Chrisb222

Get rid of those elevation lines and the lowered region. Use Elevation Regions instead (Elevation Data submenu). Make one to replace the lowered region at the walkout door, and another to wrap the sides and front of the building. Set this second one to 0 height, then you'll probably have to adjust your Subfloor Height Above Terrain value in the Terrain Specs.

@Legacy-HNoles I use these settings for an initial exterior CPU ray trace (I can't do RTRT on my system, and do not use PBR): 14 passes seems about right. Less than that is too grainy, and more is diminishing returns. Takes about 4 minutes on my system at this (relatively low) resolution. I then save the image and open in Gimp (free image editor like Photoshop) and apply Unsharp Mask, contrast/color balance, etc, and do cleanup/touchup. Here's an example of an image I made using these techniques: Tips: - You can quickly evaluate lighting and shadows and such, and save time for trial and error by lowering the Resolution or Height/Width in the General panel. Just remember the settings to restore them for the final run. - You can also save time for trial and error by temporarily turning off Photon Mapping on the Advanced panel. - Even after the ray trace is done, you can still adjust the settings on the Image Properties panel for changing the colors, contrast, etc. by accessing the Adjust Image Properties button:

Not much to choose from: There was a suggestion recently asking for more control of parametric doors. You can "fake" a center bar(s) using a glass panel style, setting the number of lites, and making the glass panes a solid material, but it's very limited:

Only works if you use one of the parametric door styles, not a library symbol.

Not sure exactly what you're after but deleting all layers in the Ceiling Finish DBX of the Room Specs seems to work...? Make sure you "Build Framing" and have "Framing, Roof Rafters" Layer set to display in 3D views.

Do you have View > Line Weights toggled on? It may also be on one of your toolbars:

In addition to what has been suggested, once you enter all of your data into the Material List, you can hit the Select All button and then the Update TO Master List (see pics). This will save all of the data you've entered into your Material List for updating to future material lists. Then when you generate a new Material List, once again hit the Select All button, then hit Update FROM Master List (the button left of Update TO Master List), and this will populate all your custom data into the fields. The Master List is program-wide and your data will be stored and available in all plans. Side note; for dimensional lumber you'll probably want to use Buy List for calculating costs, which pulls from your Saved Structural Member Reporting Defaults, and which can also contain pricing for individual lumber items that will then automatically populate into the material list.

Nice video Steve. I like your Loom videos with the playback speed control. You talk slow enough that I can watch them at 1.7x and still follow along. And it's entertaining to hear you speedtalk

I've been living with this because I always had to go in and change the color of the pattern lines anyway, but I made a suggestion to restore the function Michael described. I also asked for color setting in the dialog box. Fingers crossed.

Could be Chief wants to deprecate the entire function?? From X14 Help (bold mine): The Edge and Pattern Line Defaults settings are included for legacy files and are not the recommended method of specifying this information. See Edge and Pattern Lines. I think that's wrong. Edge and Pattern Lines is the best way to create elevations IMO.

To my knowledge, as Michael said there is no actual default setting. This used to be the case in X10, and yes it would remember the last used value, even across plans. Somewhere along the line it was removed as it no longer functions that way in X12 or X14. Not sure why they removed that but it would be good to get it back. I have never found any preference or default settings in plan or layout to change the default values. Hope I'm wrong.

Yes, it saved me from the same frustration you were experiencing, not only in material selection but everywhere. Glad to help.

If you turned off Auto Rebuild Roofs, it won't automatically generate. Yes, very easy to draw a manual roof plane there using Premier. I'm not sure if Interiors has that tool, I use Premier.

"Smallest Fraction" settings are different for those two dimension Formats, so the program is rounding based on your settings. See your Auto Story Pole Dimension Defaults:

I don't think so, not according to this PPI calculator: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/technology/ppi-calculator.php Michael's numbers all worked out close using this calculator, but yours do not. I'm certainly no expert on this, and no offense intended, but I didn't want any Mac users to make a purchase decision if that information is not correct.

Yeah even my truss company uses a better 3D program. My homeowner clients are still impressed because they're not used to seeing anything like that, plus it's a model of their home so that's gratifying to them. Are you using a third party app?

I share your frustration. Personally, I have not found a way to do that. I have written and saved detailed instructions for when I email a link of their model to clients, including to switch the rendering technique, and that there are two ways to navigate the model and to play around with both, and let me know if they have problems. My clients run into more issues with navigating than they do with the rendering technique. Some older folks just never get it. Not enough time spent playing video games I guess.

Just throwing this out there, but I've spent a lot of time learning to understand what causes that "weird stuff" and how to correct or avoid it. Time well spent.

Michael, I am not having any issues like you describe, and wanted to let you know, as a fellow Mac user, this plan is not slow on my M1Max Studio at all. Most things I tried were instant, or only a 1 second delay. Just thought you might like to know that. Good luck.

Auto-built rafter roof with OOB 9-1/4" Structure thickness changed to 3-1/2": After using Michael's method of switching Roof Defaults to Trusses, no Birdsmouth, drawing a manual roof plane, noting the baseline height, then applying that value to all roof planes using Edit All Roof Planes: Only now the gutter board is out of place...

Yes that makes it easy to reset the structure thickness on all the planes at once. Still need to lower the roof, and that's where Michael's suggestions are helpful for getting an accurate baseline height. Edit All Roof Planes works there as well.

Yeah, that has already been covered. The OP had manually-built roof planes they wanted to preserve. Checking Trusses wouldn't solve the problem with the existing roof planes.

Right. But the OP already had manually-built roof planes they wanted to preserve, and had not checked Trusses, No Birdsmouth before doing so. That's when the program uses the rafter thickness (9-1/4" in OP's case) to build the roof deck. The test I did was using the OOB template also, but first building the roof without checking the Trusses option. That's what the OP did. Then I tried just lowering the roof and building trusses, to see if it mattered whether or not I changed the Structure thickness, as I suggested the OP do. So far I haven't been able to get the desired result without doing that.

I've been playing around with your suggestions and can't get the right results without first changing the structure thickness that is generated when using the OOB settings (9-1/4"). The baseline height comes out right and the truss is drawn correctly, but the ceiling and wall height issues are still there. The clip below is what I keep getting: I keep going over your instructions but it always comes out like the above. Tried resetting wall top heights, didn't change it...