misterwiley

I'm having trouble with getting my exterior lights to render in 3D the way I would expect them too. I've tried different combinations of spot lights and other lights with different intensities without any realist results. I've turned off the sunlight and tried different back drop images without any luck. Interior lights seem to be working and when I look at the lights DBX it even shows them in use like below in blue However every time I'm outside the structure with the camera view looking at the exterior lights the light DBX will not show any lights in use. Below are the style lighting effects I'm trying to get on the exterior of this structure but not having a luck. I feel as though I'm missing some sort of setting that is not allowing the lights on the exterior to render correctly. Like they wont even turn on. Does anyone have any recommendations or troubleshooting tips as to why my exterior lights are not functioning? Thanks for any help here. 240_Chestnut_Forest_Rd_-_Basement_Remodal_and_Deck.plan Oh and I'm doing all this work in X12

I would be interested in how you got that material list from Chief?

This was posted back in 2014...can anyone tell me if this is still the case or has chief added some sort of new function for controlling the threshold line on exterior doors?

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Something is definitely up with the computer, I’ve probably lost that file but I’ll try and get down to the root cause soon.

Seems like everything in My Documents Folder->Chief Architect X11 and the last 2 Plans I had opened are completely corrupted.... Strange, this has never happened to me before. My backups appear to be corrupted as well. Can anyone else open this plan? 102_Alpine_way_-_Screen_Porch_Concept.plan

Unfortunately the repair option did not work.

So I just hoped on my computer to open a project from a few days ago and X11 has completely lost the ability function with errors happening all over the place. My tools bars have all disappeared and when I try to add them back the program throws an error. When I try to open a plan I get the other error having something to do with a file header. I've completely uninstalled x11 and reinstalled with the latest from the website and still having the same issue. Only thing that has happened since it was working last in I updated my Graphics drivers. Is anyone else experiencing something like this? FYI, I also have X10 installed which is working just fine.

How do you handle stepped footings in this case?

+1 I don’t have the answer to your question but this is something I struggle with Chief quite often.

@HumbleChief I did however notice that in your plan the 2 simple 4/12 gable roof lines are set lower then the other framing. So i moved them up to have the same base line and then it all broke again. So i went back to my original plan and deleted these two roof planes and everything started working. So it is only these roof planes that are causing the issue. Still strange stuff.

Very informative, thank you so much for your help Larry!

Is this a well known issue? I've never heard of this. The attached plan, with much thanks to Larry, has this condition but now suddenly behaves as expected for all roof planes and trusses. 1311_Hamburg_Rd_-_Pricing_Set(temp)_Larrys_Fix.zip

It might also be worth mentioning that in my 3 years of using Chief I never ever use the auto built roof feature. I always manually draw my roof planes. This might be why I'm having a difficult time understanding why auto building my roofs might solve issues like this.

Wow Larry, this works perfectly. I don't fully follow what you meant in your previous post about making a new file and the auto built roofs. But the plan file you posted worked wonders. I ended up selecting all the original floor 2 roof planes that are not on floor 3 in your file and moved them down to floor 2 and re adjusted the one roof plane to still have the under/over framing aspect. The floor 3 roof truss are building correctly and so are the floor 2 trusses. I don't follow why what you did solved the issue but you're a wizard my friend. See attached plan, do you think this will cause the truss features to break again? Seems to be stable now. Thanks again. 1311_Hamburg_Rd_-_Pricing_Set(temp)_Larrys_Fix.zip

I got a couple to work too but if I select the couple that did work and force a rebuild they suddenly cut in half again. I don't understand what is going on here. All the rooms below have the same ceiling settings of flat ceiling and no elevation changes either. I'm stumped...

I'm having issue with the top floor of this house's roof. It is a simple 4/12 gable over a rectangle. The 2 roof planes seem to be setup fine and no matter how I change the structure of the roof I can't get the roof trusses to build from one eve wall to the other through the ridge line. They seem to be snapping to the ridge or to interior walls. See attached picture. Would anyone know why something like this might be happening with trusses on this upper roof? Thanks for any help, you guys are all so awesome! 1311_Hamburg_Rd_-_Pricing_Set(temp).zip

Thank you so much Chris! I wonder why this is the case though. There is plywood on top that doesn't effect this feature seems like the plywood on bottom should either, unless it is a bug. How would other recommend adding plywood to the underside of a floor system in a way that doesn't break this feature?

For some reason when I place a floor beam and then rebuild the floor joists, the joists are no longer cut to the flush floor beam. I have made sure that "with joists" is selected in the beam defaults under the framing defaults dbx but for some reason the joists continue through the floor beam and don't butt into it. This is my main template plan for all my construction documents which has it broken but if I use one of the templates supplied out of the box this feature does work. What is the deference between my template and the out of box templates that could be causing this issue? Steps to reproduce: -Draw 4 walls -Build floor framing -Move to floor 0 to view floor framing -Check that "with joists" is checked under framing dbx defaults -insert a floor beam perpendicular through all floor joists -rebuild floor framing -Joists are not cut to beam... Same steps on the out of box plan and it does cut the joists.... Thank you for any help Flush Beam Issue - Problem plan.plan Flush Beam Issue - Out Of box.plan

I always put my Terrain on the lowest level, usually 1, so that when I take floor perspective overviews in 3D and move down to the "basement" or level 1 the terrain will still be displayed. I then just adjust my terrains height above subfloor to what ever desired elevation for the "main level" of my house.

In fact part of me wishes Chief would treat level 0 like they do the Attic level, in the since that it doesn't recommend rooms be created on the attic level and gives you a warning if you start drawing on the attic level. I haven't completely thought this through and it may of some side effects that I'm unaware of.

This is exactly what I'm after in the end. I think from now on I will always have all my foundation walls and foundation rooms on level 1 and the slab and footings on level 0. I think this makes con docs way easier in the end. The whole point of me trying to split them up is to make the documentation easier to understand for my engineer and builder.

How do you insert a floor below an existing foundation? I can only seem to insert it on top of the existing foundation floor. Thank you both for your advice so far

I have a mostly completed plan with walls, roof, windows, framing (a lot of custom framing components), terrain, etc... I've currently got it setup with the following floor structure What I would like to do is split the current Floor 0 into 2 floors like the following image. Where the little deck platforms are on their own floor and the foundation walls below would be on the foundation floor of 0. The image below is the end result I'm after with all the components of the plans staying in the exact same place they are now. So the above request seems pretty straight forward by simply using the "Insert Floor" command right? Well no matter how many ways I try to skin this cat, I can't get all my windows, roofs, framing objects to stay put and not get completely screwed up like the following... First image here shows what happens when I Insert a Floor whilst on floor 1. This creates a new 3rd floor. I then use the exchange with floor below command twice and get the result below. Second image here shows what happens when I Insert a Floor whilst on floor 0. This creates a new 1st floor (GREAT) but non of the framing moves up in elevation, all my framing is sort of custom and uses absolute positioning for it placement. Do I have to redraw all my framing in order to get it back up to the level I need it to be on? I assume I will also have to completely redraw my foundation and lower deck levels. I know there are a few topics on this subject but I'm having a hard time understanding exactly how to make this happen without spending hours redrawing and modifying all the things that get screwed up in this process. Is adding a floor to an existing project suppose to be this much of a pain in the butt? I attached a plan file in case anyone wants to take a stab at it and show me a method that might work a little better then what I'm trying. 1311_Hamburg_Rd_-_Pricing_Set.zip Oh. The attached plan is currently under the latest release of X11

Thanks for sharing your solution to the problem! Cheers

ah ha, I see you are the one that I actually learned that little trick from haha. Yeah that is exactly what I was referring to. Sadly I do not know anther solution...