Nick7b





Assignment G THE LAST ASSIGNMENT! The above picture is of my new landscape with the new elevation. We learned how to do this in the section of chapter 12 detailed in my last post. My logo, pictured below, was the final section of chapter 12, and is thee only thing I’ve learned how to do since my last post. I don’t think that this section helped me at all. I don’t understand the significance of learning how to make a logo. I probably could have figured out how to do it on my own. For the last time, if you want to know how this book helps me in real life, please refer to my previous posts. I only had one problem in this section: making my logo a CAD block. I’ll make it one, and it will show up in the library, but it won’t be there the next time I go on Chief Architect. It’s really strange, and I haven’t figured out how to fix it yet, but I have a plan of it saved, so it’s not like I’ll lose my logo if it doesn’t save as a CAD block. I was successful in making my logo (but not saving it). It was really easy and took only about thirty seconds. There were no opportunities to be creative in this section. The book told you what you should make your logo look like, and the only thing you could change was your “company” name.





Assignment F: In this chapter (chapter 12) we learned multiple things, but this section of it was on how to use the House Wizard and how to change the elevation of your terrain. This picture is a plan view of the vacation cottage that I built with the House Wizard, and the terrain elevations that I made (I know it’s not too fun to look at). The last chapter, chapter 11, was about how to make print layouts. This chapter is helpful because I don’t plan on having the house I build to be in the Great Plains, so the backyard should at least have a hill or two. As far as the House Wizard goes, I’m not planning on using it anymore because it makes me feel like I’m not doing any work and someone else is building my house for me, which annoys me. I’ve said many, many times how this book will help me in real life, and I’m as tired of saying it as I’m sure you, the reader, is tired of reading it. So, if you want to find out how this book helps in real life, see my past posts. I had two problems in this chapter. The first one is that the House Wizard decided to put a gaping hole in the center of my cottage, which I had to fix myself. I’m pretty sure that the House Wizard has some kind of mental defect, and this is part of the reason why I won’t be using it anymore. I could have built that entire cottage myself in the time it took me to fix its’ mistakes. The second problem was a little unnecessary. The House Wizard makes every wall, interior or exterior, clear (as you can see in the picture). The walls that I had to put in to fix the hole in the center of my house looked like walls normally do. For some reason, this really bugged me; maybe I have O.C.D. or something. Anyways, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Doing the landscape elevations was easy, although I don’t see the point of putting in the elevation point or the elevation line before putting the elevation splines in (you’d have to read the chapter to understand what I just said). Again, in this section of chapter 12, we weren’t really allowed to get creative. We had to put in the elevations of our yard as the book said to, and the House Wizard took any other opportunity we had to be creative away from us.

Assignments D and E: Assignments D and E both from the same chapter (chapter 11, the one about creating layouts), and very similar, so I’ve decided to include them on one write-up. There are no pictures with this one; both of the pictures were printed out on 11x17 papers as part of assignment E. This chapter was about how to create and print layouts of your house, including multiple views of the outside of it and dimensions. The last chapter was about rendering and landscaping. I’m not sure how this chapter will help us in the future of this course. Unless making a print layout for our own house is required (which it probably is), I’m not sure if it will help me at all. I guess learning how to make a dimensioned plan will help if you actually wanted to //build// your house, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon. I’ve become tired of saying how this book will help us in real life, but I’ll mention it one more time: this book is teaching us how to follow directions better. The only problem I had in this chapter was changing the scale of my dimensioned plan when I tried to send it to the layout. It was always either too small or too big. I had to mess with the scale for a while to try and get it to fit, but eventually I figured it out. It was rather easy for me to gat the different vector views of my house onto the layout. All I had to do was find a scale that worked and keep all of the pictures on that scale. There were literally no opportunities to be creative or original at all in this chapter. We had to follow the directions to the word and make a black-and-white print layout. Looking at your house on a piece of paper isn’t as fun as looking at a 3D vector or render view of it on the computer.

Assignment C: This is a picture of the outside of my house, with my own landscaping ideas and 4:00 PM shadows. You can’t really see the pool area from this angle, but I put a picture of it below. This picture is from chapter 10, where we learned about building terrain models and rendering images of our houses. As mentioned earlier, we learned how to make terrains this chapter. This will help me in the future of this course because, when I make my own house, I’m going to want some kind of landscape outside (I don’t like the idea of looking out the window and seeing nothing). The reoccurring theme in this book is learning how to follow directions better. This is the only way this chapter could probably help me in real life. I don’t exactly think that learning how to make a lawn in Chief Architect 10 will have an impact on my future, unless I end up using this program again at some point. You never know… In this chapter, I had two major problems. The first one was figuring out how to get a cement platform on the ground outside fro my pool area. When people put a pool in their yard, they don’t usually just put it on the grass. They build a pool area around it that’s usually made out of cement. Doing this was a challenge, because there isn’t a cement platform available in the library (there probably is, but I don’t have the patience to search through the entire library. What I had to do was make a soffit and edit it to the specifications that I needed, which meant making it as thin as possible, which wasn’t that hard. My second problem was figuring out how to get a fence around my pool area. I scoured the “exterior furnishings/fixtures” section of the library over and over, but didn’t find anything. Mr. Bailey didn’t even know how to do it. It turns out that fencing is under the “build wall” section. Duh! I was able to overcome all of my problems this week with minimal help. I was also able to get very creative with landscaping. I wasn’t, however, supposed to mess with elevations, because that’s like two chapters ahead, but I already know how to do it.

Assignment B: This is a vector view of the outside of my bungalow, with a new deck and porch added. This picture is from chapter 8 of the book. In the last chapter (chapter 7), I added a basement, which you can see on the bottom of my house. In this chapter I learned that you can make railing walls for porches and decks and things like that, and that there are many other uses for soffits. In the last chapter, I learned how to build a basement and a staircase. Learning how to build stairs helped me in this chapter because I needed to build stairs from the porch or deck to the ground. Also, I will want a deck in my house, and stairs are a necessity in any house. I’ve finally figured out how this program will help me in real life. You have to follow the directions that this book gives you to the letter, or you’ll get completely lost and/or end up with a completely deformed bungalow. The book is actually teaching me to follow directions more closely. In this chapter, I had a major problem with making the support piers for the deck and porch. No matter how hard I tried, I could not adjust the width and depth of the soffit to the specifications the book wanted. Every time I tried to change the width to 8, it would change back to 13 when I clicked out of the dialogue box. It turns out that the soffit wasn’t supposed to be a corner soffit. Once I made it a regular soffit, the numbers stopped changing back. Again, other than the soffits, I had no problem, and all I had to do was follow the directions. I figure that if I keep going the way I’m going, I’ll be done with the book in two weeks. There really weren’t many options for creativity in this chapter. The book told me how to do everything, and there wasn’t a place where I could do what I wanted.



Assignment A: This is the kitchen of my bungalow, with the appliances, cabinets and soffits. In chapter four of the book we are working from, I learned how to make base cabinets and put in kitchen appliances. This picture is from chapter five, where I learned how to make wall cabinets and soffits. This chapter (and the last chapter) taught me how to put cabinets in my kitchen. This will help me in the future of this course when I'm making my own house, because every kitchen should probably have a few cabinets, an oven, and a refrigerator. As far as real life goes, I'm not sure how knowing how to put cabinets in a kitchen in a CAD program that I'll probably never use again out of high school will help me solve any of life's problems. However, if I ever become an architect, I'm sure this will be very useful. When putting in the wall cabinets, I had a problem getting the cabinet above the oven to fit on the wall. Instead, it was sort of hovering over the oven towards the middle of the room. To fix this, I had to shrink the cabinet to the right size // before // sliding it to the wall. I also had a problem trying to get that curtain off of the kitchen window. When putting the windows in my bungalow, I changed the default window setting so that all of the windows I put in would have the curtains already on them. As you can see, I couldn't figure out how to get the darn thing off! It still looks good. Other than the wall cabinet and the curtains, I was pretty successful. All you have to do is follow directions and listen to the book, and you'll be done in no time. I still consider the curtains creative, even though they were a mistake. I also like the hardwood floor of my kitchen, although it isn't even close to matching the rug in my family room (you can see it in the bottom right corner of the picture.)