have an older Gigabyte MB with i7 950 and kinda need a little more from that one. My newest build will have to be a ground up. I tried Ray Trace with my old machine and stopped the cycle after realizing it was going to take WAY too long. Also, from what I gather so far, it seems that typical renderings in 3D space are primarily just GPU heavy, correct? And Ray Trace is what pushes the CPU?

Sorry, I have never worked with a second level. I seemed to have got what I need with the edit/copy/paste features to get those features to move to the second level. However, my next issue is getting this ceiling/floor figured out. Only part of the building will get a second level. Do I need to create invisible interior walls to build the floor structure over just that area? When I create new walls on the second level, they generate with a space between levels for the floor structure.

Well, just in the sake of progress, I basically have a bunch of columns in the 'framing-posts' layer, and roof trusses in the 'framing-trusses' layer. I have a concrete slab for the floor. When I build the new level, I used the 'derive 2nd floor from first floor'. It brings in the ext walls on the second floor, but nothing else. I have those layers turned on, have tried to select a different layer set, you name it. I am sure I am just missing a setting to allow all my wood members to be visible on the second floor? Or do I have other settings messed up? I am not too familiar with the 'floor reference' menu but have tried about all of them.

I tried that. My inet is probably too slow. Fileconvey has always worked for me. I did test the link and file and seemed to work? I did have to reload the link. Can you test again?

OK, you should be able to use the linky. http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=g5f348f8eedf0768b999887573407c281e8457e75a Here are a few questions or issues I have. 1. Need to generate the large partition wall from floor to roof at the 36ft mark where the roof truss is. 2. I would like to know how I go about creating floor trusses between floors? Never done that. Please take note that this is a quick rendering and there will probably be some layout issues. Simply trying to play with a floor plan.

By adding the second floor, that seemed to have fixed the issue with the odd wall heights. Thank you for that! One issue I still have is getting all my framing members to display on the second floor set. All layers are toggled on but will not display. It seems to bring in the exterior walls but not the columns, trusses, etc. I am sure I have missed a setting somewhere?

Is there a way to correct what I have now? I am too far along to start over. It seems whenever I tried to generate that big partition wall, I did something. All walls are generating to the right height but when I mess with that partition wall, things go whacky. I would not care if I had to generate a lower wall, then an upper wall.

I probably got started wrong with this but the plan is a post frame building with interior buildout. I generated a ceiling plane to create the roof trusses correctly. Now that I am trying to apply interior walls, they are coming in too tall or sometimes making very odd features at the top of the wall trying to follow the top of something. They are not going all the way up to the ceiling plane. What I am trying to do is generate a single partition wall all the way from floor to roof line across the whole building at one of the truss lines. Then apply 9ft interior walls within an area, and set a second story floor over those. Do I need to somehow generate a ceiling plane for the first floor at my desired height? How can I do that since I already have my ceiling plane defined for the trusses? That change will likely change the trusses. I tried building just 4 walls in the area and double clicking to edit the height but the walls will not come down. Sometimes it will even generate only parts on the top of the wall, but not the lower areas. EDIT: It seems I must have made the entire building into a room or CA auto generated that. Is that going to cause issues? If so, how can I change that? after double clicking within the building, the room spec window showed up showing the same height as my walls were being built to so I changed that and seems to be better for now. EDIT: well, it seems to be building walls correctly other than the one line where I tried to create a floor to roof wall. If I create any wall connecting to that, it takes the wall up and does odd things at the top. I know when I was trying to generate the wall, I deleted a couple things and got errors that I was deleting something that would not be regenerated. How can I fix that?

Well that is sort of a CAD "need-to-have" but I guess I will make do. The issue is that some of my points exist in other sectors of the cartesian map. IE, negative values. Next I will have to determine if I need to or can even add scale factors.

I am needing to plot some survey points on a grid and need to move my origin point. It is currently oriented at the top left corner of the page. Is there a way to move this?

Would I need to go back and rebuild all the trusses with a "raise off plate" value to get this to generate correctly or is this just an issue I cannot easily get around?

When I selected "balloon through ceiling" on my gable end walls, Chief generated a 2x4 solid wall up the whole gable side but did not add my metal siding to it. Is there a way around that? Also, I was reading where I might have needed to add to my "raise above plate" value to get things to work right but a little too far to redo this. I am trying to get siding on the side walls to extend over the truss heels?

Thank you Glen. That got me pretty much what I needed.

I am doing a flush purlin design where each purlin will sit in a hanger on the sides of the trusses and sit flush with the top of the trusses. When I generate any framing member, they want to locate vertically. Which function should I be using to allow an angle on the frame members? or is there a better way to do this?

Alright Glen, I was able to sort of reproduce the result in my test plan so I moved over to my pole building plan and I am still getting confusing results. I will again get the heel that I desire in your pic above on one side only. I made very sure I had the walls turned on and drove that line. The roof planes are auto generating either the plane or the baseline 1/4" out which makes the truss heel sit out away from the framing that much. When I move that back and rebuild the truss, it moves the heel I want to the OTHER side! I cannot get it to produce that heel at both ends. Obviously it has something to do with the roof plane setup but my results are so unreliable, I have to be doing something wrong. Again, here is a file to load and review. http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=ge8adc8f575e4e4da9997595772ab95c4a8da0c85a

You guys got it! Tell me what I am missing here? I only had a few minutes to play with it a bit but certainly seems this problem is being caused by the roof plane not being far enough outside. Glen, how did you produce the truss above? was it by raising the ceiling just a touch? It really won't matter on my design, as there won't be a ceiling but it seemed to generate the truss I wanted. I probably should do more reading but I am still pretty unclear on settings for ceiling and roof plane heights. The way I was doing some of the raised heels, I was just raising the roof plane 'x" amount from what it was. i assume the right way is to either use the "raise off plate" setting in roof setup but I was surprised you cannot set that after the fact?

Pretty darn close. Actually, I think I spoke too soon on the roof plane edit. I Did end up with at least the same heels but I am wondering about making the heel like the one in my pic above as TR-0? I seem to remember playing with the ceiling height a bit and it did that. Never the less, I think we are really close. The issue is the energy or raised heel truss design that needs siding over the truss. I need that truss to be flush with the wall, not the siding but I am sure we can play with it a bit after I get the right truss design to come up. Thanks guys! I think we are super close. Figured it was nothing major.