Quirky - that is what I am talking about

[Doug Park]

As far as I know there should be no difference in the sharpness of prints unless you have set up your printer badly. When I updated the printing I compared it to printouts from a lot of sources and ours looked as sharp as the sharpest out there. However, some print driver settings can negatively affect your perception.

Whether or not antialiasing is used by the printer driver can change your perception of crispness. Some find that using antialiasing makes things look sharper others find exactly the opposite. I can't explain why, but I've seen this occur.

Much of the time people print using a PDF printer driver. By default some of those drivers have very low print resolutions which would explain a print that is not sharp.

If we have an issue I would like to know what it is because the statements that Chief isn't printing sharp don't make any sense to me.

As far as line drawings go, lines are lines. But your configuration of the weights, styles, colors, choice of patterns, etc. can have a huge impact on the differences in perceived quality. Heavy lines don't look as crisp, for example.

Toolbars are an area of weakness in the program that we are working to correct.

Our user interface does need some functional and organizational improvement and we are working on that as well.

I'm curious about what areas that you find quirky. I could guess about what those are, but I would probably be wrong because one persons quirky is another persons preferred way of working.

As always specific observations are a lot more informative than generalizations.

In any case we are always looking for constructive input to improve our interface.

[dshall]

I think the biggest difference for me is whether it it is PLOTTED in house vs printed by print company. Either way, it had been printed to pdf995.

[sutcac]

For schematic and design development stuff, I prefer to go with the watercolor with line drawing feature anyway, which can be done entirely native to Chief.

[HumbleChief]

For schematic and design development stuff, I prefer to go with the watercolor with line drawing feature anyway, which can be done entirely native to Chief.

That's really sharp Bryce!

[sutcac]

Thanks, Larry. It's an old, unbuilt design, but thought it was good to illustrate this.

[dshall]

That's really sharp Bryce!

I totally agree, but if I had the choice of a straight on watercolor elevation or a 3D watercolor, I would choose the 3D every time. My point is, why would I ever use this straight on view when I have the option of some kind of 3D view? What am I missing?

[sutcac]

Thanks and I pretty much agree with you, but often ARC's ask specifically for elevations, and I just wanted to demonstrate that Chief can do this, since it seemed this is one of the things the OP was after.

[dshall]

Thanks and I pretty much agree with you, but often ARC's ask specifically for elevations, and I just wanted to demonstrate that Chief can do this, since it seemed this is one of the things the OP was after.

And I agree with you. I think it is a matter of educating ARC's on what we can now provide for them. I believe this is all relatively new stuff. People do not understand yet what we can do.

[perryh]

My opinion is the watercolor with line drawing, and final shadows, is way to slow for me anymore, what happened to it. It gets slower with every version. Raytrace is much faster. I really like it but, not ready for prime time yet.

[HumbleChief]

My opinion is the watercolor with line drawing, and final shadows, is way to slow for me anymore, what happened to it. It gets slower with every version. Raytrace is much faster. I really like it but, not ready for prime time yet.

It's a shame about that great feature - just to slow to EVER really use. Is that function CPU or GPU dependent? Both?

[perryh]

It's a GPU function, but I have one of the best you can get.

[Joe Carrick]

I think it's both - maybe more CPU than GPU. Actually, the more I think about it the more I think it's CPU. It's almost like a Ray Trace but directly over the GPU Image. It has to be regenerated if you change the view-point.

[johnnyprc]

I guess that is the point really. CA is not setup well to do CONCEPT WORK in 2D. These drawings were created just in 2d - and yes, in minutes - each elevation less than 30 min. I guess the issue is that CA doesn't do 2D as well as it could. It does 3D great, but it would seem to me that 2D tools would be easy to improve, yet they don't seem to worry about it.

The interesting thing is that residential 3d work is 20times harder than commercial - in my opinion. I would take CA any day over Vectorworks for 3D modeling of residential structures. I just wish CA could be more flexible and better for 2D work - as sometimes you need to do concept work before you produce the full model.

I will post a PDF of the drawing file so you guys can print.

[perryh]

I was under the impression that
rendering=GPU / raytrace=CPU

[johnnyprc]

Here is an example of a quick 2D site plan early in concept drawing. I used Vectorworks with the "hand-drawn" effect, but overall I wouldn't think CA is suited for doing this simply. Maybe I am wrong and ignorant. I hope I am really.