rlackore

You can assign pure white as the color and this will give you a gray color in Standard view; the down-side is that you then get white in vector view. I'm not sure there is a good solution to your problem.

Most home automation software allows you to overlay an image of the floor plan and to graphically assign controlled devices to a virtual location relative to the image. The client can do a simple Google search for home automation software to find examples: HomeSeer, Legrand, Crestron, Control4, etc. Understanding how the software interfaces with controllers, devices, and technologies isn't as simple.

Is there a setting that will render the light source in a raytrace? I'm tired of having to change the "light bulb" material from non-emissive to emissive depending on whether I'm doing a "lights on" render or "lights off" render.

Caveat: the Raytrace images posted in this discussion are crappy because my comp is old and slow and I'm impatient. As an exercise to try to understand lighting in Chief I created a room and plopped in a light fixture from the Chief bonus catalog: Pendant Lighting>Glass Jar Pendant 01. I copied it twice and threw in some base cabinets for context. Here is the floor camera Standard view: Then I threw a Raytrace: Uniform Intensity=0; Direct Sunlight=0; Use Photon Mapping=Yes. I get a completely black scene with three light bulbs that show up only because their material is Emissive: The Light Data for the lights is: Point Light, 1200 Lumens (75W). All three lights are turned on in the scene, yet I get no illumination from any of them. If I dial up a bit of Uniform Intensity or use Ambient Occlusion, it's still clear that no illumination is coming from the fixtures: So I moved the Light Source on the middle fixture down below the physical geometry of the model: Now I get illumination from the middle fixture: Why is this? The fixture tube (shade, whatever you want to call it) is defined as Transparent Crown Glass. Why won't the light source shine through? So I moved the middle fixture's light source back to it's original position and changed the material of the tubes to a fully transparent General material: Then threw another Raytrace: ...and I'm right back to where I started - three 75 watt Emissive light bulbs hanging in the air. Plan is attached if anyone cares to take a stab at figuring it out. Lights.plan

You can do all this with X6 using boolean operations.

Why don't you post your plan.

Yes - I was confused if the OP was really talking about a render vs a raytrace (I hate how Chief uses these two terms). As you mentioned, probably a material definition issue.

Photon mapping enabled?

Yes, just set it up in the Room dbx. Be certain you have the Rooms layer turned on. Terrain can also have a fill - set it up in the Terrain Perimeter dbx.

Rooms, decks, terrain... all you have to do is assign a fill pattern.

A fluted block texture would be your best bet.

I opened your plan and had no problem auto-generating a roof over the deck. Of course, it also rebuilt the existing roofs, so if you want to preserve what you've already got, mark the existing roofs as edited, check Retain Edited Automatic Roof Planes in the Build Roof dbx, and then delete the roofs you don't want after the build operation.

The plan south walls of the game room need to be defined as foundation walls.

Yes, my first run was with all the lights and the sun on: 25:14. Second run with just master bedroom lights and sun: 10:44. Third run with master bedroom lights and no sun: 10:09.

Thanks Mike.

As specified by the OP for his original test.

I'm at 25:14 - which explains why I never do ray traces. Hopefully we'll be able to afford a new box sometime this year - mine is from 2007.

Mike, please share how you achieved the divided lites.

Achieving the diamond is pretty easy. Insert a fixed glass window with identical height and width, remove interior and exterior sills and lintels, then a dogear arch with a height equal to 1/2 the overall height and reflected vertically: The kicker is the muntins - I can only get one - you may have to manually add the other unless someone else can find a solution.

The example you showed is very clever, but the individual components can't be modeled to the same degree of accuracy. It's a matter of personal preference, or what is required by the application.

Normally I like to bash Chief for its shortcomings, and this kind of project is definitely easier in another program (like Sketchup), but I was able to knock together a sandwich board in about 10 minutes using polyline solids converted to solids, boolean operations on the solids, explode the solids and assign materials. So, it may be, as others have stated, that if you spend time understanding how to do things with Chief, it gets easier.

Just like a tilted floor mirror - I suspect you'll have to build it manually, or https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=u1e413018-2269-45d7-9b24-9720100a07ac

Chief doesn't have a command for quickly offsetting a line or arc - you'll need to draw the offset manually. As Alan mentioned, any shape can be turned into a symbol, including a door symbol - but Chief doesn't allow inserting doors into wall corners. I believe you'll need to build the shower walls and doors using Chief's other tools, such as poly-line solids, primitives, soffits, etc. - or create what you need in another program and import it into Chief.

The lack of an option within the Schedule dbx to format how measurements are displayed is befuddling.

Using Glen's suggestion, I guess you could enclose it with invisible walls.