rlackore

Graham, it appears there is no whiskey in your glass. Can you achieve the same raytrace results with a couple fingers of whiskey in the glass?

I assume this is residential, because the shaftway walls appear to be wood frame. Keep in mind that most residential elevator manufacturers don't provide the landing doors, and I'm not aware of any residential door interlock that works with a sliding, bi-parting, or pocket door - they are for swing doors only.

I'm not aware of any residential door interlock that works with any door type other than a swing door. Of course, I'm assuming this is a residential application.

I'm usually not excited about more cabinet improvements, but I have to admit that these new features are definite improvements that I will find useful.

Here are some: Of course, the quality of the texture is a direct result of the quality of the image used for input.

Yes. If you center the door then you won't be able to open it fully. Chief forces the door into a position that will provide a deep enough pocket when the door is fully open.

I agree - physical samples should suffice. I once presented an architectural rendering to an Urban Design Commission, and there was one commissioner who got completely bent out of shape because the trees and bushes weren't the exact species and varieties that were listed in the plant schedule. Eventually the project was approved; then the economy tanked and the developer lost their financing.

Do you know the manufacturer and blend?

Gimp is a great tool, and I've used it for years. However, I'd like to put a plug in for PixPlant - it's the easiest, fastest method I've found for creating seamless textures. It will quickly output diffuse, displacement, normal and specular maps from an imported image (or pasted from the clipboard). It's easy to learn (took me about 3 minutes to figure out the basics) and not terribly expensive.

If you use Windows, the download link is here. The Acme Masonry Designer is an excellent tool and includes products from Acme Brick, Featherlite Blocks, Hill Country Stone, Cordillera Stone, town Square, Fast Track Stone, Elgin Butler, Cherokee Brick, Forterra, Old Carolina, Palmetto, Pine Hall, Ragland Clay, and Sioux City. It lets you build all kinds of coursings with your choice of mortar colors, then save the image for using in a material definition.

Those are some nice additions.

Draw a Railing and use a custom Panel:

There's a chance that the Room Specification>Materials>Room>Walls material is no longer using the Default. For instance, here is the dbx for a room that is using the Default material. Notice that the Walls material is set to use the Default: Now I plop in my glass shower wall. The glass material shows properly because the Room is still using the Default material for walls, and the glass shower wall has material definitions that over-ride the Default. Note that in the Room dbx the Walls material reads "No Change", indicating that there are walls in the Room that are using different materials. It's also possible that it may still indicate the Default is being used. Either way, the enclosing walls are drywall, and the shower wall is glass: If at some point in the design the Room must have been defined to use a specific material (as Joe mentioned, probably with the Eyedropper/Painter tool), not the Default, then all walls will show up with that specific material. In this example I've changed the walls to "Brick." So, even though my glass shower wall is defined to use Glass, the new Room wall material will over-ride it: To fix this, open the Room dbx and change the Wall material to "Use Default".

I don't believe one exists.

Window Schedule dbx>Label>Additional Text>Include Schedule Number

Personally I'm really excited about the new block management features, and the ability to reorganize layout pages in the project browser; I recognized both these as feature requests from the Suggestion Forum.

Usually when I experience things showing up as black (when they aren't supposed to) is if an object is assigned one of Chief's Predefined Metal materials and I haven't turned on Photon Mapping. I don't imagine your light bulbs are assigned that kind of material definition, but it may be worth a look. If you post the plan we could give you a better answer.

DWG TrueView from Autodesk is free and you can view and convert dwg/dxf. This isn't an integrated Windows Explorer solution, but it's very useful. I don't know for certain, but there's a chance that installing TrueView will also install whatever's needed to preview in Explorer (I can't test this because I have a bunch of AutoDesk products installed besides TrueView, but I've read elsewhere on the net that this is true).

I copy the window, move to the second floor, then paste in place. Position it the same as the first floor window (using the absolute elevation as the reference height makes this easy). If you want you can put the second floor window on its own layer so it can be hidden in 3D views, but I find this isn't usually necessary.

I think because windows and doors are "special" symbols (we can't open a symbol dbx and make changes) that Chief treats them differently. A "normal" symbol can be reflected/resized etc. through commands or a dbx, but not windows and doors. I think this is why Sherry can't reflect a garage door and expect to see the actual symbol truly reversed (about it's own axis). The same for mulled windows.

ShaneK, you probably have it - I just can't see that high-to-low pitch intersection in the Google picture. A few more site photographs would help.

Yeah, I didn't look at the second PDF. Regardless, the more I look at the Google picture, the more I'm convinced that the rear intersection is the real issue, and needs to look more like this: Obviously I don't have it perfect - but I think there is a lot of tweaking that needs to happen.

If this is what you're after: ...here is how I would do it: Steve & Tereas Oslund Exist roof 1a - roof edit.plan

Duh. Thanks for the clarification.

Dan, referring to your post above (reply to Chopsaw), when I click on your first (large) image, I don't get an "arrow" on the right side to click through to the next image - I only get the "X" to close the image. However, when I click on the second (smaller) image, I get the left "arrow" to click back to the first image - and again, there's no right "arrow". Shouldn't the first image have an arrow?