Doug_N

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Everything posted by Doug_N

  1. This took about 45 minutes. A lot of that time was used to explain what I was doing to the owner. I will be charging about $3,200 for the as built and proposed drawings. I can't see how I could take measurements around the furnace. Tim will tell as I continue to hone my skills. Perhaps I could have closed the door to do a better job of "seeing" the furnace. I took a lot of hand measurements as well, and most of the camera measurements were just about spot on. I was amazed at that. In Ontario, a second furnace is not required if the apartment is an accessory suite. That is, a main dwelling and a smaller apartment in some part of the house. The one proviso is that a smoke detector is installed in the cold air return, with the detector wired into the furnace controls to disable the furnace in an alarm condition to prevent smoke and the products of combustion from circulating between the units.
  2. Well here it is! My first client Matterport scan. https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=pCSoG4q7sad
  3. I don't know about your jurisdiction, but that solution for a garage would require engineering to prevent possible fluid leaks from entering the habitable space. The plans examiner would still require the certification of the design for the building assembly, not just for the pre-engineering slabs.
  4. Do a model of the house in Chief Architect and make a basement under the garage. The garage floor will be a suspended slab, probably with at least one steel drop beam under the slab. The ends of the beam can bear upon the foundation stem wall or on pilasters. More than likely you will need one column in the center of the beam if the garage is a double width. The beam will probably be 8" deep so make sure that you have enough headroom (say 7') under the beams, and then make drawings for the structural engineer. He(she) will tell you how to change the drawing to suit, and provide a structural drawing along with load calculations.
  5. There are two possible reasons. 1) you still have the plan file open in Chief Architect. Exit Chief Architect and then try. 2) The file is too large to upload. Run backup in CA and save to a zip file for the plan file only. This may or not reduce the file to a size where it can be uploaded.
  6. Hi Amy, Please post the plan file. You can do this by exiting Chief Architect and then uploading the plan file in the forum. Please note that if CA has the file open, you will not be able to upload it. Doug
  7. Back when I was on the tools, there was a saying that the contractor with the worst estimator often got the job.
  8. Change your settings for footings in Default Settings, Foundation, Edit Default Foundation Wall, Footings
  9. Gene, I did a little slicing to see what was going on. This is some sort of visual artifact and should be reported to CA support. The floor is not being clipped correctly and if you change the floor to only have one layer of concrete, the problem disappears. What is happening here is a Z fight at the surface of the stem wall and shouldn't be happening at all. A work around is to place the insulation as a slab stopping at the footings. That is, obviously, a manual operation and is just a bit of kludgy work around, but it will work. Doug
  10. You know something? I have wanted to do this on purpose sometimes and could never do it! I am still trying to sort out what is going on here.
  11. You might also be able to do that with roof planes. Sometimes I need to do that with a sloping wall and the roof planes worked for that. Here is a lighthouse that I designed for the Whitby Yacht Club.
  12. My bet is that it is not frozen. If you are opening files from previous versions of CA then x-14 is looking for and can't find those files. Unfortunately, the program, with regards to user inputs, remains suspended until the project timer runs out. At that time, you can work on replacing the missing files or helping the program to find them. It would be a good idea if CA could allow the user to stop the search and to help manually within a second or two of encountering that problem. One other place that CA X-14 suspends user input is when there is some problem in the library. I currently have that problem every time I need a range. I have to wait for CA to time out before I can select a range, and if that range is not in the library window, and I have to scroll, then the waiting starts anew.
  13. I am going through money like I had my own printing press! A few days ago I bought a Matterport Pro2 camera. I have yet to use it and ran into to some vexing problems when trying to subscribe to Matterport for the company to process the scan files so that I could actually use the camera. I opted to enroll in the Matterpak Professional package and took the plunge to pay for a year in advance. There are significant savings in doing that. Here is where the adventure begins!!! Matterport did not accept my perfectly good business VISA credit card. Before anyone raises any eyebrows, my card is not at its limit, not in arrears and has way more space than would be required by the cost of the subscription. So, what happens next? The nightmare of Matterport customer support when something goes wrong. Again, this is my point of view, and my opinion about how to run a company, so take that into account as I relate my storey. For some background about who I am, and my experience in managing a company. My background includes the ownership and successful operation of two companies that had multiple employees. I had an excavation company that I ran for about 10 years and sold when the opportunity arose. That company was tiny with only 4 employees. After that I had a steel fabricating company and ran that for another 10 years, with 24 employees. The company had awards and recognition for excellent customer relations and for quality of work from clients like IBM, Telex, GM and Chrysler. We did business in Canada, the US and in Europe. Still not a company as big as Matterport, but there were things that were done well, and the clients recognised that. Matterport is not set up to deal with anyone outside of the US, although their website would lead you to believe otherwise. Matterport does not know how to deal with a credit card problem that is not a problem with the card, nor the issuing bank but with the card processing at their card processing company. Matterport also does not have a great way of dealing with other methods of payment. There is only 3 ways to pay Matterport. 1) Credit card 2) Wire transfer and 3) Cheque. As of now they don't use PayPal. Another problem with customer support is that you only learn the first name of a rep. For example, I had wire transfer instructions sent to me by someone named Rc. It turns out, when I went to the back to get a wire transfer done, there wasn't enough information to actually do the transfer. The bank needed more info. So I called Matterport, while standing at the counter in the bank and asked for more information. After being transferred to two other people I ended up with a rep who, after I explained the situation, sent me an email with the rest of the info, except.... it didn't match the account information that the first person Rc sent. This raised all kinds of alarms with the bank people, and they then refused to do a wire transfer to Matterport, suspecting that this was some kind of scam because the credit card didn't work (they checked the card and said there was no hold on it) and the banking information didn't match. They (the bank people) said that Matterport should sort out the credit card problem and have them call their card processer to find out what the problem was. There is a lot more to the storey, but in the end Matterport suggested that I get a credit card from some other bank and try that. Some other bank? Isn't that implying that the bank is the problem? So what did I do? I had a personal VISA credit card with the same bank. What do you know, Matterport accepted that card. Why? I have no idea. A note about Matterport people when you do get them on the phone. They are amazingly polite, engaging and care about communicating whatever they can. They stay on the phone with you, and if they put you on hold, come back every couple of minutes to let you know that you are not forgotten. Cudos to Matterport customer service reps for that. So the saga will continue as I look forward to the first project using this monster of a camera. By the way it looks very well built! Rugged with well-designed handling features.
  14. You may be in the wrong place to try to sell a license, most of us have a full license already. Have you checked with CA about transferring the license to someone else?
  15. But why would a construction line have any effect on bumping? I just don't get it. How can I turn that off, just for the construction lines? I still want to be able to select them, so putting them on a locked layer is out of the question.
  16. I can't drag anything past a construction line. Is there a setting that I am missing?
  17. I have figured out one of the problems, and the fix, well sort of. The problem is that the old layout files may have reference to either library items or PDF files, such as surveys that X-14 can't find. It tries to resolve these files and doesn't stop (and won't let you do anything either) until it times out. In my case, that took about 2-3 minutes. The file then opens. If you then try to open the plan file by clicking on an inserted view in the layout, again you have to go through the long wait until it times out. Trying to do a file check and link also creates a really long wait, very frustrating indeed. Now the good news. Do a file check for missing files, and don't try to fix them. Make note of the file, and where it is looking for the file. Then delete the reference. Next re-insert the pdf, or referenced file manually. Nest time the file opens like silk. No problem. I can't speak for others, but part of the problem in my case is because I am also running a new computer, new drives, new everything. That prevented X-14 from importing my user library, As a note of caution to others, make sure that you export your library, especially all those precious blocks that you made to some known place so that you can import them again. That one missed step is causing most of my problems with X-14, at least as far as I can tell.
  18. Neither of those are on in my situation. It can take minutes for CA to load an old file, and the same thing happens from time to time with library files. Task manager just reports CA not responding.
  19. I have experienced that, and reported it on the X-14 report link. CA reports that they can't duplicate the problem. It persists on my computer (not the one in the signature line, but my new computer with a RTX 3080 Ti Video card. Windows 10 i7 1200k cpu.
  20. First make sure that the 1st floor type is setup correctly. Remove any reference to lumber and framing etc. Then prepare the foundation configuration. 1) Make the foundation wall a pony wall with the upper wall being a reduced thickness 2) Set the structure of the foundation wall hang the platform. Adjust the height of the pony wall upper segment to be the same and the thickness (unless you wall something else). And this is what you get