Michael_Gia

They don’t apparently. They want you to submit a request separately. Then they won’t look at it either…lol. All of the ranting in this post will fall on deaf ears. Chief really struggles with this sort of “accurate” drawing features that are non trivial in all other software of this type. However, try drawing a roof ridge on a shingle roof in Revit and you’ll pull your hair out. I’m always debating which is more important, the pretty cabinets and trimming in Chief of the no-nonsense precise and efficient structural drawing in Revit. Especially when the purchase price of Revit Lt is the same price as SSA in Chief without the upfront purchase. I already spent the money so I’ll stick to Chief, is always what I settle on but it’s frustrating since Chief is so close to what I need but just far enough to make it painful on a daily basis. I wish I could just draw without the fuss.

I had some issues with 3D stuff when X13 first came out but not anymore. I don’t have the latest M1 type but it’s been great so far. I would however take rgardner’s advice and future proof yourself if possible? Happy shopping!

Why isn’t Solver moderator already? Or maybe make filling out the part about what version you have as mandatory when creating an account? Or automatically tagged on by Chief?

Did you try the “Edit Wall Layer Intersections” tool, located on the Edit toolbar? You can just drag the drywall layer over to cover that up. Here is a good article to help… https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00033/adjusting-wall-connections.html

The reason is because the exterior of the wall on floor 1 is not aligned vertically with your foundation wall. Chief can often give wildly erratic behaviour when walls are not aligned, that is, sitting perfectly one on top of the other. When walls are not aligned I’ve seen weird behaviour from items not even related to walls get messed up.

What tool bar?… joking, but yeah hotkeys for nearly everything.

I’m no terrain guru so I cheat at it. I use a terrain feature (with a negative value) to cut a clean rectangular/polygonal hole that includes my driveway and walkway and stairs leading to the front door. I’ll even go past these points to include areas that need to be “resculpted” by the excavation contractor. Then I draw in my exterior stairs and landings at the required height. For the driveway I’ll use a polyline solid and shape it as necessary. This way I can determine the slope from a cross section. For the parts of the land that need to be resculpted I’ll again use various polyline solids to indicate sloped sections. They won’t be pretty and smooth but they’ll at least give definite outlines and elevations to follow as a guide. I leave the smoothing to the excavator. It’s quick and dirty but it works. You can go mad trying to get elevation regions to do what you want. If you really want to smoothen out your p-solids you can export them to Sketchup, smooth them out there and re-import them.

Merci Ivan, pareillement. En passant, joli site web!

When you designate a room as a garage type then Chief just changes basically 3 items in the structure tab of the room DBX. 1) floor height drops. 2) stem wall shrinks and 3) the check box is removed from “floor under this room” to a check in “floor supplied by the foundation room below. It’s their way of helping you get started and creating the illusion that Chief somehow knows something magical, and then you’re supposed to say, wow! This smoke and mirrors approach often creates more confusion than anything else. Sarcasm aside, you should get real comfortable with pony walls. They are the proper way to define walls such as the ones you are describing here. They have another advantage as you can create step foundation walls without those walls re-healing or re-joining after you’ve split them to create a step wall. I also build in the Montreal area and I’m pretty sure you are looking to drop the brick line of your garage facade wall so it’s only 12” above your driveway so you don’t get that unsightly 42” of barren concrete just in front of where your poor client is going to park his bmw… The best way to do this again is with a pony wall. You’ll be able wrap that wall onto the side of the home for that first 24” which is also pretty common. Also, you don’t want to build a knee wall (because of compression issues) probably for the dropped facade of your garage wall which is what Chief will do if you decide to mess around with the brick ledge feature, don’t do that. Stick to a pony wall. Also don’t drag the exterior brick finish down and foundation up to create what you’re looking for, this is chaos. Besides being chaos you never really know the elevation of what you’re dragging down or up. As for the pony wall you do and this information can allow you to accurately place ledges/sills to divide, for example a lower stone wall, and upper brick or siding wall. You’ll know exactly where your window will sit above your sill. Hope that helps.

I don’t know what climate zone you’re in but I would have to extend my foundation walls another 54” below the bottom riser of your exterior staircase (a frost pit), and a drain. Also you can build a roof plane in the middle of the solar system for all Chief is concerned. Just move it wherever and add posts and beams separately if you want or use p-solids to create those. If you want the auto roof to build your roof then build an exterior room and define its floor elevation, roof and ceiling height as per usual. Maybe I’m missing something but it seems pretty standard.

File > Export > Collada. That’s the .dae format. I think it’s the best format. If you’re on apple then you even get the 3D model in the file thumbnail in the finder window. Another free option is TwinMotion. You should checkout Rene Rabbit's YouTube channel for Chief to TwinMotion tutorials. https://youtube.com/channel/UCbkgwAcrZQP0Ek0bNmqpgAQ

I don’t use the brick ledge feature anymore. I find I have more control by using pony walls to properly represent brick ledges. The brick ledge portion often has a different wall composition from the wall it’s a part of so I don’t want extra material where I don’t need it. Often for a facade wall, we’ll bring down the brick veneer sometimes 36” from the top of the foundation wall by inserting a 2” styrofoam panel when we pour the concrete to create the hollow for our brick ledge. The only way to achieve this properly in Chief is with a pony wall. TL:DR pony walls are your friend.

Well, I did respond to the original post, and that was to correct OP and everyone else that there was nothing wrong with the dimensioning approach in the image. The image shows a very common way to dimension. It shows dimensioning to the brick it doesn’t mean it’s measuring from a brick veneer but to the outside of a foundation. Of course I had to add in my very condescending tone with the rest of my comment but that’s just me…lol. There is more than one way to skin a cat, of course. You guys obviously deal with carpenters who can’t figure out how to place a 2x4 on a floor from a center line which I find laughable. You’re all harping about your precious design considerations, meanwhile you open yourselves up for a very dangerous situation where a support wall could be off-center. Isn’t that more important than Mrs. Jones getting her pantry at precisely 24” clear interior to accommodate her new filter queen?

Export to TwinMotion. You don’t need your lighting. Walkthroughs are so much simpler and straight forward on TM. For large projects with multiple buildings I will convert the buildings into symbols first then export into TM. I only have a MacBook and have no problem with large projects using this approach.

You guys do things funny. It’s not that he’s dimensioning the brick. If you read the whole plan then you should see a note that says the exterior surface of all exterior walls are deemed to be inline with the exterior surface of the foundation walls. This is for structural reasons. Also in this method (the correct method) all bearing walls are dimensioned from the exterior wall surface to the center of all bearing walls, beams and posts. Architects are not concerned about simplifying the math for framers. They’re concerned about proper construction. Dimensioning to lumber is careless design.

Here… https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/311/creating-a-suspended-or-dropped-ceiling.html

You should learn about the “distribute plant” feature in the Garden Bed tool. here is a post with a few great suggestions. but if you really want great grass then download TwinMotion, export your model and add the grass in there. It’s free.

I really wish everyone would stop acting like there’s a solution or a fix. There isn’t, until Chief decides to fix this very irritating problem. Everything else is bullshit. I do a lot of sit-downs with clients, so if you think it’s frustrating and disruptive of workflow when you’re alone, imagine when it happens in front of your clients. The issue is related to when more than one monitors are used. Especially when one monitor has a different resolution than the other. Chief should be ashamed of themselves at this point. It’s disgusting.

You need a beam to support that brick. it’s actually a good thing that Chief won’t automatically fill in that void with brick since it’s not really possible without support.

That did the trick. Thanks! ...again

It works, just need to round out the decimal places to 0. I thought by entering in, area.round(0) would give me no decimal places but it just adds .00

Thanks Chopsaw, I had a typo originally, but now it works great. Pretty neat stuff.

Yes, that's what I was able to do as well except I loose the comma separator. If you uncheck "use default formatting" you lose the comma. ...and yes, I was trying to get sq.ft. in French, lol

What controls the "Use Default Formatting" in the Polyline DBX? When this is selected I get "sq ft" suffix that I would like to change to something else.

Great video, and just in time for what I'm working on. Chief sometimes just has too many tools with overlapping capabilities, so it's easy to get lost. This video shows how to stick with the most basic of tools and improvise.