Michael_Gia

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?

Auto build roofs puts the roof height back to default and fixes the gaps but now your roof is no longer at the desired lowered height of -24”, as David and Kitchen Abode pointed out. Once you drop the roof again the gaps return. I am able to “fix” this at the front end of the house by making the floor above the garage 24” thicker but that only works if I’m ok with dropping the ceiling inside the garage for the entire ceiling surface of the garage (which I’m not) but I just want to point that out to show that the problem is definitely coming from the fact that the roof is being lowered to expose the floor structure above.

The funny thing is that even dragging the wall down doesn’t fix it. Always leaves a gap. I’ve even tried, “extend wall past floor below” and that also doesn’t help. I thought there would be a way to add wall material to edge of floor, you know how we do with deck floors?... Nothing.

So, I often have this condition where the exterior wall above garage is inset as shown below. Then I will often/always lower the roof over the garage to reduce the distance from the top of the garage door to the soffit. (it looks nicer) (the plan is for demonstration purposes only, my actual plans are even uglier) haha. Anyway the plan is attached and the problem is those gaps above the garage roof created by the exterior wall above which won't extend down to cover the side of the floor. (I'm guessing) I've always just slapped on some p-solids to cover my shame, but there must be a more intelligent solution? Test from Template.plan

Sometimes by raising the roof just an eighth of an inch will get the trust to rebuild and span across to create the soffit. It’s a hit and miss with cantilever trusses.

I think security is the big feature but that's pretty much under the hood and out of sight. Other than that I don't notice any noticeable improvements in performance. Chief works as before. I hate getting used to all the new UI changes. I didn't have a problem with what was there before. If anything, I'm starting to question why the hell am I on a Mac anymore in this day and age of gmail, dropbox and online apps. I don't think there's any advantage anymore and as far as X13 it seems I'll be missing out on some new features. Starting to get that left out feeling of the 90's when so little was available for Mac and all the good stuff was only designed for Windows. Seriously thinking of switching again. It's actually easier this time around. The more the MasOs changes the more it starts looking like my iPad. I don't think I want that.

When you draw a deck and the posts are drawn automatically from the deck to the foundation below then you can just click on the individual posts and unlock the top height and make your post whatever height you want.

Use invisible walls to mark around your lower staircase. Adjust the ceiling height and then add a p-solid for the sloped part. Or a ceiling plane with a slope if you’re comfortable with that. You can also work from the floor above but instead of adjusting the ceiling height you’ll be defining the area as “open below”

Nevermind mind I changed “standard” to “internal” to get the inside square footage. Your method also allows to control the text more freely since my way uses polylines and therefore is stuck in that dreaded “polyline, labels” hell.

My way is definitely convoluted but I need to be able to control those independently of the room size. As in, stretch a polyline to see what area it gives before I make a modification to a room or area. I also forgot a decimals place in my calculation. However your calculation doesn’t return the correct area. I copied and paste and got 6.97 sq m instead of 5.2 sq m in my little plan.

I’m no macro genius, but here’s my method: 1) select room and “make room polyline” (I put these polylines on a separate layer so I can turn them on and off) 2) In the “label” of the polyline specify a “user Defined label from the list” (a macro that you’ll create in step 3) 3) now you need to create a macro for that list: 3a) Go to menu > CAD > Text > Text Macro Management > New 3b) >Name: Give your macro a Name, ex. roomAreaMetric 3b) >Value: “((area)*(0.9290304)).round(2)” <- type the crap between the quotes, don’t ask. 3c) > check “Evaluate” 3d) > Context = “Owner Object” 3e) > OK Your polyline will have the area in metric rounded to 2 decimal places. (that’s what the “2” is in the “round(2) part of the formula. If you want both imperial and metric in the same polyline label then you can add a second line in the polyline label which is just: “%area.round% sq.ft”

I’m a big fan of your construction docs, actually. They are the nicest I’ve seen in this forum without a doubt. I feel your comment is a little like what people used to say about horse and buggy when the car was first introduced, though. I just want Chief to really improve in the con docs creation department.

Weak points of Chief: We need to be able to snap to any line/point or part of a parametric object, and in any view or whether in plan or layout. You shouldn’t have to open a separate program to work on a layout. Archicad has everything in one place, plans, layouts, sections, PDF plan sets, etc... And yes, you can link stuff from other plans. How about being able to dimension between any two point on an elevation or cross section? How about a measure tape tool that actually works at any zoom level? Not inherent to construction documents but it is part of the process. I’m only pointing this stuff out because it seems that Chief isn’t really working on our ability to produce construction documents in a coherent way. Their effort is visuals aka rendering etc. I don’t need anymore advancement in the pretty pictures department. Chief is already great for that, I believe.

AutoCAD is hardly comparing apples with apples. Chief has its strengths but for construction documents we’re way behind Archicad and Revit.

Compared to what? I’m curious.

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.

Construction docs are not Chief’s strong suit.