rlackore

I used the lights already in the OP's plan - nothing extra. I agree that lighting is half the battle (material definitions being the other half), and supplemental lighting is often needed to achieve acceptable results.

I'm on X10 Premier, so I don't know if Interiors is going to give different results, but here is what I did: 1. Changed the aluminum and stainless steel materials from Material Class>Pre-defined Metal to Material Class>Shiny Metal. I've found this improves rendering speed and quality, and gives reasonable results. 2. Reduced Ambient Occlusion from 5.0 to 3.0. 3. Reduced the resolution from 2000 to 72 dpi. 2000 is extremely high - most high-resolution printers do just fine with 300 to 600 dpi. 4. Increased the number of passes to 30. By the way, if you can tell us exactly what you don't like about your original rendering, it would help us zero in on fixing any specific issue.

Melissa, your solution looks very nice. Sorry that I missed your signature - I hadn't realized you were on X9. Anyway, I took on the challenge of creating the buttons, just as a personal exercise. This is in X10, but maybe it will be useful in the future: panelmeshwithbuttons.calibz It renders well at a distance, and up close it's acceptable, but the normal and bump mapping could use more work. If you're interested in trying to recreate this in X9, here are the loose image files and settings (I think X9 won't have the Normal Map and Ambient Occlusion Map):

Give this a try: panelmesh.calibz Renders pretty well, though you may need to play with it a bit. No circles at the intersections, though:

Make the sections of walls shown in red "No Room Definition":

Maybe this will work: 3D Model with terrain.plan

As a general rule of thumb, it's best to control the wall materials using the Wall Type Definition, not by using the Wall Specification dbx, unless you need to over-ride the default for a specific wall.

Open the Wall Specification dbx and change Materials>Wall>Exterior Wall Surface to Use Default.

I'm confused by the description of your problem, but might it be related to using Grid Snaps?

Have you tried Print View>Advanced Options>Open System Print Dialog...

Here are two PVA panels I've created for my Library: PVA Panels.calibz The Canadian Solar unit is set up with a ballasted frame set an an angle for low-slope roof applications: The Hanwah unit is to be flush-mounted on sloped roofs:

Open the symbol's Specification dialog box and set General>Elevation Reference to From Roof, and tick the General>Options>Flush Mounted checkbox.

Thanks for reminding me of this - I'd forgotten about this feature.

The OP didn't ask about cross-section views - the setting he referred to controls the appearance of framing members in Plan. AFAIK, you can't control the fill color of a framing member in a Cross Section view: cut members will have a solid white fill, and members in elevation will be filled with the Material color.

As Eric showed, this setting can be found either when you build the framing, or within the Default Settings>Framing Defaults>Plan Display tab:

AFAIK you can't snap to sheathing. Use a Point-to-Point dimension snapped to the framing, then manually grab the dimension marker and move it to align with the sheathing.

it can be very difficult to get Chief to "behave" the way you expect/want when walls intersect at different levels and at angles. You can try playing around with the wall intersection tool, or you could "patch" the area with a p-solid or something similar, or you could post the plan and maybe someone else can find a solution to your specific situation.

Familiarize yourself with the NVMA recommendations; you can download an installation guide here. Keep in mind that it's merely a guide - final installation details depend on a number of factors that aren't necessarily given full consideration within the text and drawings. Regarding the Xypex, I'll assume you propose to use it as an admixture, not as a coating. I've only specified Xypex on commercial projects where control of bulk water is critical under conditions of high hydrostatic pressures, and even then it was used as a "last line of defense" - I still used a membrane on the positive side as the primary water control layer. Theoretically the use of Xypex, or any other crystalline PRA, should be all you need, but there are some practical considerations that argue against it's use, especially for a residential project: 1) cost 2) availability at the local ready-mix plant 3) interactions with other admixtures 4) Xypex will affect the concrete setting time, so getting the mix figured out is important 5) some veneer stone manufacturer warranties depend on the installation details, which may not include using a PRA as a weather-resistive barrier 6) I've run into masons that won't warranty their work on non-standard installations, so you need to find a mason who is comfortable with the final design and installation details

It's because you have two Door Schedules in your plan - the second one is a CAD Detail - so both schedules are applying labels.

No, Chief can't calculate this automatically - you need to that yourself per your local code or ASCE method, etc.

Chief won't do it automatically. If the township needs a photometric plan, it's easiest (in Chief) to download the manufacturer's isoplots and hand-jamb it the old-fashioned way, but obviously you need to lock in the manufacturer, lamp type, output, spacing, mounting height, distribution, etc. As far as representing the lighting in 3D, you can only approximate things, but if you spend enough time you can get close. Here's a Lithonia KAD LED fixture with a Type III distribution, 4000K color temperature, 35 watts (4200 lumens) on a 10' pole:

This is an issue we've run into at my office twice after the latest Chief update. I sent the problem into Tech Support, so they are aware of it. The problem is that Chief is looking for a network path or share location, eg: \\server\partition\chief\files The solution is to map the network or share drive to a local drive, eg: E:\chief\files ...and then go into Preferences>General>Folders>My Data Folder and Browse to the newly mapped local location.

Maybe set up a custom Layerset to display only the roof planes, roof framing, etc:

Also, with the Perspective Overview window open, you can use the Adjust Sunlight tool:

Yes, I got my statement backwards - color should be controlled by the Distribution Path layer and not the Block color. My bad.