Elevations to Layout - Unexpected Lines

[Ian Pellant]

X2: New Bug or New Feature?

This is a really simple starting job - sketch of external walls done last week in Chief 10 to establish floor areas for prelim design. Simple wall model at this stage. Little more than 2 floors in Plan and sent to Layout. Works fine in Chief 10; has problems in Chief X2.

The Bug:
Extra lines appear when the elevation is sent to Layout. The lines look as if they are internal edges of the external walls and extend down from ceiling to about half the upper floor height. Walls are very simple 200mm concrete block; only core layers defined; no skins. Metric units.

I have tried every new feature setting for vector view rendering and send to layout and the lines will not go away. Since they don't occur until the view is sent to Layout, they cannot be edited out. Opening the Elevation from layout and the lines disappear again.

Views attached.

Has anyone found a similar problem?

[Curtis Johnson]

Ian:

If your wall corners are properly joined and perpendicular and square with each other (are the wall angles as they should be?), then those lines probably shouldn't be there. It seems that when sending views to L.O., there are always a few lines that show up that don't belong there. I guess I am used to seeing them and I just routinely edit them out.

Maybe you could zip and post your plan here so others can look at it and see if we can spot something.

[Ian Pellant]

Hi Curtis,

I've been testing from scratch in Metric and Imperial. It's a bug. A regression.

Create a new plan; create a simple rectangular house first floor; build a second floor off the first; add a roof; create an elevation; turn off patterns in 3d; save; create a layout; send the elevation to the layout and zingers occur. Open the elevation from the layout... zingers disappear. The bug is in the model build > layout image... and is roof related! Turn off display for the roof layers and the walls clean up!

I've been using Chief since V5 a decade ago. Regression bugs are common in new releases... now running 12.2.1.41; I didn't bother with X1 due to Home Designer Pro 7 compatibilty needs... there was no functional advantage but a heavy cost penalty to upgrade 9 licenses of HD Pro. X2 won't really be used until Home Designer Pro 9 is available.

Cheers, Ian.

[Bradley Boltz]

X2: New Bug or New Feature?

This is a really simple starting job - sketch of external walls done last week in Chief 10 to establish floor areas for prelim design. Simple wall model at this stage. Little more than 2 floors in Plan and sent to Layout. Works fine in Chief 10; has problems in Chief X2.

The Bug:
Extra lines appear when the elevation is sent to Layout. The lines look as if they are internal edges of the external walls and extend down from ceiling to about half the upper floor height. Walls are very simple 200mm concrete block; only core layers defined; no skins. Metric units.

I have tried every new feature setting for vector view rendering and send to layout and the lines will not go away. Since they don't occur until the view is sent to Layout, they cannot be edited out. Opening the Elevation from layout and the lines disappear again.

Views attached.

Has anyone found a similar problem?

Ian, I've had interior attic walls bleeding thru and showing up in layout views of cross sections I've sent to layout. Unlike the other reply, I'm used to the phantom boogie lines that show up in 3d and layout views but I'm never anything less than extreamly anoyed when it happens. This recent problem has occured when I'm bringing in drawings from v-10 and previous versions of which I have a few hundred. All I've been able to do is cuss the layout and edit it!!-Sympathies and Regards, Brad

[joey3032]

Sometimes you need to delete the saved camera view and send a new one. Those lines will go away in the new camera.

[Ian Pellant]

Hi Joey,
It's not the camera. I've tested the problem inside and out.
It is the send / update to layout that is at fault. The camera view is clean. It is the layout image of it that has the zingers.

This is an X2 problem that does not occur in 10.

[joey3032]

I understand that the problem is on the layout page. What I am telling you is that this problem has been around for as long as I have been using Chief. After so many updates and/or changes, the camera needs to be deleted. Everything will look fine in vector view, but when you go to layout view, you will see stray lines. I have combated this problem by making my elevations the last thing I do to keep from having to delete the camera, or edit the stray lines.

[Tommy Blair]

Try taking your elevation view and do a cad from view, edit it and send to layout. You could also do an edit layout to remove the lines.

[Doug Park]

Send in the plan with steps to reproduce.

We rewrote the engine behind the hidden line generation in X2. The result is that it will more correctly show lines. The cases that are left almost exclusively fall into the category of model issues that. Some of them were there before, but didn't show up because of bugs in the old algorithm.

You should never need to resend a camera that was generated in X2. There is the possibility of cameras coming from old plans needing this, but in X2 the results should remain very consistent. If you do find a case where this is required sent it in so we can take a look at it.

There are two options for this new engine they can be accessed via the advanced button in the camera dialog. The two choices are NNS and BSP. Rather than explain what they mean just think of them as method 1 and method 2. The initials of the first are the initials of the guys that invented the algorithm and in the second case they describe how the method works.

NNS is the default and is algorithm that our old Vector View was based on. The implementation is more correct than the old one. In most cases it produces fewer faces and is faster. Because it is more correct there are cases where it can be significantly slower than it was in the past.

BSP will produce more faces and in the case of models that have a lot of highly intersecting faces can significantly outperform the NNS method. It will in general use more memory and be slower.

If you find a case where sending an elevation to layout is excessively slow you may wish to switch to BSP for that view.

[Ian Pellant]

Doug... any relation to Dan Park who was the 9.5 Beta Coordinator?

I'll package up a couple of test plans and layouts later today (gotta go line up to vote in State elections this morning.)

I've tried both the hiddenline options and on such a small model, didn't notice much speed difference. I opened some old Chief 8 > 9 > 9.5 (progressive upgrades) of some of my works with X2 and results varied considerably. Worst cases the Layouts fell apart when elevations and sections were opened.

My current work environment requires continue using CA 10 to support HD 7 and custom libraries for HD 8. X2 will become mainstream when HD 9 is available; in the interim it may be used to import HD 8 plans.

The new engine seems to be a bit slower but is more accurate than the old in camera view orthogonals. It is just frustrating that the camera view is clean and then it collects zingers when it updates to Layout. The Roof does seem to be a factor in creating zingers in wall surfaces. Odd. Chief 10 does not have these particular problems.

For serious work, a lot of CAD and Text gets added to the camera generated view. Resorting to generating a CAD Detail from the Camera view is a last resort.

Frustration with the almost random rebuild of complex models when re-opening the plan file in versions after Chief 9 led me away to Revit for complex working drawings. Revit uses cut plane hidden line representations of a 3d model for all views - plan, elevation and section. They have a brilliant rendering engine which has a few really nice edit tools. Their problems are when the print renderer doesn't quite read different plan regions correctly and high set windows disappear from the plot.

[Doug Park]

Dan is my twin brother. It is actually amazing how people actually confuse us online. We get that all the time in person as well.

It's actually good that there was very little difference between the two methods as that points toward a model problem that is probably easier to correct.

[Ian Pellant]

Hi Doug,
Pass my regards onto Dan for me... I was bug reporting to him on the 9.5 Beta back in '03.

Plans and Layouts are in the attached zip files. Chief Versions 10 and X2 are in the pre-extension names.

The model was initially built in Chief 10 - a very preliminary block sketch to determine gross areas. Everything seems fine in CA 10. When the Layout ("Tibbs Sketch 01.10.layout") is opened in X2 and the Elevation is opened then closed so the layout is updated, the drop line zingers appear.

Poking around with an updated set in X2 shows that the roof is involved. If the Roof Layers are turned off in the elevation when sent to layout, it does not have zingers; turn the roof layers back on, update, and zingers appear. This is annotated in "Tibbs Sketch 01.X2.layout". Layer Sets with Roof layers on and off are in the Plan to facilitate testing.

The zingers are not in the camera views. It is the send / update to Layout when Roofs are on that causes zingers in the Walls. Most peculiar.

Graphics card is ATI FireGL V3600 with Driver Packaging Version 8.563-081210a-074139C-ATI

To be sure that the problem was not in my customised plan data, I reset X2 to Factory Defaults and used the delivered Profile templates for Metric and then Imperial Plans and Layouts. Any simple two storey house with a Roof displayed will create zingers when the Elevation is updated to Layout in the Layout Image. Turn the Roof off and wall zingers disappear. Failure is consistent and reproducible in all cases (so far). It does not occur in CA 10. I don't have CA X1, so cannot test it there.

Another thing to note is that the X2 Plan grew to over twice the original file size when saved and opened a few times in X2. Nothing seems to want to purge the file to compress it back down again.

Cheers, Ian.