contractcad

I've got a rectangular warehouse/manufacturing building that although existing (not going to be building from my plans) I'd like to create a fairly accurate layout for some minor interior renovations as well as just have the building documented in a digital format ('m working from pencil drawings made back in 1976). My main hoops I'm dealing with is that although the building is a high bay flat roof 22 feet high front to back it does have a single floor enclosed office area in the front with a mezzanine above (sticking a 2 floor area within a single floor structure). I also have exterior pilasters every 20' down the long walls (161 FT) which most are easy the first one on either side in the front happen to be blended into a brick façade ( I have problems wrapping the ends of the pilaster with the brick) . Then to top it off I have some architectural augmentations to the exterior walls around the front office area of the building that's not making it easy. Just wondering if anyone has dealt with similar situations that may have some tips for me. AVN-FLOOR PLAN.pdf

I have a design where the customer would like an inverted center web on his roof truss (for attic ease of access and storage) as well as a void for a hvac chase down the center of his floor truss. I've been attempting to locate a how to so I can accomplish both tasks but have not been able to do so. Is there a simple way to modify the web in both roof and floor trusses?

I have a couple of retaining walls in my terrain that if I create them the way I want and turn off the terrain following feature radio button the wall plays havoc with my terrain. I don't want the top of the wall to follow the terrain, I want the top to level masonry with a cap. The way I accomplished this was to turn the wall into a railing and turned the top rail into a 2 inch thick slab an inch wider around than the 10 inch stone wall. If I make it terrain following this goes away and I get crazy terrain on both sides of the wall. Thought I had a solution by placing a .25 inch thick invisible terrain following wall on the terrain side of my retaining wall but I'm still not getting the result I want. Any Ideas? House Addition.plan

Yes, I think I understand that, probably not on this model but on the next. I can fix the floor plan on this one by turning off the pony walls but leave them as is for the elevations.

It's kinda coming back to me, I started this design probably at least a year ago and I remember it took me a little while to get the gable ends correct as far as the outside siding (it's an addition to an existing structure and I was attempting to match the exterior to what is actually there. (see pics). Just now in turning off the pony walls I have my gable scallops blanketing the whole outside walls. Got to play with it some more.

As far as version, I have 19.3.0.49 x64 which I believe is the most current.

Here's the plan, I guess a quick fix would be just to turn off the hatch layer. New Ofc Adtn Chief.plan

I just noticed a problem on one of my plans where for some reason doors and windows were hatched thru on gable walls. I did some searching in an attempt to fix but have so far come up with nothing. Am I missing something?

Worked Beautifully! Thanks!!

Is there an easy way to create a Asymmetrical interior double door? I have a doorway that the max width I can get is only 5 feet and I need to create a door where one door has to meet the minimum ada requirement of 34" clear. It requires a door where one is 36" with a door latch and closer with the other being 24" pin locked with a manual swing and lock open. It's for an entrance into a banquet room. I can easily place a 5 foot double door but I'm not seeing where I can modify the doors to different widths within the same frame. My only out I can think of typing in a description of my intent but using a standard symmetrical double door.

Point Taken

Sorry for taking so long to respond back, but thanks so much Mark3D. I do see what you did road wise but I am still at a loss as to why I had a hiccup blending the polyline sidestreet into the main street (curb along the length of the intersection) or the sidewalk into the curb of the sidestreet. I would have thought it should have blended no problem... unless these problems are what you referring to as Chief lacking flexibility. All in all mucho thanks again, it helped me out of a bind.

I'm just starting to dabble with creating terrains, and learning mostly by seat of my pants rather than tutorials. I had a couple issues come up creating the site for the building I posted earlier and am asking if there are work-arounds. 1st. I have an asymmetric side street intersecting the main street and for some reason I did not get a clean blending between the two. I ended up having a curb running the length of the interface where the two streets join. I also wanted to drop the curb on the side street beyond the curb radius of the side street but couldn't find a way to accomplish this. 2nd. I for some reason created an issue where the sidewalk ends at the sidestreet curb radius - not a smooth blending of the sidewalk down to the street on one side. 3rd. I was able to blend the east concrete drive approach easily to the street but not so much with the polyline drive I created for the south entrance. Any pointers will be appreciated. Thanks, Randy Highland NAPA 2.plan

Yes, Richard and Solver's work-a-round seems a bit rinky-dink but it works. Thanks much!

I think I've seen other users have a similar problem but don't remember seeing a solution. Please look at the attached file and note where I have my trench footings intersect at the corners of the basement walls. I REALLY DO NOT want my trench footings to intersect into my block walls, I want them to stop at the block wall. I did already check "through wall at beginning" and "thru wall at end" for the all 4 basement block walls which did correct the 1 inside corner, but not the two outside corners of the basement walls. Is there a simple way to solve the problem? Highland NAPA 2.plan

I did revisit my 1st and 2nd floor walls on the east side and noted that I had the 2ND floor wall was mis-aligned E to W by 2 inches in relation to the 1st floor wall. But still not my problem with the losing my 1st floor slab when deleting features. Still not figuring this out.

Yep, chopped up. Are you saying that they may be misaligned also??? I didn't have a problem with it until installing X9 Premier. If I understand what your talking about when you say "chopped up" I did have to get creative when making several spandrel windows. Got to keep them that way, unless there is a better way for creating them.

Sorry for not responding sooner, but had to take care of some things. I've attached the plan to see if someone can figure out what is going on. I'm wondering if the file is somehow corrupted. It appears that it's only involving the right exterior wall on the 1st floor. If I try to delete a window the 1st floor slab in the main area disappears and it also happened when I tried to add interior firing to that same wall. It's got me scratching my head... 17_0104_SLH_OI.plan

Did as you said. Opened an older archive version a couple days old. Opened as was fine, started to make some changes and it reverted back to the same problem. I've isolated it to having the program delete the 1st floor when I attempt to delete a window on the exterior wall. Very bazar. Tried it with a couple different windows with the same effect.

in the middle of an important project. I don't know if it's actually from me upgrading (or how I upgraded) to Retail X9 or I inadvertently did something else screwy but I'm in the middle of a large time sensitive job and I just noticed this morning that I've lost my main floor (slab on grade that now just has grass terrain on the inside). Seems to have shifted doors, changed doors on main floor. Also can't highlight or open the main floor to attempt to fix. I was working with said plan in Beta X9 I either didn't have or didn't notice this problem. Also seems odd that if it is that somehow the floor elevation was changed it doesn't seem that it's effected the second floor. Is this something I should be asking in the Online Support Forum? Hate to have to redo this project over again from scratch.

It did overwrite the X9 Beta but left my X8 untouched. So after all was said and done Installing the new X9 I went into programs and features and deleted my X8, probably a bass ackwords way of doing it. When I did re-start X9 the second time it asked me if I wanted to associate files and features to the new program... didn't ask me that the first time I started it which I thought was because I had already done that to the X9 Beta install a couple weeks back. Well, it hasn't crashed yet. If it gives me problems I'll just re-install. Thanks

I did go the process again and re-downloaded and re-installed. Appears to have worked this time. I'm pretty sure when I installed the Beta a month or so back I updated my product key at that time. The product key appears to be correct because it matches the first 4 digits shown on program start-up and I still have access.

I don't think my Beta did get replaced. When I click on my X9 Icon the build is still the 19.0.3.50 Beta version I had originally. And it still is popping up with a flag saying "There is a new version available, would you like to download?" Maybe when I originally clicked on Run after it downloaded, all it did was unpack. I'll go check to see if I can find a folder for it that has a "Install" executable or just redo the download and try and pay a little more attention to what's going on.

Ok, I downloaded the initial Retail Release of X9 the other day to install, glanced at, skimmed the release notes and attempted the upgrade. I erroneously thought that the installation would either recognize and uninstall either the Beta X9 (which I have migrated to and is my primary version I've been using) I have on my system or Install over the retail release of X8 I have on my system. Nope both previous releases are still active and although the retail release of X9 said it was installed correctly it is nowhere to be found. I have again glanced at, skimmed the release and installation notes (as much as my short attention span will allow) and have not found out what I'm doing wrong. Maybe just completely uninstall X8 and the X9 Beta and do a fresh install of the X9 retail??? I don't have much in the way of anything custom to migrate except maybe my recent files list and I think I have to re-install the extra library catalogs anyways so I guess it's not a big deal.

I'm new to Chief Architect and don't know all the ins and outs yet and I'm working on a Restaurant that has a bit of commercial equipment to be laid out in it (Yes, usually a kitchen supplier does this, and my proposal said "kitchen by others".... but I'm doing it - not going to be anything fancy). I'm ok with either stretching similar appliances or blocking units out using primitives but I notice that with several kitchen equipment manufacturers, they offer Revit models for download. The couple I've looked at seem to only offer 3D in Revit, haven't looked at them all yet though and the model extension doesn't appear to be supported by Chief's import function. Any chance of a work-around?