Page 1218 - Chief Architect Reference Manual

Terrain Specification Dialog

the first floor. See “Terrain Height vs • Custom - Specify a custom triangle count
Floor Height” on page 1201. value.
• Check Flatten Pad to flatten the area • Triangle Size - Specify the maximum tri-
beneath the building. To create a walkout angle size in the terrain surface. Smaller
basement, uncheck this box. triangles produce better quality results in
3D but take longer to generate.
2 Define the thickness of the Skirt added
to the terrain. The skirt is only visible in Chief Architect builds 3D terrain surfaces by
3D views and gives the viewer a sense of splitting them into triangles. See “Terrain
depth when viewing the terrain. Surface Triangles” on page 1202.
• Flat specifies that the skirt be flat at its Triangles are computed roughly as follows:
base. Chief Architect determines the low-
est point in the terrain and then offsets Size of Triangle = Area of Terrain Perimeter /
this value by the user specified thickness Number of Triangles
value. The resulting value is used as a uni- The Low (1000), Medium (2000), and High
form elevation for the base of the skirt. (4000) values work well for a terrain
• Follow Terrain specifies that the skirt perimeter of approximately 20,000 sq ft
base maintains a consistent distance (1858 m²). If your terrain perimeter varies
below the terrain. The distance is equiva- greatly from this, consider defining the
lent to the specified Thickness value. number of triangles using the Custom setting
or the Triangle Size setting.
3 Terrain Surface Smoothing - Control
the amount of rounding applied to 5 Clipping - Check Hide Terrain
terrain edges. A low value for smoothing Intersected by Building to cut out the
produces terrain that has sharp peaks and portion of the terrain that is intersected by the
abrupt changes in slope. A high value results first floor footprint. Checking this box
in terrain that continuously flows from point prevents the generation of contour lines
to point. inside the house.

4 Triangle Count - Specify the number If your foundation footprint differs from your
of surface triangles used to generate the first floor footprint, you may need to use the
terrain in 3D views. A lower count value will Terrain Hole tool for custom clipping
generate more quickly but with reduced instead. See “Terrain Feature Tools” on page
quality. 1208.

Contours Panel
Chief Architect identifies two types of control how they display in floor plan view.
contour lines: Primary and Secondary. They See “Contour Lines” on page 1214.
are drawn on different layers, so you can

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