misterwiley

Two things are wrong here. 1. All the rooms on the 1st floor have the "retain floor/ceiling framing" box checked in the structure panel. To solve, go to floor 1, marquee select all the rooms on the first floor by selecting a room, click on the select similar marquee selection tool and drag a box around the entire house, then open the room spec dialog box, go to the structure panel and click the check box where it says "retain floor/ceiling framing" twice or until the box is blank. Click OK. This will fix the framing issue and generate the floor framing. 2. All your exterior walls seem to have incorrect bottom elevations. To solve, go to the first floor and select one of the exterior walls, click on the select similar marquee selection tool and dragging a box around the entire house, open the walls spec dialog box, go to the structure panel, and click the check box next to "default wall bottom height" until it is checked. Click OK. This will allow the 3D views to look correct. Hope that helps.

Look in the help files for "framing reference" marker and also joist direction tool which can control on center spacing. Joist spacing can also be controlled in the framing defaults. Everything you want can be adjusted to make the auto framing look correctly for a basic shed but you will need to set all the defaults and framing reference accordingly. This little shed would be a great time to learn all the basics of how to control the framing in Chief. Lots of info in the help files and the video tutorials located HERE.

If you don't like the auto behavior you could always go into your template plan and change the "Deck" room defaults to always have the floor framing group on number 2. This helps ensure that all decks are built against the house and never "into" the house.

Open the deck room specification dialog box, go to the Structure tab, and change the "framing group" from 1 to 2. Click ok and rebuild the deck framing.

This topic might help you understand and resolve your issue if you have AutoCad installed on your computer.

Thanks Micheal, I knew it was simple but with all the tools available it can be hard to tell the difference between those rotate buttons in the 3D box specification dialog and the other tools like the rotate handles in 3D views or the rotate command in the transform replicate tool. Each one seems to affect the object differently. Your method works great though. Thanks again!

Rotating 3D solids is not very easy when on sloping angles that you can't get a cross section to view. I know its possible because Micheal did it but I'm stumped. Chief's 3D objects tools have never been my strong suit.

As much as I would love to have this feature automated in Chief, this solution is pretty easy. Thanks for taking the time to post the example plan. I can't for the life of me replicate the valley plate that you drew with 3D shapes though. I can get close but I can't figure out how to rotate the object to sit flat against the rafters.

Usually the wall type for the railing will be a typical wall type like interior-4 or something. If that's the case there is probably a wall layer with drywall or paint that is causing the white material to display. I usually create a new wall type with opening no material that is the width of my railing to eliminate this. This is of course all a guess without the plan file to look at. Hope that helps.

Edit->Edit Area->Edit Area (All Floors) Zoom out and draw a box around the entire plan, make sure the box is large enough to capture everything that might be invisible in your current view. With the box still selected, click on the reflect tool in the tool bar and reflect about any wall or cad line either in the horizontal or vertical to flip the plan up and down or side to side respectively.

When you say manually entered dimensions I assume you mean manually type out the dimension as text rather then use the built in dimension tools. I just did a test using the method you suggested which worked great but the dimensions are all wrong because Chief can't really dimension 3D objects like sketchup can. The attached image shows a 24" base cabinet, a 45" upper cabinet, and a wall height of 8'. All the dimensions are slightly less then the actuals. For simple details typing the dimensions out as text might actual still be faster then using a 3rd party program though. Thanks Micheal

Thanks, yeah sketch up is probably my best bet for something like this I’d guess.

Can Chief Architect create orthographic details with dimensions like the follow image? If so how would you add the dimensions? If not in Chief then what software would you do a simple detail like this in and then import into Chief?

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/10236/cad-tools-for-productivity-what-s-coming-next.html?playlist=139

Agreed!

Why would you have a check box that implies there is a default setting when there actually isn't? I love the functionally of what Chief has provided with Edge and Patten line settings in the layout dialog but if there is actually no way to set these as a default setting then the check boxes when sending to layout seem entirely superfluous. What exactly do those check boxes do? It's like someone thought "Hey we should program a check box here for that default setting we are going to add later" but then never actually added that default setting. It's confusing why they exist if there is not a default setting to go along with them.

If that's the case than why even have those check boxes in the layout dialog? Sounds like they don't do anything. I'll have to look into that more. Which specific layer controls that? Is it a layer in the plan or the layout file? Thanks for your help Michael!

When I send a elevation to layout I get the option to check "use edge line defaults" or "pattern line defaults". When I open that layout box in layout I can see what those values are and can change them for that layout box. However I can't find the place within Chief that actually allows me to set those defaults so I don't have to open every layout box and change them every time. Could someone point me to where those defaults are actually set? Thanks in advance!

Since you mention the word "loop hole" here in North Carolina we are allowed to call a separate living area as a "mother-in-law suite". This allows you to have a kitchen without the need to meet the 1 hour fire separation rules. The only thing is anyone living there other then "family" would violate the "mother-in-law" suite rule and then it would be classified as an ADU. I guess the reasoning here in NC is that your family is less likely to sue each other if the apartment burns down than that of a stranger renting the apartment out. Maybe you have something similar where you live in the local zoning/code books.

Posting this for others that might run across this same problem and need a solution. Requires AutoCAD though. I found this thread while I was battling the same problem with a 3d DWG file I got from GE's website of a fridge that would import into Chief as one material. I'm not very good with AutoCAD but I do own the 2017 version of the program and was trying to figure out what I had to edit in AutoCAD so that when I imported the DWG to Chief as a symbol it would have different components that I could apply different materials too. The solution was to create a bunch of "Layers" in AutoCAD for each different material I wanted and then assign the CAD surfaces to those individual layers. This is what creates the different materials when imported into Chief. It has nothing to do with the AutoCAD materials that you can assign in that program. It has everything to do with the layers. Hope this helps someone else in the future.

You might try opening the PDF on your computer with Adobe Reader and then click "Save As", pick another PDF format, like optimized PDF and save it under a different name. See if that works? Some times Adobe Reader can fix issues by simply saving it within their reader program.

I would also note I have no idea if my above mentioned approach is at all efficient for the plan or layout file size. I could see on a really big set of plans how this might bog down the layout and cause slow downs or lag in the program with a bunch of hidden information but I've not really experienced that myself.

I think the idea is to send the entire view to the layout and crop it down to the schedule you want to have displayed, thus hiding all the others. You can also send the same view to layout multiple times and crop each differently to display what ever schedule you want or multiple schedules on one page if needed.

To get 1/16" dashed lines in a 1/4"=1' layout view it would seem you would have to create a line style with a super small line size and space size, like 1/216 or something. In all views other then printing it would make that line look basically solid which makes it seem like the wrong solution to what we are trying to achieve.

Yes this is 100% the problem which I'm experiencing. I very rarely have my views sent to layout at 1:1, its usually as Chopsaw said, 1/4"=1' but in my particular case in the cross section elevation example above, I usually send them as 1/2”=1’ scale and have small details that I need appropriate line dashing to be shown. Chopsaw’s comment is the reason why I can't seem to get any of my dashed lines to show properly or print in the line style I wish it would seem.