Angie15

Chiefs terrain elevation controls are stupid. Extend the elevation lines all the way to the end of the terrain and then add another duplicate elevation line at the back of the house to flatten it out.

The Gable Porch entrance extends further forward than the other other exterior walls. "Flat angled roof" is a pefectly acceptable description, and any experienced architect would know exactly what you mean and how to incorporate it. Unfortunately, the easiest is to manually build those roofs, because its probably beyond HD Pro's capabability to autobuild, but even if you purchased premier, you'd still have to manually build it.

Select the front GF wall, change it to a hip wall. select the left side bearing wall and change it to a high shed wall. Tell first floor to ignore roof (or in chiefs case, 2nd floor.) The back wall roof pitch will determine the roof and attic walls for the 4 horizontal windows, but my bet is that you'll have to build this manually, its beyond HD Pro. Its even beyond Premier. Its a manual build.

Im aware I can remove the details tab. Im talking about the filters tab, where it no longer shows the sub-folders but everything in the entire volume instead of the folders! I did say what additional controls I was epecting. Read my original again. I was expecting explicit control over the window sills (as attached). Why does the window sill still Z-fight with the wall? If you even bothered to try this with a default plan you'd know what Im talking about. In Pro 2025, build an exterior wall (any wall) Increase that wall to a 350mm depth from center. place a window with casing. Recess a 50mm depth window frame, 100mm from the exterior wall, then recess the window sill. change the casing colour. oh look. Z-fighting! Im ranting because Id expect you and any other Pro User to know this and Ive been on about this for years! The gutter moulding problem according to Chief technical, is that I found a way to manipulate the software in a way that wasn't intented. If it wasnt intended, why have the option? Home designer suite did it no problem, so did Pro right up until 2023? So Chief removed the softwares ability to apply moulding to a gutter, but forgot to remove the ability to do do? Right.

Gutter Moulding. I was told by Chief Technical that there was no way for me to fix the problem, because the software shouldnt have been able to do it in the first place. Wow.

This is rediculous. Ive just upgraded to HD Pro 2025, ONLY, because it said "Sill and threshhold control for openings". "explicit control of doors,windows, and openings" Turns out there is no additional contol in 2025 from 2023 in this regard. 5 years on... the window sill still Z-Fights when its recessed. Regardless, I will logde another technical complaint regarding the window sills, and they will reply that because I dont I have PremierX14, that is apparently incompatible and blah blah blah. Why procliaim to have the fuctionanitly in PRO then? 2016 : Chief: cannot recces doors into a specified wall 2025 : Chief can only recess the door panel 2016 Chief cant do window sills 2025: Chief still cant do window sills. still Z fighting. 2019 Apply gutter moulding, move the wall, cheif tells you none of their products had it. WOW! And seriously? Who's stupid idea was it to remove the library preview for all materials, only the selected material is displayed! Do you have any idea how much longer this will take to find materials? And its replaced with the stupid "details" tab ffs!!

When is HD Pro going to start rendering shiny glass correctly in PBR? Im tired of using glass textures from 2012. (and while youre at it, change all the PBR and camera settings back to 2021. PBR is abysmal in 2022 & 2023. Standard view is a nightmare its so hazy, cant see a thing!! When is HD Pro going to be able to recess hinged doors to a specified depth within the wall (Including frame & jamb)? When is HD Pro going to change the window sill settings so that that they dont Z-fight with the wall below if you recess them? When Is HD Pro going to stop the unnecessary snapping of walls, and the obession that the software has to determine how best they should intersect, and where they SHOULD be. Block cavity walls in reality, do indeed join stud walls, yet basic things like that are beyond this softwares capability.

Dont bother. The rendering has gone backwards. I never thought Chief could get worse with the renders, but they have. They have apparently increased performance in 2022/2023 but any file size over 80MB still lags and struggles, which is rediculouly stupid compared to other design software. (like one decent plant in sketch-up is 30MB!) The standard camera views have changed and are now hazy compared to 2021 and PBR is worse, like a grey filter over your lenz. Deep shiney black is also impossible. The backdrop totally changes your interior to alien colours and will take you hours to get right, only to give up and eventually go with no backdrop. The actual quality of the exported pictures is also dismal. Attic walls, or anthing, any item, thats exposed to the exerior lights up luminencent like a christmas tree including the auto built walls in PBR. It will look fine in Standard view and then suddenly its bright blue or green in PBR and takes hours to sort out because changes in PBR are so slow! They still dont have the option to recress doors. They still cant make their window sills sit above the wall and theres Z-fighting

Yes I do realize that, and do you know what else, it doesn't work when your walls are 350mm plus thick, it leaves feckin holes everywhere that you have to fill with soffits and wedges and soffits and more soffits and celings and more soffits only to realize you cant use soffits because they don't span ceilings and walls and then have to change to shapes which keep snapping by default to the to the terrain!

To All those dicktards, who said you can do so much better with Pro, upgradeto pro they said, it will be better they said, No< I am on pro , it sucks.

In two fecking years nothing has changed. The software still does not use my GPU, yet it takes me 45seconds to make a change in PRB

I understand that , but unfortunately chief sucks at both. It sucks at dpi export as well as ppi.

Hi There. The centering tool uses a point of reference to "center" your object. If you click on the door ( as you have done) and center it to the middle of the room (there will be a horizontal line indicating this). If you then click on the window and center it using the same mid-room line it will center over the same door as you are choosing the same room mid-line as the door. There are several "snap" lines you can use to center objects, ie walls, other windows, rooms, roof etc, but they are usually perpendicular. You cant use the center tool to "center" sidelights next to a door because there is no center reference point.

Thank you Dominic, but that doesn't help me. To be honest, all the PBR renderings I've seen so far on this forum are actually pretty bad, I'm really struggling to understand how you could say they are great. They are all extremely dark and hazy. How do I make a room bright and crisp, where the white walls and ceiling are actually white, not grey, or a weird alien shade of green or blue because of the backdrop? Why is the software not using my interior light settings despite me setting it to such? Why does it make no difference when you set a light to 10 lumens or 5 billion lumens? Why when you use floor to ceiling windows or sliding doors, does the backdrop make my shiny steel blue and green, despite using a terrain? (this one REALLY irritates me!) Its terrible and very poor attempt by CA and I have no idea what they were thinking but whoever was in charge of the production should be sacked. Its not a PBR, its a half-arsed lame attempt to keep up with the likes of sketchup and v-ray and they failed dismally. pic 1 - Same plan in standard view pic 2 - Same plan in PBR (I want it brighter, whiter, and the blue wall gone. I cant for the life of me figure out why CA thought it was a good idea to reflect the backdrop!! wtf!) pic 3 - a technical issue I keep having, where everything goes black and I have to exit the software, restart my computer and reload the plan.

Hi JonQ Thank you for your reply. I have finally been able to get a decent rendering but its still not good enough for my liking Reducing the sunlight intensity only solves the problem in a room with windows. It makes F-all difference in a with no windows. How can it be a true physical based rendering when it doesn't take into account the actual light settings in the room? (even when its set to "actual" light settings and not automatic)

I'll attach the plan here anyway. pbr_lights.plan

Hi Dominic, Thank you for your reply. I did think that might be an issue so I started a new default plan. The pictures above are from a new drawing, not an import.

I upgraded to Pro 2020 from 2019 and I'm asking for help with the new PBR rendering in HD Pro 2020. I’ve searched PRB on Chieftalk, watched the tutorials, and read the reference manual. I’ve been playing around with sun intensity, angles, lighting and materials etc and it seems to make no difference. It’s still dark. In the tutorial videos, there is very little light difference between the standard render and the PBR, only a few teaks are needed. In mine, its like night and day. In this room (pic 1) I have 8x10000 lumen lights and 2 x 5000 lumen lights. Sunlight is default. In a realistic scenario this room would be blinding (A stadium light is 60000 lumens) In pic 2 there is 4x10000 and 2x5000 (I removed 4 lights) In pic 3 there are 2x5000 lumens (removed all the ceiling lights) There seems to be very little difference. It’s still dark. The white walls, ceiling and cabinet are not white either. I have the most recent graphics driver. Is there a setting somewhere that I’m missing or is this a technical problem that I should report?

Thank you David. I am fully aware that upgrading to Pro wont solve all my problems, I was just hoping that throwing $400 at it might solve THIS one. I'm quite happy to have to do a few tweaks to get it right, but at the moment its proving next to impossible with HD suite. In case you haven't noticed, 90% of new houses in Ireland are a storey+half with these type of dormer windows. I've done hundreds of them and there's always an issue and it takes me hours to get right. I was hoping and half expecting HD Pro to be able to do it a little easier. That's all.

I'm not angry, I simply don't appreciate you implying I'm lazy, incompetent or stupid. You could've simply informed me that these dormer windows are easily built in Pro using the auto dormer tool etc but instead you chose to blow wind up your own arse and refer me to the manual. (which I've read, and I've been struggling with this for days and this forum was a last resort for help). I know for a fact that they cant be built using the auto dormer tool in HD suite so I was asking if It was possible in Pro. "direction of any attained competence you may, in the future obtain". That doesn't even make sense.

No DavidJPotter, the question was not addressed to you, but I'll rephrase the question an put it in dickhead language that you'll understand. Is it possible in HD Pro to build a dormer window as shown above, using the auto dormer tool without manually using soffits and inverted wedges and so that it looks the same externally and internally simultaneously?

Hi Did you ever get this right using Pro?

Its not only the 360 that I have a problem with. Its the export quality/resolution in general. For example, I originally had HDS 2009 which exported at 96 dpi, then I upgraded to HDS 2018 and on the exact same computer, with the exact same plan only exported at 72 dpi. I since have a new PC and still cannot achieve anything more than 72 dpi. I have searched this forum and been unable to find any way of improving it. I have even connected my PC to the HD 48" TV/monitor and still only get 72dpi. The only way I can get satisfactory results is if I print image to PDF at maximum (4000 dpi) then import to Photoshop (which still only sees it as about 108dpi), then sharpen the image. I understand that HDS is only $100 but Im very reluctant to pay for for HDS Pro or Premier given the above. If I cannot export images at least 300 dpi now, which in my opinion is the industry minimum, then why should I upgrade? I mean, sketch-up is free and does better images??

No, I've left the dialog boxes as they are. I'm just not happy with the overall quality, the sharpness in particular. Its fuzzy and blurry and the 360 image doesn't look the same as the 3D view on my screen.

Thanks, I managed to do it at 8192. When I entered like 6000 it simply defaulted back to 4096. I also tried at 12288, but that also reset back to 4096. It does look slightly better, but I'm still not 100% happy. Thank you for your help