Michael_Gia

you shouldn't have to adjust (augment as you say) it's shape if you do it right.

You need to add breaks to the walls at those points. If it's one wall with no break then you'll have all kinds of funny stuff going on. Here's great video from Chief Skills... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAIitWfO0j8

That's too clean of an environment for a proper litmus test. I took your barren out of the box X12 plan and only added a basement, a roof, a couple windows and look at the mess already. See attached modified plan if you want. walls align.plan

You can reverse walls and all the other little tricks and you will at one point fix the connection. The real issue is that even once it’s fixed it can inadvertently get jumbled up. The effects are not just limited to walls out of line but it can even affect material colours on nearby doors and windows. It’s bizarre.

Thanks, that does work on occasion. It's still a work-around, which is ok, I guess. I really just wish we could set priority connections and lock exterior walls so they are never altered or re-positioned by interior walls. X13?

no, it's just that in order to maintain a proper connection for the exterior walls I have to constantly pull back the interior wall so it's out of the way before I re-align and connect the exterior walls. After that I re-connect my interior wall and pray it doesn't screw up the exterior wall connections.

In the image below, I have a 1 foot check on the facade of this home. At anything greater than 2 feet, I would say there's never an issue. I have a hard time having these three exterior walls meet along with the interior wall which is offset a little. The problem is, even after fiddling with the wall connections and getting it to work, it can randomly erupt into walls disconnecting or misaligning upon re-opening the file. The effect it has can not only wreak havoc on wall connections but even the colour of a nearby exterior door?! Why doesn't this program prioritize exterior wall connections over interior? If you all can tell me that there is no clear solution to this reoccurring problem then that's fine, just say it. If there is a trick then please let me know what it is. (yes, I know how to use the "edit wall layer intersection" tool.) (I even make sure I'm editing the same intersection on the floors above and below) Thanks,

A MacBook that you have an external monitor connected to and often take it on the road? If that’s the case then I’m special.

I've reported the crap out of this issue with Chief. The problem seems to be if you run Chief off of a laptop and use an external monitor in the office. When you grab your laptop and go see a client or whatever, Chief has to redraw your big toolbar configuration and get it to fit on the laptop. Then when you get back to the office and plug in your external monitor Chief has to again fit your toolbar back onto the larger screen. This has been my experience at least. There is no fix. Even re-selecting your saved toolbar or renaming it, or deleting and re-importing it etc... doesn't work. You just have to re-adjust your toolbar off of a saved screenshot and re-save it. Nobody at Chief has had this issue apparently, or at least they haven't been able to reproduce the problem. I am on a Macbook, however, and the universe appears slightly warped from this perspective.

I’ve been enjoying your recent YouTube videos on TwinMotion. It’s great to see someone as well versed in Chief as you are, go through a discovery mode exploring this awesome tool. Keep up the great work!

I use temporary dimension points to line up dimension strings. If you have a hotkey setup it’s fast.

I don’t get the logic of you crazy Americans. Question: Size of beams and posts etc. can change depending on availability, suppliers or even a wrong order. That is you might order a 4” post and receive a 6” post. The carpenter can use either, so he grabs the 6” post and now he has to do the math of where to place that. If you dimension to the center in your plans then there’s nothing to worry about. I just gave a simple example but what if there are several dozen changes in the dimensions of support walls, 2x4 to 2x6 or floor and ceiling beam thickness or posts, throughout a plan. You will have a structural nightmare on your hands. Accommodate the structure and not the carpenter is what I say. Most of you guys sound like framers who learned how to use Chief. It’s pretty scary, what I’m hearing. I am the odd man out though. But then again you guys still haven’t figured out the metric system, so there’s that too. Ok, I’ll sit back and take my lumps now. Go easy on me.

I’m able to drag any type of dimension string to snap to the center of an interior wall, as long as I zoom quite close onto that wall. Also there can not be a door anywhere in the vicinity or it won’t snap. Anyone else have this experience?

Ha ha, good one. Well maybe it is a regional thing. You’re obviously a master of your trade and have hands on experience from drawing desk to site. Maybe it’s because we often deal with more than one language up here it’s important to isolate and simplify drawings to avoid multiple interpretations. I don’t know. Carpenters up here want to see center lines as well. It’s not like we’ve imposed it on anyone. Maybe it’s a French thing. They are damn fast carpenters, I can tell you that. Rough around the edges but very efficient.

What do you mean by a framer dimensioning? Who's drawing the plans? Also, what about windows and doors? The center never changes. What is the edge of a window? Is it the window box? The window opening, including or excluding the air gap?

I just wanted to reply to something you said in your video regarding why anyone would use centre dimensions on interior walls. Two big reasons why most plans show the centre is that the centre won’t change even if the wall thickness might suddenly change. Also for walls to line up with support beams and columns, that definitely can vary at any moment, again the Center measurements will not change. Things always line up properly. You should always use center measurements. You’re playing with fire if you don’t. Your carpenter is well versed in splitting dimensions of 2x4’s, 2 x6’s etc. It should be second nature to them.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag here. It’s just plain lazy and a result of disorganization that general contractors get their carpenters to stick frame. In order to get roofs, floor systems and even prefab walls manufactured, requires precise plans to be submitted 4 to 6 weeks before you need them. This means you can’t change things on the fly because of inaccurate plans. It also means getting your clients to sign off on plans and tell them, “that’s it, no more changes”. Most guys don’t have the guts to tell their clients when enough is enough. We build in extreme conditions up here. This is why I get stuff pre-manufactured. Even my exterior walls and all support walls. They come wrapped in plastic so the insulation and lumber doesn’t get wet. I guess if I was building in Arizona I would do things differently. Hopefully I can retire in a place like that, but for now, I’ll keep battling the elements. If my comments come off as a little antagonistic it’s probably a result of this damn isolation crap. lol

You’ve are correct. Premier adds nothing, regarding trusses. The truss checkbox is a joke at the moment. Here is the simple and prevalent condition I’m looking to build. And I don’t want to have to take a cross section and measure how much I need to raise or lower my roof planes to achieve this. I would like a roof dialogue box to adress this in a clear and obvious way.

Unless you’re framing your own home, I don’t see the savings benefit of not going with manufactured roof trusses. Allowing a carpenter to build rafters on site for a decently sized home is costing you money in time wasted, mistakes, and questionable on site structural guess work. I don’t get it. This is why I don’t see why a program like Chief, which is so well suited to sending plans off to a Truss manufacturer, isn’t more geared to prefab roof trusses instead of onsite rafters.

That is indeed my gripe.

I still don’t get why Chief still assumes the majority of North American homes are built with rafter style roofs as if we’re all building log cabins in the woods, or dog houses... I’m sorry to offend some of you. My problem is still the roof dialogue box. The old “raise off plate” remained an unsolved mathematical formulaic problem to produce the kind of A-frame roof trusses that sits on TOP of the top-plate, producing a boxed eave with the underneath of the eave flat and level with the top plate. This is so we can have adequate heel height for insulation and ventilation. In X12 they included a handy diagram but it still does not seem to allow for easy manipulation of the values to produce the roof that 99% of homes built in the northeast and anywhere near the Canadian border are built. At least, I still don’t get it. TL:DR The roof is a big triangle that sits on top of the top plate. How hard can that be to program?

That was it. Problem solved. Thanks Humble Chief. ...and yes, they were polyline labels. Always learning.

Hello All, I want my labels to have a transparent background as opposed to the white box around the text. Is this possible? In the image, the lot numbers have a white box around them. I would like the numbers to have a transparent background.

It's because the first floor exterior wall bottom descends below the foundation wall top. Chief doesn't like that. If you use P-Solids instead of Material Regions for your cladding then you don't get the lines.

Gotcha.