First Chief Architect Drawing....

KentWhitten

How you go about things is your own personal taste. Revit now has a much better rendering engine that comes with it and yes, Revit will do rendering, construction documents, and materials lists all from the same program

The thing that EVERYONE needs to understand is that you get out of it what you put into it. It's not easy building the library and lighting settings and tweaking things just right. This goes for CA, Revit, ACA, AutoCAD, SketchUp, ArchiCAD, SoftPlan.....anything.

The generic point that I'm trying to make is that the program you have (in this case we are on CA) they usually give you a crappy rendering engine and that there are easily better FREE programs that you can upgrade to and show your clients a much better presentation that may be the extra you need to get the job over someone else. CA is better suited for construction documents just like most CAD/BIM programs. Rendering programs are better suited for rendering, not construction documents.

Is it necessary? Maybe....maybe not. All depends on your client. Maybe they don't give a rats ass about pretty pictures. I am all for putting your best effort forward. High end product. You want a trailer, go find a trailer builder.

Agolk2, in my opinion, you are in the right direction to me. Not saying orson isn't. I do notice that you have some scaling issues of your maps though, not sure if you realize that. I don't know if you have construction background or not. I like your stuff, it looks good. Have you been to vismasters? Now those guys know how to render.

__________________
If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place ~Lao Tzu

Custom Cabinetry - Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Kennebunkport, Yarmouth, Falmouth, Cumberland, Ogunquit, Maine

Salmon Falls Cabinetry

KentWhitten

Those aren't bad Leo, just your maps are patterned is all. Some things don't reflect real world. I'm just being picky though.

__________________
If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place ~Lao Tzu

Custom Cabinetry - Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Kennebunkport, Yarmouth, Falmouth, Cumberland, Ogunquit, Maine

Salmon Falls Cabinetry

Leo G

Ya, I know they are patterned. It's quirk with the program. I can stretch the grain patterns or tile them. Either way they look repetitive. Those are some of my earlier drawings when I was just learning how to use the program. It is not intuitive at all. High learning curve. Some of the guys over on the eCabs forum can do kick ass renderings. They have high end machines with expensive graphics cards. I just have a good laptop with the on board card. It suffices. Most of the people I work for (residential) really enjoy the renderings. They have either sold the job or gotten me more work because of it. The Bookcase was the first rendering I did with the program. It probably took me more than 8 hours to do it because I had to learn how to do the curved cutouts on the rails. The original drawing I gave my client was a 2 dimensional CAD drawing. This is what I had been using for years. I had gotten the eCab program a few weeks beforehand and had only played with it. After I did the cabinets up on the 3D and showed different views of it my client said it was to small, and we added another section of lowers and bookcases. I have had some interesting problems crop up in corners when using the 2D CAD, with this, because you can look at it from almost any angle, and even do a wireframe view of it. So you can locate a lot of interference problems before they happen. eCabs is also a library based system. You make the cabinets you need and them just enter them into the room where you want them. Unfortunately all my work is custom and rarely can I use pre existing cabinets. I am always making new libraries. Sometimes I wish I was a non custom, standard cabinet guy. But, that would become boring pretty quick.

__________________
Sawdust Follows Me Everywhere

http://lrgwood.com
Custom Cabinets in Hartford County Connecticut

J F

Nice drawings Leo, and no, Chief will not give you cutlists etc, as it is not cabinet-concentric. It's specifically for builder/archy's/remodelors so it's geared toward that overall pic as opposed to the many details that are needed to actually build the cabinets.

Chief will give you a lot of lattitude in regards to customizing cabinets, but I don't think it will do anywhere near (at least not yet) what ecabinets will do for you concerning the cabinet details, cutlists etc. you need.

I will say, if you've taken the time/innitiative to learn ecabinets, you would do well with chief if your needs would ever require something of the sort.

J

sutcac

While I actually agree with you on this, I have to chuckle a bit after thousands of posts on ChiefTalk and continually seeing the thrust in complaints about the direction Chief has been moving with the last version being not nearly enough towards CD's but too much toward the "pretty pictures" world of materials/textures, rendering, and other more 3D presentation based features.

They have actually had some major defections from long time users and beta testers as a result of this.

My own take on Chief has been that I have few issues with it's abilities to do CD's and long for better onboard rendering capabilities. Way too many hoops to jump through to get it into a decent rendering engine.

And let's face it, CA is mostly a program for one-man or very small shows that need a package where you can do everything yourself and have professional quality presentations. If you have a larger office, you specialize and either delegate or sub this stuff out.

__________________
Bryce Engstrom: Architect A.I.A. & General Contractor
www.engstromarchitecture.com
www.central-coast-project-design-planning-guides.com
Chief to Kerkythea Training Videos

KentWhitten

True...I shouldn't have assumed. I don't know CA at all. I don't think I've even tried the trial. Too may out there spins your head.

__________________
If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place ~Lao Tzu

Custom Cabinetry - Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Kennebunkport, Yarmouth, Falmouth, Cumberland, Ogunquit, Maine

Salmon Falls Cabinetry

sutcac

That's the truth. I tried demos of Chief, Vectorworks, Soft Plan, and one other I think more than 10 years ago now and just thought Chief seemed the best for the money then. Since then, I have never really tried much else, just not motivated enough and Chief seems to mostly do what I need.

I guess things would have to get pretty bad for me to change now, makes my head hurt to think of learning some completely new software that is at this level of sophistication and complexity. I think they all take years to really develop any mastery in at all. And of course they are all always changing.

__________________
Bryce Engstrom: Architect A.I.A. & General Contractor
www.engstromarchitecture.com
www.central-coast-project-design-planning-guides.com
Chief to Kerkythea Training Videos

J F

I think that all enters into guys. I was a cad virgin when I looked at softplan and chief, and some others I don't recall (around 2002).

For my needs/requirements, etc, it worked out with chief. I've never thought/wished I'd gone another way, but I'm sure that's how a lot of people feel after getting invested ($$, and a whole LOT of time) in any software.

I think a lot of this kind of (intellectual) stuff/programming is: you get as much as you're willing to give (time/learning/willing to cry,swear,curse).


Ahh, hellllll...time for GA/FL game...cya.

J

(and i'm not a big college football fan, but this one...yeah)

Agolk2

I know about the maps, Framerman, and yes I have a const. background. I was in the field for a good number of years. I find that remodeling clients aren't very discerning about renderings. As long as they see a relatively good representation they are still wowed. I have high end advertising clients that we do work for as well and those renderings turn out like Vismasters because we can take the time to actually create custom textures and not use prefab models.

__________________
Andrew Golkin
ANG Visuals
www.ANGVisuals.com
(703)898-4430