Michael_Gia

A few important things to keep in mind. The stemwall height includes the thickness of the sill plate, so do the math for that. When you enter a rough ceiling height this value will push the footings and floor down, as in away from your absolute “0” level. So regardless of the value you specified for stemwall, it is the ceiling height that will take precedence. Your “Rough Ceiling Height” plus your “Floor Structure” will give you the proper stemwall height, PROVIDED the already entered stemwall height is less than that total value. That’s because even if the stemwall height is less the action of entering a ceiling height which is greater will have the effect of “pushing” down your footings and elongating your stemwall. In your screenshot you have a floor structure of 18-3/4” which I’m assuming is not what you want but I know for a fact that you got that by messing around with the stemwall height value. Don’t do that. If anything, just enter 0” for stemwall to reset the foundation height and then go back and re-enter the rough ceiling height which will then correct your stemwall height. Example: If you want a stemwall height of 104” with a floor structure of 4” then enter 100” for Rough Ceiling height and that will give you a stemwall of 104” including that pesky 1-1/2” sill. (providing your existing stemwall height is LESS than 104”). Crazy, I know. About that stupid sill plate; If you want 104” of concrete then enter 105.5”for rough ceiling height. This will give 1.5” sill plate slapped on top of a 104” stemwall. Afterwards, IF YOU PLAY AROUND with the stemwall height and enter 110” then you’ll see a gap of 6” between your floor and the top of your footing. Because your larger stemwall height value is pushing your footings down and leaving your floor “floating”. -> to correct that then just enter a stemwall height ridiculously lower than your ceiling height and then go back and re-enter the ceiling height to correct it. Experiment on a simple structure by splitting the screen with floor plan and cross section so you can see both. Add some visible cad lines at the proper heights in your cross-section so you can see the effect of this system in real-time as you experiment with different values. This explanation might have been convoluted but I wanted you to understand the quirks of this very convoluted system Chief has devised. However convoluted though, I can’t see any better solution which gives so much control over every aspect of the relative heights of a foundation. So I guess we’re lucky?

Sketchup

You’re asking for a guessing game unless you post the plan.

Now that’s encouraging to hear. If Revit Light had collaboration, it would be affordable but I can’t imagine the kind of expense to run multiple seats of Revit. $$$$

Yet another underwhelming sneak peek of X13. I think they focused on Real-time Rendering and called it a day. Sorry for the unpopular opinion.

Try this... https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/recordingView?webinarKey=1867424153798035216&registrantEmail=michaelgia%40me.com

Steve's video explains it well. The only difference with the way I did it was to use the Transform/Replicate tool to manually adjust the vertical placement of the roof. Steve however, shows the proper way of doing this by setting the rough ceiling height on the 2nd floor and then building the roof. I strongly encourage you to watch all of Steve's videos on his YT channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjDk9xKcXSsC5HTKrDW6E1A?view_as=subscriber

- Build the roof before you build the second floor. - Then build 2nd floor and uncheck "move the roof over the highest floor up" (uncheck flat ceiling over this room/floor) - Use Transform/Replicate to move your roof up to whatever height you need to create those knee walls. - To create the balcony in the front just extend your 2 exterior walls out and create a porch area by drawing in an invisible wall (porch, no roof or ceiling) - your roof structure should be changed to a minimum of 18" truss height (at least here in Canada that's the minimum) Here's the plan if you want to poke around... Cooky Chalet.plan

Find the absolute current point of the plan at a corner by placing a point (Cad -> Points -> Place Point). Go back and move your older as-built plan to that same absolute point. Now the as-built will be back to the proper location.

Amazing, that this is so not obvious to most of us lay users. Are you sure you haven’t given away some heavily guarded trade secret? Prometheus

You won’t be able to achieve this automatically, at least not on a consistent basis. Your best bet is to add p-solids to fill in the gap if it’s for your 3D Views.

That's great to hear. The problem is how sporadic and arbitrary this is as a problem. I do know that, as the post you displayed mentions, it must have something to do with two monitors at two different resolutions. This was info I had provided in the ticket I had opened up. What is even more troubling is that OP in this post is working from a single iMac with no external monitor, so I would start by trying to solve the problem from that vantage point first. For what it's worth, below is my monitor set up. I experience more menu shuffling/disappearing when my "Active Layer Display" window is open on one monitor and the plans open on the other. I've begrudgingly learned to live without having that window open but the problem persists albeit slightly less often. I also try not to have a layout open until I really need to since this also almost guarantees menu issues after a short spell.

Well at least I brought a bit of attention to this problem, finally. I’m sorry I had to be rude to Alaskan Son in order to do that. I hope he understands, it’s nothing personal. Ive been an SSA subscriber for 6+ years, which means I believe and love the product. This also gives me the right to rant about what I don’t like about it. After all this is a user forum, and I had something specific to relate to OP’s post. My goal was to let him know that this is a real issue and to give him some ammunition when dealing with Chief so that they don’t try and brush him off like they did to me.

So, STFU

It’s a Mac problem. And will remain a problem forever since we probably don’t make up a big portion of Chief’s business. I’ve opened up tickets on two occasions for this. It was not resolved and I was led to believe this is not an issue ever experienced by anyone on the Chief staff who also use Macs, bla bla bla. For all you Mac users that don’t have this issue please refrain from commenting as you are not helping the rest of us. I’ve never seen any other software that has an issue with toolbars as Chief does. It’s maddening. Crickets from Chief expected. Ok, It’ll wait for the Chief fanboy downvote brigade in 3, 2, 1....

I bring an IPad to the site and use CADMATE which is a DWG viewer so I can at least measure off the plan while on site. Of course I have to export the plans to DWG format, which I usually do anyways for sharing with non-chiefer folk. It’s a free App and works great on either iPad or iPhone. link to app... https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/cadmate-dwg-viewer/id1436941904

Yup, that’s the solution. Thanks!

Yes, I did. OOOPS! I named it in the library but didn’t name by Opening the CadBlock. Wow, I didn’t realize that naming it in the library would not automatically rename the cadBlock. I still can’t maintain the dashed lines though.

I don’t know why I have such a hard time with this. I usually just accept the Auto generated 2D CAD Block but sometime I want to get fancy. I draw a rectangular polyline and add another cad line and change it to dashed. I group selected the two items and hit “Make CAD Block”. I add it to my library but then I can’t find it anywhere in the CAD Block Management window list. How to add my newly created cad block? Also I’ve done this before and somehow magically added a cad block I’ve created but it doesn’t maintain the line styles when assigning it to a Symbol? Is there any trick to that as well? Yes, I’ve watched all the videos ans read the help files. Can anyone help?

It still wants to snap to stuff even when holding the command button. maybe it’s a Mac bug?

I actually would like it not to snap to anything. It happens quite often that I measure the distance between two objects and get a wrong measurement.

I’ve always just assumed it was a bug but the measuring tape tool always wants to snap to things even when “object snaps” is turned off. Is there any way to have the measuring tape tool NOT snap? I usually end up drawing a cad line and checking its length. Cadlines don’t snap when snap is turned off. (Which is the way it should work)

I think this falls under the “overmodelling” umbrella. I mean, what should we be modelling and what should we be simply using a detail/callout for? Is anyone in the field looking that closely at a 1/4” scale set of plans to take instructions on how to frame a door? I’m not being facetious. I was told this once by an architect who asked me to show him how I use Chief Architect. He told me that a real architect doesn’t even show baseboards in a plan drawing. All details are dealt with in schedules and detail drawings. I for one, need to show these details in a live 3D view to my clients, and that is why I use Chief in the first place. My carpenter couldn’t care less about those details, he goes straight to the detail pages and schedules.

That’s usually not wood on those modern style facades. It’s a printed steel siding product. here’s a link to one of a million suppliers... https://www.formasteel.ca/products/specialty/woodgrain-series/ These guys also sell architectural panels like the ones you see on commercial buildings. This industrial look has found its way into residential design. It’s better to first find a local supplier that the tradesmen in your area buy from and then get the colours and patterns off of their website. This way you design your client's home with a clear way for your builder to reproduce your drawings in the field. I always hate it when clients show me photos from some heavily photoshopped Pinterest facade they absolutely fell in love with and ask me to build it.

Thanks guys. It actually helps to know that there isn’t a solution almost as much as a solution itself, if you know what I mean. I guess slapping on some p-solids is a small price to pay for having automatic room, labels, floor finishes, paint, trim and moulding, floor structure, ceiling structure etc... Compared to other software where all this has to be added manually, and updated when room divisions change. I guess we’re lucky. My wish list for Christmas would be to have the ability to “explode/ungroup” the exterior finish layer and the interior finish layer of walls so we could modify those as we do p-solids. Is that too much to ask for?