glennw

We can almost do a horizontal rafter tail automatically. But we are stuck with that pesky line on the underside of the rafters which is the invisible horizontal soffit meeting the invisible raking soffit.

"plumb horizontal" - ???????? That's a new one on me! It must be regional thing. It must be a tad difficult to do "plumb horizontal" with a plumb bob. I guess you get the apprentice to go down to wallmart and ask for a horizontal plumb bob. Down here in Oz "plumb horizontal" is called level or horizontal.

I think Partition walls came in with X11.

Yes, I can see the image, but it really doesn't give me any idea about what you are trying to do. I am suggesting that you do not use manual roofs at all - let Chief build auto roofs over the whole building. Post the plan.

Larry, What tools did you use for the driveways? Straight and Spline driveways do not exactly follow the terrain like a Terrain Feature - they modify the terrain so that the road is level across it's width. ie cut and fill the terrain. If you want a road the just sits on top of the terrain, use a Polyline Road. With a Polyline Road yo need to do all the shaping with Terrain Data which means that it will not cut and fill, but instead just sit on the terrain.

My best advice would be to use auto roofs. Can you post the plan?

Also available as one of Chiefs Special Characters.

Have you had a play with the Edit Wall Layer Intersection tool?

I think you already know that you can use an invisible bearing wall to break the trusses. But if you don't want to use a wall, try using a Bearing Line where you want the truss broken. These are butted over: These are lapped over - unfortunately there is a set lap distance of 200mm (8"): :

Brad, Temp dims inherit a lot of their settings from the current Saved Dimension Defaults. Yours probably has something to do with the Reach...... or 1st Line Offset....or....something similar...... I can get the small dimension to display or not depending on the location of the vertical wall.

There is a tool that will do exactly that. Have a look in the help file for Symbol Moldings. Basically it is a 3D molding symbol repeated along a molding line as opposed to a normal molding which is an extruded 2D cad shape.

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Just a FYI and as Graeme says.....the oldies amongst us will know..... The OOB line weights are based on the old Rotering pen sizes and thus a line weight of 18 is based on the Rotering pen weight of 1.8mm. A line weight of 36 is based on the Rotering pen weight of 3.6mm....etc.

You should be able to control the ending location and mitre angle. The Frieze is a 3D Molding Polyline on the Roofs, Trim layer. Unlock the Roofs, Trim layer - you will have to turn off auto trims. In an elevation view select the 3D Molding Polyline and drag the end of it along as you require. It gets a little confusing because there is a short line attached at the end - this section of line has no Frieze attached, but is there to control the molding cut off angle at the bottom - have a play at rotating the line and you will get the hang of it.

After selecting the wall and dimension you want to change, use the 2 headed arrow icon - not the 4 headed arrow icon. 2 headed stays connected, 4 headed breaks away.

That Number Style setting only applies to what is displayed in a dbx. You need to change the CAD Defaults to apply that setting to cad objects.

Your way looks pretty good. How did you do yours? You can get the shaped openings ok using the Inserts Into Wall option for a "palce holder" symbol. ie, use the symbol to create the cutout and then use Edit Wall Cutout Polyline to shape the cutout as required. This will only give you the hole though. You would then need to add glass and trim - using objects like solids and molding polylines or similar. There are probably other ways as well.

Is your Exterior Room displaying correctly?

I didn't have a lot of time to spare but I did have a play round which resulted in an approach that solves some of your problems. To make it a bit easier on myself, I only build the roofs over the main 2 storey part of the building in this simple plan. This method may be worth a look: What I did was to let Chief auto build the roof using Ignore Top (2nd) Floor and Upper Pitch options. Basically an auto Gambrel roof ignoring the upper floor. I think whatever way you go, you are going to spend a lot of time to get it all as you want.

Post the plan after using Backup Entire Plan.

Try this instead. Porche911.plan

Sorry, that is a typo that I didn't pick up. That should say "wall definition" not "door definition". I was talking about the various wall definition layers and should read: "The wall definition will wrap the exterior wall definition layers. You can move the Exterior Layers into the Main Layers to do what you want, but this may cause problems else where." Does that make sense now?

The door definition will wrap the exterior layers. You can move the Exterior Layers into the Main Layers to do what you want, but this may cause problems else where. You could minimise those problems by using the wall definition in just this one area like this:

What version of Chief are you using? Assuming X15. I usually draw a wall or some other object as a reference plane. Draw a single 3D Molding Line line in plan and open it's dbx. Edit the molding shape, size, material,etc. You should now see the molding line in 3D views. You can change straight lines to curves and adjust their shape. Now you can add another section of your 3D Molding Polyline. Do this in an elevation view and drag the new line of the existing one. Continue changing views and editing as required.

It is doable in Chief, but you need to follow the rules. Set up your plan and elevation cameras and tile the views. Draw your polyline one section at a time and adjust it's height and direction as you add more sections to the polyline. Don't try and convert a multipart polyline to a molding polyline and then try to edit the various parts of the polyline - you will find that very difficult. Each time you want to add another section to the polyline, change to an elevation view that is perpendicular to the angle of the new polyline.