LevisL

5 hours ago, Mark22 said:

I need to upgrade an aging Mac I'm currently using with X12 Premier.

I'm in the same boat, but as Mark said, the new Macs don't support Real-Time Raytracing yet, so you might be better off waiting a bit until Apple comes with their line of graphics cards that can support it. That's my plan. Then I can get a machine that will be useful for a longer period. Hopefully the folks at Apple don't make us hold out for too long!

Perfect. Thanks Eric. That's exactly what I needed!

Here's a simple plan showing the same problem. 

Post to Beam Example.plan

The layer is on. The problem is the doorways that are automatically created at the top of the stairs. They span from corner to corner. In doing so, Chief seems to make the whole wall invisible. If I make the doorways narrower, then I get posts and beams. Problem is I just want one post on each corner. I'll post a simple plan shortly.

Wondering if there's an easy way to get the posts and beams to show up in camera views in this case where I have a deck with wraparound stairs and post-to-beam railings? The automatic doorways are making the railing walls invisible and I can't delete these doorways, just resize them. Am I missing something?! I know I could manually add the posts and beams, but if I can get this to work, it would be easier... especially if the client decides to change the deck size later on.

Easy peasy! Make a new layer. Call it ‘Doors, Future’ and give it a dashed line type.

28 minutes ago, GeneDavis said:

Oh, and the annoying rim thing.  Find me a way to specify in defaults, deck rims separately from floor frame rims.

You can't. I find this really annoying too. I've made the suggestion to separate those directly to Chief. Send in a suggestion as well.

You would need to set up different layer sets and/or saved plan views. Some for viewing on screen with layer colors that can be viewed against a dark background, and some for printing with these same layers set to black (or whatever color you want printed). 

3 minutes ago, solver said:

They are in a Bonus Catalog.

 

 

Yup. Exterior Roof Attachments, in the skylights folder

4 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

Here you go...

Solar Tube Lens.calibz

You could also just resize a recessed light and adjust the lighting properties. And you could also change the CAD block for the symbol

On 10/13/2020 at 7:36 AM, robdyck said:

 

It will do this automatically if the concrete slab is the floor finish, not the floor structure. Use gravel for the floor structure.

21 hours ago, Ridge_Runner said:

...but never thought of changing the garage floor to having a finished concrete floor like Robert suggests! Another day and I have learned something!

Very clever Robert! I’ve complained to Chief about this and I hope they give us the option to run the floor structure over the door opening at some point in the near future, but until then, at least now I have a workable solution. Well played!!

6 hours ago, KTransue said:

Still, though, I don't have these problems with ANY other software I use except Chief, so I can't help but believe there is something that Chief Architect can be doing to alleviate the issue.

For the record, it’s not just Chief’s PDF’s that have that problem... I ran into the same thing printing some of my daughter’s school assignments when schools shut down last spring. The problem is in Preview. I print PDF’s from either Bluebeam or Acrobat Reader now. 

37 minutes ago, robdyck said:

@LevisL

 

None of my business but you're pretty skinny on headroom...I've got the railing set to 1.95 m in this image.

I know. This project is giving me grief! It's for a relative and trying to work with the existing shop height is challenging. We're still in the design phase though, so I'll address it before we get to con docs. I've got a couple options. Either inset the stairs a bit more, play with the roof slope/wall height/truss depth for the open to below area, or worst case, detail some sort of angled ceiling in the roof framing for that area.

21 minutes ago, SNestor said:

 

All I did was click on the wall and make it an "attic wall"....done.  

 

Beauty. Thanks Steve!

1 minute ago, javatom said:

Check your room type definitions for the shop.

Thanks! I didn't realize I hadn't made the foundation room a garage.

4 minutes ago, javatom said:

Delete the wall.

But I need that wall on the second floor to close up the 'open to below' room.

I'm starting to think this file is corrupt. I just noticed that it's showing hardwood floor in the existing shop and I can't get rid of it either!

I'm pulling my hair out with this one! I have a small portion of the north wall above the trapezoid windows that pokes through the roof (plan attached), as these screenshots show. I can't figure out why or how to fix it!

I've tried:

- dragging that small portion down in section view, but it pulls the rest of the wall down too.

- checking/unchecking 'Default wall top height'... doesn't change anything.

- checking/unchecking 'Stop at ceiling above'... also doesn't change anything. 

- I also checked for errand attic walls or mis-aligned roof planes, but all seems good there.

Living Quarter Addition to Shop.plan

If you change your general wall defaults, you can manually move the walls into place and have them snap to the reference walls below. The 'Align with wall below' tool still won't work like you want though. Not quite automatic like you requested, but it'll be accurate.

2 minutes ago, DianeP said:

Levis, can you show me the delete tool you mentioned.  Thanks!

It's this toolbar icon

It's also under the '3D' menu

If you send your view to layout using plot lines with color fill, there's another trick you can use. Use the 'Delete Surface' tool in your vector view to delete the screens/glass panels. When you send it to layout, the color fill will remain even though the surface has been deleted. I think it's a bug, but I use it to my advantage!

4 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

That would sort of work, but I think a simple on-the-fly preference/toggle would be much better.  Otherwise, any shared CAD blocks, blocks in the Core Catalog, blocks in Bonus Libraries, etc. would all be dependent on whoever set them up and there would be no way to modify without adding each one to the User Library.  A preference/toggle would solve all these inherent problems and would also address legacy issues IMO. 

Good point. I didn’t think of shared blocks and those in the core catalog, etc. 

Perhaps the solution could be a setting that would be stored with the specific cad blocks in the library. When adding it to the library, we could have a radio button to choose either ‘Insert on current CAD layer’ or ‘Insert on specific layer’ with a layer chooser pull-down. 

1 minute ago, rgardner said:

Just curious as to why you are using polyline solids to frame that instead of actual framing materials?

I was wondering the same thing. I’d just use general framing members in a case like that. No need to mess with different materials.

I've had it happen twice when way from my office using my MacBook with my iPad as the second monitor (Sidecar feature). I sent it in to tech. support and they weren't able to replicate it either. Haven't tried it again in quite a while to investigate further

2 hours ago, robdyck said:

I bet that weird wall assembly must have had you wondering...It's an existing building that has the 2nd floor balloon framed against a 15' tall fir wall. So the plan is to add a knee wall on top of the existing fir wall and, for vertical reinforcement of the hinge connection, a new framed wall inside of that at 97 1/8" tall. All engineer verified, of course.

At first glance I found it odd that you had double walls on the second floor, but not the main floor. I figured it out pretty quick when I checked the wall type definition! No further questions... you do what you have to do with renos. There’s some weird stuff built out there, especially some of those farmer builds!!!

1 hour ago, DzinEye said:

Nice catch Levis.  I tried changing the wall material thinking it might be something to do with the wall, but didn't think number of layers would be the issue.  Very interesting.

When I was first looking for the issue, I was comparing roof settings with one of my own plans. Nothing stood out there. Then I checked attic walls. Still no fix. Then raising the roof. Nothing. Then I focused on the double walls on the second floor. At first, I moved the outer framing layer up to make it an exterior layer. That solved the flush eaves problem, but created a whole bunch of other issues! So I just split the exterior layer into sheathing and siding and that was the trick. 

Rob,

The problem stems from your wall definition. You don't have a sheathing layer, just a single exterior layer. If you split up the 1 1/2" board and batten layer into 2 layers, say, 1 1/8" board & batten and 3/8" OSB, the z-fighting disappears. Seems odd that those 2 things would be related though... might want to report that to Chief.