glennw

Scott, Yes, I did delete it because I suggested you could use a joist instead of blocking. The trouble with that is you can't do staggered blocking as per your pictures, so I deleted the post as the suggestion was pretty lame.

You have 2 choices: For equal pitched roofs you will need to change one of the roof heights. Done in 4 seconds with auto roofs. Draw a room Divider. Select room and change ceiling height. Or...if you want the same plate height for each roof, you need to change one of the roof pitches in the wall's dbx.

I am pretty sure that this is doable with auto roofs (similar to the pic attached). BUT, the critical thing is the geometry. What are the critical dimensions and what is their priority? Ie, is it the floor/floor heights and sizes, building width at each floor, roof slope and structural sizes.....? A change in any of these could make the roof undoable.

Try this. Delete all the wall framing in one go by using Delete Objects. Multi select the walls you don't want to frame. Open the dbx and on the Structure panel, check Retain Wall Framing. Use the Build Framing dbx to build all the wall framing. Any walls marked Retain Wall Framing will not frame - because Chief remembers the state of this setting on a wall by wall basis.

Yes, I think this has happened to me on a couple of occasions even though I have a plan open. I haven't been able to track down when it happens as its only been a couple of times so I haven't send in a bug report yet. I think from memory that clicking the menu bar brings it all back as it should be. I will take more notice next time it happens. I note that Michael is also on a mac for what it is worth.

You can control that behaviour with the Connect Island Rooms setting:

Is this happening all the time or occasionally. I don't have any problem on my mac.

Gene, Here is another way that works. Make this selected wall (or some other walls as well) a Furred Wall. Why not try making those double walls as a single wall definition? It may be worth a try. I have no idea why changing that 1 wall to Furred effects walls on the others side of the building. I have also gotta ask because I don't do any walkout basements - is there any particular reason why you put a full liveable floor on level 0 and don't have a seperate Foundation on level 0 and the first liveable floor on level 1?

In X14 you can specify material defaults (as well as all other parameters) for 3D Solids.

Don't use a Garage room type. The Garage room type automatically supplies a raised stem/curb wall up to the main floor level. As Eric said, you can't specify a floor step down or level in the Room Types defaults (except for in the Build Foundation defaults for a Garage).

Your hole may be interfering with the bottom edge of the solid. It looks like you are making this a lot harder than it should be. Instead of the Boolean operations, have you tried selecting the polysolid and then From the Edit menu use Solid Feature. Draw your hole and then shape it. You can draw your hole over the edge of the polysolid if you want. Or...if you have a lot of the same shaped holes, draw the shape in the elevation view with cad, copy them into place and then convert them into a Solid Hole - you can multiple select the cad shapes and convert them to holes all in one go. I think this will be much easier and more intuitive than using the boolean operations.

Check to make sure your foundation is forming a room. Go down to the foundation plan and try selecting the foundation room. If you can't select a room, look for unjoined walls.

The stem wall is probably greyed out because you don't have a foundation. Try Build Foundation and leave auto build foundation on if you can.

Sounds to me like you are asking about floor framing? If so, you can use a Joist Direction arrow (don't forget to draw it on the floor below the room). You will probably need to use some Bearing Lines or Bearing Walls as well.

This is probably because you already have a terrain created. You can only have one terrain in a plan.

I am having trouble following your post but I think this setting may help. Can you reword your post so that it reads a bit clearer.

To me, this sounds like the way to go

Ah, I saw X11 in the signature and glossed over X14 in the message. What I described with the color chooser can happen in X11 but not in X14. It still may be possible with other aps, windows and tools.

Also, have a look for a Chief window that may be hidden behind other windows, or it could be on another screen. It could be a window like a color chooser window or similar. The Chief window may be waiting for a response.

Jason, After building the foundation: Room Specification dbx>Relative Heights>Stem Wall. or Before building the foundation: Build>Floor>Build Foundation>Stem Walls>Minimum Height.

Larry, I think part of the problem is that you only have one truss drawn. Try copying the truss over the whole room. I think Chief is building the wall up to the roof where there are no trusses. Don't forget that Chief will build a framed roof where there are no trusses.

At a wild guess, for rich text, it may be worthwhile checking the status of the Cad Style Font Sizing setting to see what happens. Rich Text Specification>Options>Size

You can do it in Preferences before generating the ML.

One is for floor 1 and the other is floor 2.

Newell, Ah...I think I realise what you want now. Something like this? This is done with a straight stair section and 2 treads in a curved stair section at the bottom. Do you want the left hand stringer and rail of the 2 lower steps to be a straight line (ie, what angle?), or do you want the stringer and rail to bend between the 2 steps like the attached picture? You need to attach a plan file - not a layout.