glennw

I am really late to this party, but thought the following may be of some use. It amazes me just how many ways there are to do this and here is another that I don't think has been mentioned. I am not saying it is the best way - just another way. You can set your grid snap to the wall length you want and the walls will snap to that grid length. You can get some very helpful snaps for the walls that do not necessarily land on the grid but follow the grid snap interval. This snap interval is used even if the display of grid snaps is toggled off. The grid snap also work for wall lengths that start off grid - the wall will still snap to the grid snap setting even though it is off grid and even if the wall is at an angle to the grid. In this picture the grid snaps are set at 1800. The left hand wall was snapped to the end of the line that was placed randomly off grid. As the wall was dragged at 45deg it snapped to 1800 long - off grid. The horizontal wall was dragged out and it snapped to 1800 long - off grid. Same for the hi-lilted wall on the right.

My advice is not to use Rotate Plan View unless you 100% are aware of what it actually does. It rotates the drawing sheet including grids and coordinates - it doesn't rotate the plan in relation to the drawing sheet. In this case, I would use Edit Area.

Off the top of my head...this may be worth investigating although I haven't tried. You may be able to use a Referenced plan - have a look at The Reference Display in help, including the XOR option Although this will allow you to place the referenced plan offset from your main plan, it won't automatically show you the difference between the 2 plans. With a bit of playing around with layer sets, etc, you can probably display the differences between the 2 plans while one of them is referenced in the same location as the main plan. This could work for both plan and 3D views.

Chopsaw, Ignore my last few posts, with all my playing around I had inadvertently left Treat As Part OF...toggled on. I think that is the easiest way to go though. Make all the walls Hip Walls and Treat As Part Of Bay/Box/Bow Window.

This is all Auto using Extend Slope Downward. Is this what you want?

That should work. Did you create a new room with an invisible wall where you want the beam to go? Did you make the 2 short return walls Full Gable? Did you rebuild the roof? Post the plan if you are still struggling.

You may need to change your default roof slopes to 5:12 to match this front roof or leave them at 6:12 if that is really what you want. Turn on auto roofs. Then try this:

I don't think a beam by itself is not going to do anything There are a couple of ways I can think of to do this. Have a look at Extend Slope Downwards in the Roof Options in the Wall Specification dbx - you may need to raw an invisible wall. Have a look at Treat As Part of Bay/Box/Bow Window (with the Use Existing Roof option) at the bottom of the same panel. Do you want the bump out to have the same ceiling height as the main house, or lower (flat or sloping)?

Construction lines will display in both plan and elevation views.

Creating a .jpg happens instantly on my machine in both X14 and X15

In my younger days of hand drafting we used the straight door swing because it was so much faster and easier to draw a straight line using the set square than it was to get the circle template and draw a curve. But....I would never mix them up now so as to distinguish new and existing.

What about placing the notes on a hidden layer - they will not be visible in the plan, but will still appear in the schedule.

Yes, this is possible with Chief without too much effort - think of your fire pit table as a small room. If you want a Material List, you will need to use 3D objects so that you can assign materials to the objects. You don't need a cad drawing, you need to build a 3D model. Cad cannot report to the Material List.

Why can't you just change the ceiling heights of three rooms on the upper floor and then auto build roofs?

Notice that the left side Baseline is locating on the inside of the side wall and that the ridge is not in the centre of the room.

Just a wild guess without a plan. And it doesn't really look like this should help, but give it a go. Railing Specification dbx>Rail Style panel>Build From>Generate on Low Platform. However, there is an underlying problem that you need to find and fix.

Are you getting this error message on opening the plan? Did you try the Move option? This is the result I get when choosing Move - much, much closer to 0,0 than Ignore. I have placed a point at 0,0 for reference. Have a look at the coordinates in the status bar and compare the different options. Chopsaw is correct in that the cause of the problem is the objects drawn miles away from the origin.

The Exterior Walls setting applies when you select the outside room and change the material.

CAD>Lines>Line Style Management.......

That doesn't appear to be the latest plan?

Post another updated plan.

For the gable walls, select them, open their dbx and on the Roof panel>Pitch Options, uncheck Upper Pitch. For the walls above the roof, select them, open their dbx, Structure panel>Default Wall Heights, check Default Wall Top Height. It looks like you need to do that for a lot of the walls. I which case go Edit>Reset To Defaults.... It looks like your ground floor roofs need a bit of work as well?

For the gable roofs, select both end walls where you want the gables. Open their dbx and on the Roof panel>Roof Options, change it from Hip Wall to Full Gable Wall. Auto rebuild the roof. Can you post your latest plan.

You already have a second floor but the problem is that the floor and ceiling heights are all screwy. You need to go here (Floor Defaults) and change the floor and ceiling heights to your defaults. Especially note the Relative and Absolute heights. You wouldn't want the second floor to have an Absolute Elevation of zero - that would set it at the same elevation as the ground floor. You need to do this for both floors. You can then go back to the plan and apply the default settings you just created. The easiest way to do that is by ticking the wrench on the right of the input boxes for each room (you can group select the rooms).

Thats what I said way back - still waiting for feedback from the OP.