Doug_N

No permit drawings are part of the design process where you are explaining design features to your client. In the submittal set pf drawings, the trusses are deleted and the truss drawings from the truss manufacturer are included. Getting the designs past the client, now that is indeed an elusive animal that can haunt all designer's dreams.

Don't forget to report this, with info about your setup etc. to nvidia so they can fix their driver.

Anyhow the problem was that the stairs have to be in a closed room. All walls have to intersect.

No, damn, i was trying to edit it and goofed up.

For some reason the stairs won't tuck into the corner where the walls intersect. Strangely the winder option => works at other locations in the building. I suspect that there is something wrong with the intersection of the two walls, or there is something wrong with the room.

So here I am trying to make some winder stairs. I create the stairs, move them into a corner, turn off the railings and click on the stairs to open them, then click on the winder check mark. Nothing happens. What am I doing wrong? Renovation Plan Original House.plan

David, Far be it for me to blame the tools. This reminds me of a story about an apprentice carpenter who was complaining about the quality of his saw. He said that he had cut a board 3 times and it was still too short. If only he had a better saw. I realize my shortcomings with CA because I have been using it now for just short of a year. Every time I use it new methods are discovered that make me think, I wish I had known this on the last project. But I disagree that CA is just a tool. It is an intelligent tool. It completes a great number of tasks in the background as you go about the work of defining space to live or work in. Overall on a scale of one to ten, I would rate this program as an 8. It does nearly everything that most jobs required. That being said, there are also some things that CA are really quite poor at. When you need to do something that doesn't fit the "rules" that make it smart, it is hard to turn them off. It is hard to do railings for example, and I have run into that problem on nearly every project that I have worked on so far. Chief Architects creates roof details amazingly well and like magic, can join them together, making ridges and fascia details pop up like nobody's business. Roof and wall intersections. Not so much. Most can be fixed with a few tweaks of the surface material planes with the editing tools. But sometimes the planes decide to fly, and off they go and you end up with a punk rock version of the building with really bad spiky hair. Do I plan to go to some other software? Not a chance. I LOVE this application. For any of the frustration, it makes my job a complete joy. I can hardly wait to start the next project! And the next, and the next. One other small wish, and this is for the support people. Autodesk will try and walk you though something. If they can't they do a remote session on your computer to see first hand what is going on. That is amazing support, and often with amazing results. Just saying. Well enough for now. I am so happy to be a user, and really happy with the group of users who are so willing to support one another. One other small point. I am really really happy that most of my competition are not using this software. (I hope the Chief Architect guys are not listening to this last one.) Regards from the not so frozen north. Hotter than Miami today. Doug.

The big problem is with as built drawings. Sometimes the original building is a bit chaotic. Non standard methods create awful details that need to be captured attach the addition to. That is the case with the attached file. Drove me nuts, and I am still not done. This is a draft. Just uploaded it as an example. The builder had gone ahead without a permit, and now I have the problem of making this mess compliant with code. The owner is asking me to work around what is already done and to change only what must be redone to meet code. For example on the wall above the stubby roof in the picture was built on top of the roof, even thought the roof inside the wall was demo'd. Arrrrggggg. Renovation Plan MODE.plan

It might be just me, but I have noticed that as I work on a building and things become complicated, with CA sometimes it is just easier to start over. With the things that I have learned from the mistakes that I made doing the design, the second time goes much quicker, and with a much cleaner build. Also I wanted to comment on the great help I have had here in this forum. You guys (and ladies) are great. Thank you so much. Doug Doug Norton Whitby Ontario Canada

Ok thanks Eric.

Hey Eric, Thanks for that. I appreciate the feedback and help. I noticed the stubby roof was moved away from the building, did you need to do that to place the attic wall? Doug

I had posted this before and DSHall was good enough to post a reply, but then I clicked on a wrong button and deleted the whole thread by accident. Mr. Hall, if you could would you please repost your solution along with the plan file? I tried your solution but couldn't get it to work. I must be doing something wrong. Doug Renovation Plan.plan Most of the building is a close estimate, but the top floor of the extension with the popup roof and skylights is new. What I am trying to do is to make the wall in the highlighted area. Doug Norton Whitby Ontario 905 409 8487 Renovation Plan.plan

Just a question about building code. Would railings be required at the top of the retaining walls near any walkway in your area?

What a great link, Thanks Richard.

Just for the record, AutoCad is not a 2d program. It generates a 3d database. You can do a 3D version of a house in AutoCad.

OK it works, and here is how to do it. 1) Export from CA to a DWG file. I used a 2017 version dwg file including all the layers that you need. 2) Open the drawing in AutoCad. 3) Export the file to a PDF file with layers Attached is the file in PDF with switchable visibility layers along with the original CA file, and the exported AutoCad file MAYNARD_TUTTLE_.dwg MAYNARD_TUTTLE_.pdf MAYNARD_TUTTLE_.plan

I think there may be a way to do it. First export to an autocad file, then from autocad save as a PDF with layers. Then Acrobat will have a layer set that can be turned on or off at least I think so. I will give this a try tomorrow and let you know how it works out.

OK smarty pants, how did you do that? LOL

yes, that is it exactly

Found the problem! Each section of the stairs has its own options for open to below. The wall section of stairs to the left of the window in this image indicated open below, but when I cycled that option the part of the wall that was obscuring the window disappeared.

I opened the plan and then did a clipped cross section through the windows. I also tried moving the lower window with the problem vertically to see if the covering was part of the window or part of the wall assembly. Here is an elevation view of the problem Here are the stair options that was found in the sample file. At the moment I don't have a solution, but I am curious about this and will do more work to see if I can solve the problem. My purpose in posting this reply is to just illustrate what Diane was talking about.

Ahh I didn't get that. So he wants the grade level to be absolute with MSL. It could be useful to have geodetic references available in CA would't it.

I did'n do that manually. I just changed the elevation reference in the default pole interface. CA fixed everything after that, I deleted the irrelevant markers.