Michael_Gia

For the lazy, if you click the link, Chief has plastered the page with this... "*Chief Architect X11 release scheduled for Q1 2019" I personally get the feeling it's going to be a pretty big upgrade along with an interface overhaul to hopefully get away from the early 2000's cartoonish look we're sporting now. (just my spider senses tingling, that is)

See this post....

Ok I’ll let the genie out of the bottle. We we all know what OP is referring to, and I think it’s a great idea. There are recurrent issues, bugs, necessary work-arounds that we all navigate through on a regular basis, because the software isn’t perfect. I don’t expect it to be. However, all of the training videos from Chief show the perfect world where everything works out as planned. They rarely point out potential and common issues, because although the videos are meant to be instructional, Chief is always selling. I don’t blame them for that either. It would be nice to have some videos for common problems and workarounds but who has time for this? So I think, as Scott mentioned, just post your plan with a short description of the problem and someone will answer in less than an hour.

Looks like you’re not using the “join roof” tool and instead are just joining the roof planes in plan view. This is also why you are getting those “soffit/fascia” flying out into space elsewhere in your attached photo. Roofs also need walls to properly join under them. If walls are not aligned all the way down to your foundation you can get freakish results. Also try to use attic walls to fill up your gables, don’t just drag the walls that are on the floor below to fill up the space. Attic walls allow for frieze and shadow boards to behave properly.

Chief just sits nicely between the ease of use of Sketchup and the productivity of Revit or Archicad. It’s never going to be more but that’s good enough for residential home building. I know that might sound like an apology but my praise for Chief is limited to the renewal of my SSA and the actual initial purchase of the program. Beyond that I won’t get on the Chief fanboy bandwagon because there’s a lot that needs to improve, and if I’m paying they better be listening.

Regarding crown molding gaps, it's true that you can get some gaps which are easily fixable with a little silicone and paint. I get it though, everyone wants to buy a house that is guaranteed, no-maintenance-and-no-defects-for-as-long-as-you-own-the-house-or-your-money-back, but that's not realistic. To minimize this effect quite a bit I alway tell my sheetrock installer to NOT screw the edge of the sheets where they meet an exterior wall, just allow the tape to hold it (plaster joint). It ain't going to get up and walk away on you. This will allow the trusses to lift the sheetrock up and down as walls settle or roof trusses bow etc... Either way this is far less an inconvenience than the problems that will arise if the attic is not vented and insulated properly. As far as Chief roofs are concerned though, I wish that "raise off plate", feature in the roof dialogue box actually worked in relation to the pitch. That is I have to use a table of values for each pitch and corresponding height in order to determine how high I have to set this value. Why can't I just set the "absolute height" for my soffit, or fascia or any other part of the eave? Why have a value for the ridge height anyway? Ridge height is a function of span and pitch. Let me determine where my eave sits and the rest will follow. Ridge height will be shown in elevations with the story pole dimensions. I guess this should be in the suggestions section of the forum.

I never understood Chief’s insistence on rafter style roof systems. Maybe it’s because I’m in the northeast, but aren’t the most common roof trusses, Howe style? That is, a truss that cantilevers over the top plate and extends 16” to 24” inches past the exterior wall with a soffit that is parallel to the ground, to create the eave? This way you also have a healthy heel for insulation and venting? I feel Chief was designed to build roofs for log cabins in the desert. I always have have to take a cross section to measure how much I need to raise my roof so that the bottom chord/joist sits on top of my top plate of the exterior walls. I guess I’m venting...

Nicely done video, guy. Thanks!

I would bring my deck to come out and over the top of the lower wall and add a railing. Then you could just drain with a gutter and downspout. Membrane as if if you were building a flat roof. That way whatever you throw on top is just for decoration - tiles, trex, cedar planking, heck even a Persian rug! Also, often overlooked and a real weak spot is how the waterproofing is done around the patio door. (If you get snow where you are, that is).

Sorry couldn’t resist. Seriously, if you want that kind of control, I think you would have to draw a tile as a p-solid on the plan and use the “multiple copy” tool. That way you can change any tile you want to whatever color and in whatever pattern you want. Then you could have a p-solid covering the entire area of the room in question with a thickness less than that of the tile to act as the grout. Here’s a chief video on the multiple copy tool... https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/302/setting-array-copy-intervals-angles-and-quantities.html

Whoever sold you Chief is one heck of a salesman...

At this point, do we even know for sure that it will be callled X11?

Doesn’t make that much of a difference according to this guy. Scrub to the 7th minute mark of the video....

As a builder I can tell you the only “real” way to know what a home will cost is to send plans out to each and every subtrade and get them to quote on the job. Then you can have a true cost analysis. After that you can study and understand how each trade charges and then use this info to populate a spreadsheet based on a multiple variables, like, square footage, quantities for concrete, sheet rock, plumbing and electrical fixtures etc. It’s a big job. There is no program in the world that will do that work for you in an accurate way that will apply to how you build in your area and at what local cost for materials are.

Thanks for keeping it a secret.

For the Mac OS, “Twin Motion” is the closest you’ll get to Lumion. https://twinmotion.abvent.com/en/

Hi all. I think the upvote button is Chief’s subtle way of telling us how to best get their attention regarding suggestions and improvements. I don’t see a lot of upvoting going on in the forum. I’m assuming most of us see it as some kind of gimmick, but if I were a Chief executive occasionally looking into my disgruntled client base I would definitely be looking at the forum and sorting by most number of upvotes. I try to upvote or downvote almost every post I look at, when it’s important to me. Especially in the “suggestions” forum. Maybe we should stop wining and use this handy feature?...

No change for me when I upgraded to Mojave on my crappy old retina MacBook 2013.

By George, I think you’ve got it!

I don’t know about you all, but I see the floor level in the garage as clearly higher than the driveway and bottom of garage door. That’s the first issue.

We need to insulate under that door, so I raise the door 1-1/2” off the plywood. I also lower the concrete landing outside by 3” to give enough space for a stone sill under the door frame. Montreal snow and winter precautions.

Archicad is what you’re looking for. It’s the fastest and most straight forward way of working with “repeatable” plans such as row housing and multi-family buildings. Check out this video...

This also works without plan views by changing the anno set of the plan view in the Layout Box Specification dialogue box. So what’s different?

Even underneath your roofing trusses? No strapping?

3/4” furring, 16” on centre.