glennw

Scott gave the correct answer back in post #3 by making the point that you don't use Ceiling Structure - you use Ceiling Finish with a framing layer. Dropped Ceilings and Raised Floors The structure of a dropped, or suspended, ceiling can be specified in the Ceiling Finish Definition dialog either for a room or the defaults for a floor. SeeFloor and Ceiling Platform Definitions. To create a framed dropped ceiling 1. Select a room and click the Open Object edit button. 2. On the Structure panel of the Room Specification dialog, click the Ceiling Finish button. See Structure Panel. 3. In the Ceiling Finish Definition dialog: • Specify Layer 1 as the plenum space. • Specify Layer 2 as the horizontal framing. Framing member spacing and width are set in the material definition. See Define Material Dialog. • Specify Layer 3 as the drywall. • Specify Layer 4 as the paint color. A dropped ceiling composed of a metal grid requires only two layers: one for the plenum and one for the tiles. and also it is worth remembering:

I don't think you will have muck luck displaying the sun in a camera view or showing what you want from the owners position. I would forget about seeing it from the owners seated viewpoint. I would place an object, or 3D person at the correct location. You can then take a camera view from outside looking into the patio. Through the Adjust Sunlight dbx, you can dynamically adjust the sun for date and time to see the shadow movements . You can also adjust the height of the beams/roof and see the effect on the 3D person. I will see if I can do a vid. I forgot to do the adjustments to the roof/beam, but you can change them and see the same effect. http://screencast.com/t/jiopiO7Q

On closer look it's not Graphite. It's not Flux either Johnny - check out the upper case W.

Looks like Graphite Light to me. You can download it free from http://www.fontpalace.com/font-download/Graphite+Light/ I used it all the time but now use Chief Blueprint

Try using a Box, Polysolid, slab, etc, instead of the Landing

Michael, What kind of object do they refer to?

David, I paraphrased the process but you should be able to figure it out.

I would use Edit Area (All Floors), Reflect About Object, Point to Point Move. Edit: Ah...I forgot...clean up!

You are probably drawing them on different floors. The floor you are drawing on in 3D is the current floor. Javatom just beat me to it - you have everything drawn on level 0. I would insert a floor beneath the current level 0. Then select the fences and check Generate on Low Platform, but I think that is probably just a workaround. Redraw the fences on your new level 1 and you don't need to check Generate On Low Platform..

Uncheck "Allow Rap" (at the bottom of the Style panel).

Johnny, If you check the material definition for the "White Board & Batten" material, you will notice that the Material color is white and the Lines color is a light grey. I think that Chief is trying to display your lines as something other than grey (in this case white) where those pattern lines fall within the shadowed areas. If you change the Lines color to a darker grey, they will display better in the shadowed areas.

Johnny, A plan file would help. Does it happen on the elevation screen view or just the exported image?

Scott, There are no framing details there to use.

Do you mean that those are the only 2 items you want listed in the ML list - like this? There is a slight discrepancy in the numbers because the shingles are measuring to front of the fascia and the roof area is measuring to back of fascia. It is easy to change it so that both measure to back of fascia, but not so easy for both to measure to front of fascia. This seems a bit of a waste to use the ML on this though. It is really easy to get the total roof area by shift selecting all the roofs and looking on the Polyline panel of the Roof Plane Specification dbx to get all the various roof areas including Roof Surface Area. And then just report this is a text box or similar.

Yes, it can be done. I will post back this afternoon when I get time to repost.

One thing to be aware of is that Snap Grid doesn't really do what you may thing in many cases. If I have an object in a plan which is off grid to start with and I have Snap Grid set to say 3' 0". I select the object and drag it, expecting the object to snap to the grid. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN. The object will NOT snap to the grid, it will move and snap a distance equal to the snap grid setting (3' 0"). So it will still be off grid. BEWARE.

Normally you would: Build your crawl space walls on level 1 and your main floor walls on level 2. Auto build a mono slab foundation. In your case: Build Floor...Build Foundation with mono slab. You will now have a mono slab on level 0, a crawl space with wall on level 1. Now build level 2. You will need to fix things like floor/ceiling heights and structure types as well as wall definitions. There are any number of ways to get where you want, but the above is a basic outline. Let me know if you want to do a Skype session and I will run you through it.

I am not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain how Chief controls heights down from the ceiling?

Defaults...Framing...Foundation panel...Subfloor for Floor 1...Floor Structure...Edit...Structure Type

The arrow keys will move selected objects according to the snap Unit set at Defaults... Plan...snap Grid/snap units...snap Unit. This is true even if Use snap Grid/Units is unchecked.

Michael, Thanks. I was answering the other thread regarding shingles quantities on the roof and suggested using a new unit of measurement to convert sq ft to number of shingles. I then thought back to this thread and thought something similar may work here. It could be a handy technique for converting all sorts of things in the Material List like the number of ridge tiles in a length of ridging (which I pointed out in the other thread). You could have any number of "units" configured and then just pick the one you want in the ML eg. If you had a terrain feature that is natively reporting in area (say, square feet), you could have a unit of measurement called Paving Stones that would report in the ML as number of paving stones and we have the ability to switch the units as needed and the Count will auto adjust depending on the units. By the way, I just sent in a bug report pointing out that the shingle material IS meant to report number of shingles, but is reporting area instead. EDIT: I just used this same technique to demonstrate in another thread that you can include things like wallboard accessories, (screws, tape, etc) to automatically be counted in the ML.

And if that doesn't do what you want and you don't want to break the wall sections into 16' lengths, you can always create a new unit of measure and use that with "Linear Length" reporting. Create a new unit of measure being 16' long. When you generate your material list, use Linear Reporting. Click in the Unit column for the plate rows, and choose your new 16' long unit of measure. The Count will change to reflect the number of 16' lengths needed.

Yes, this can be done quite easily. You first need to create the unit of measurement you want. In this case you want Squares which is equal to 100sq ft. Excuse me if I have some of these conversions wrong as I normally work in metric!! Go to Preferences...General...Unit Conversion and create a new unit called Squares. Generate your material list. On the line that is reporting the shingles, click in the Unit field. In the drop down box, scroll and select your new Squares unit. The reported area (Count) will change to reflect the units chosen. You can even create a unit to report number of ridge caps based on the length of the ridge caps reported by the material list. In this case I have created a unit called RIDGE CAPS which is defined as 2 ridge caps to the foot. When I select RIDGE CAPS as the unit, the Count changes to reflect the number of ridge caps instead of the total length of ridge caps. Oh, and by the way, if you only want the roof materials reported in a material list and no other categories, that is easy to configure in Preferences. It is also easy to include proposed or existing roof planes in a material list by placing them on different layers and checking or unchecking the "Mat" column. You can also display the individual roof plane areas by using the standard Chief label macro %surface_area%.

A couple of things. Turn on auto framing. For the ground floor wall under the railing, uncheck Balloon Through Ceiling Above. Change the name of the mezzanine room to something other than Balcony, which is an external room type. You need to name it one of the internal room types.

Yes, Chief OOB uses the older simultaneous hotkeys method. This seemed crazy to me as they are so illogical which makes them hard to remember and even harder to physically execute. This is something I pushed for and a few versions back and they introduced the sequential hotkeys - much easier to assign 2 (can be 1 to 4) sequential keys which can be logical and physically easier to execute. You can even use a combination of both methods if you want - but much easier to use just the sequential hotkey shortcuts. It is very easy to remember and physically easy to use something like AR sequentially as a hotkey for Align Right than to use something like Alt+R+Ctrl (as an example) simultaneously. My advice is to get rid of all the Chief OOB simultaneous hotkeys as you can and replace them with 2 key (mostly)sequential hotkeys that make logical sense and are physically easier to execute.