CElder

Is there a way to get the barn door track (rail) to show in plan view? I can't find anywhere in the settings to toggle that on/off. I don't like showing the door as 100% open but would like to show how much of a wall a door will take up. I suppose I could work around with a CAD symbol but that's just adding a step every time I insert, resize or move the barn door itself.

That worked! I can't imagine it's the first time in the 7 years I've been using this program that I've had a room in the middle of a room that I didn't use an invisible wall to divide it but apprarently I haven't. Thanks!

room definition issue.plan Stripped most everything else out of the plan and got it down to size. I had already checked on wall connections and "no room definition" but I checked them again, just for good measure. Those were not the issue. All my other rooms are defined correctly. It's just those couple rooms in the middle of the open space.

room definition issue.zip Plan attached, although I had to zip it because it says it's too big. I can't imagine why because I just started but maybe there's something hidden that is causing my issue. This happened out of the blue today. Using the same template I always start with, I started drawing walls and am having an issue with room definition in the center area of the house. I can select the powder room as a room. I can select the coat closet as a room. If I select the open space around it (Dining - Kitchen - Great Room - Foyer), it doesn't exclude the powder room and closet, as it should because they are separate, enclosed rooms. Also, the doors on those two rooms inserted as if they are exterior doors rather than interior. I'm just starting on this plan so I haven't built anything above or below it or changed any room definitions so I need help figuring out what happened!!

The railing on my curved stairs is all wonky! Attached is a screenshot of the issue and the plan file. What did I do wrong? I do pony walls like this for stairs all the time but this is my first time with a curved wall added to the mix. I'm sure there's something I missed in the wall DBX but I can't find it. TIA curved wall stair rail issue.plan

Searching for ideas on how to combat my mulled door units switching to windows as far as rough opening dimensions and casing overlap/reveal and size. My default is set to treat the mulled unit as a door but every time I mull doors and sidelights together, I have to go in and change all those details manually so they act like doors instead of windows. This is very frustrating, as I often mull and separate the units multiple times throughout the design. Is there a setting that I'm missing? Or does anyone have a work-around they care to share?

It took me a whole day but here's how close I got!! Whew!!

I'm trying to create this stair railing for a plan. I've tried moldings, millwork, railing/walls, turning on railing on the stair DBX. I can't get anything that even looks remotely close to this - need the open tread ends and the sloped turnout. I created the wrapped treads by using landings for the bottom two treads but that's the only success I've had so far. Anyone have any tips for me? Am I stuck building a 3D block piece by piece and inserting it in the plan? That's the only thing left that I can think of and am trying to avoid it...

Thanks @glennw!! That did the trick!

Sorry - forgot to include the plan. Here it is. I hope you can access it from a zip file. It was too large to upload. foundation step issue plan.zip

I'm having trouble getting my walkout basement framing to step correctly in elevation view. It is happening on both my rear and left elevations. In my screenshot, you can see that it looks correct (the way I WANT it to look) where it steps from full foundation to partial frame wall. But when I go from partial frame to full walkout, the framing level changes at the midpoint of the retaining wall. In the additional screenshots, you can see where my intersection points are placed correctly (I believe) on both my basement frame view and my foundation view. I literally draw basements like this all the time and this is the first time I've encountered this. I can't get that framing to move, no matter what I do! Help!!!

But... I don't think any of us here on the Chief Forum have the clout to change the way the entire construction industry of the United States chooses it's system of measure. At least I don't... so the metric conversation is a bit of a moot point.

@Renerabbitt - Did you ever find a solution to this? I'm having the same issue when I do work on my laptop at home then plug in to a larger monitor in the office. They are both set to 1920x1080 and 100% scale but it keeps happening and is very frustrating when I have to check my text boxes every time I re-open a file! I hadn't thought to do a Match Properties sweep to grab them all at the same time. I was going into each box separately and clicking ok so it would reset. Hoping for a better solution that will actually fix the problem if you have found one in the past few years!

I'll have to spend a little time playing with that. Thanks for the suggestion!

Just deleted my question because I figured it out myself! Should have tried to problem solve before asking the question! Thanks though!

Rene - That is EVERYTHING!!! Thank you! Showed it to my boss in both 1/4" and 1/8" scale and he is pleased. Would still prefer a stacked fraction but maybe someday... This is a HUGE improvement! Thanks again!

@Alaskan_Son - THIS!!!! How did you do that!?!?!?!?!

Good to know! I haven't made the switch yet but plan to do so soon!

Thank you all for suggesting many solutions that are not even remotely feasible for me. I work for my GC, as an employee. I don't get to tell him how I am going to draw a plan. I do it the way he wants it done. We use 1/4" dimensions literally ALL. THE. TIME. for a variety of reasons that are necessary and cost-efficient in our building process. Maybe it's different where y'all are from but where we are, it's hard to find quality help right now. We employ our own framers and, frankly, it's hard to find people that can read, much less navigate a print properly, these days. Also, my boss has made this mistake while doing calculations a number of times as well but we like the narrow font because wider fonts don't fit between the arrows as well, which adds to the clutter of already congested areas of a print quite often. Being able to move the hyphen to the preferred location between the whole and fraction inches would make it so much easier to read. I just wondered if there was an alternative method that would work for me and my company. Clearly, there is not at this point. I've seen many benefits to this program since switching to it but I've also run into some limitations I didn't have before. Once again, I leave this forum frustrated, without the answers I'm looking for.

I'm wondering if there is a way to customize what dimension text looks like more than what the drop down list of options provides? The default way Chief lays out a dimension has caused my framers issues a number of times since I started using this program. Today's example is that a dimension similar to this screenshot was read as "twelve feet, eleven and a quarter inches" because the 1s are so close together and are the same height which makes it difficult to see how many there are. Now we have fireplace framing that is 5" off-center in a room. (This is not the actual plan, just a sample with the same dimension reproduced). I'd love if we could utilize stacked fractions in a dimension format (like the top option I've created using a Rich Text box) or at the very least be able to customize the format like the center dimension below so that I can place the hyphen between the inches and the fraction to avoid future confusion. Am I missing something in settings or this a huge ask that just can't be managed?

I'm having trouble creating my stair rail properly. I need the pony wall railing to run all the way up the stairs to second floor. Open stairs to basement with rail approximately 60" long, flat along the main floor, should be drywall above covering the stairs to upper level. Additionally, for some reason the short railing pony wall on the opposite side of the stairs won't follow the stair slope. Not shown in the screenshot, I would like to be able to see the stair railing in my second floor plan, as it is a two-story tall ceiling but if I draw a railing on the upper floor plan, it adds another rail the shoots out from the second floor horizontally. Screenshot of my issues is attached as well as a plan that is still very rough / in progress. TIA stair rail issue.plan

No. For example, my door and fixed sidelight both have 3-1/4" interior casing with 1/8" reveal. That is the default setting. When I mull the two together, the casing becomes a 5/8" frame overlap, so technically the casing would interfere with the door being able to open. Why does it move? And why does the DBX info switch from "reveal" on the single unit to "frame overlap" when it is mulled?

Is there a way to set defaults for mulled window and door units? Whenever I mull units together, my casing size and reveal/overlap changes from the default settings of a single unit.

Amazing! I assumed that if my default had both top and bottom showing that I could edit it all at the same time. Thanks so much for the help!

I'm having an issue getting the lower part (brick) of my pony wall to intersect the way I want it to with the side wall, which is all siding. I have my exterior layers (except the brick layer) drawn with an invisible line type because my builder doesn't like seeing them so you'll have to use the "Edit Wall Layer Intersections" tool to see what I mean. If you look at the screenshot attached, the one circled in red is how it always draws itself. You can see the brick overhangs the edge of the main wall layer and intersects where the (invisible) siding layer is. It has always driven me crazy that I can't fix it. Well, tonight, I accidentally "fixed" the other end of the wall (circled in green) to look the way I want it to look. I can't figure out what I did or what is different about each end/intersection. It looks like every little edit handle is in the exact same spot at each end. I've also attached the plan for you to play with, which is still in progress so it's mostly a big old mess, I know... Thanks in advance!! pony_wall_alignment.plan