CJSpud

Boxon: I would love to look over your plans and give you my opinion. If you prefer, you can email them to me directly.

Boxon: Sounds like you have a handle on things on the structural stuff... other than the project location problems and not being able to check on the construction. Nice details! I recently completed a project with 115 lb. snow load and 90 mph wind gust. Not near the structural design issues that you have with this project. By the way, if you wanted to post the plan, I would recommend saving a copy under a new name and then gutting out everything but the basic structure (no furniture, lighting, fixtures, landscape, etc. That would likely get the file size down considerably. I don't think I have ever had a project over 50 MB's .... and I thought that was too big.

Boxon: I am curious as to what design snow and wind loads you are having to contend with for this project? Also, for the beams that are supporting the clerestory side walls, what is the open span between the beams' inner most supports? Since you mention 12" or 18" depth beams, it doesn't sound like they have been reviewed for load sizing at this time. I am not sure why you have 2x10's showing overlapping the beam but it doesn't look to me like they belong there unless they are Chief's ridge beams for the rafters. I see that you also have a 2x6 sill plate as well as 2x6 studs (cripples) hidden within your beam. If your test model has the accurate spans that you will be dealing with (66'), I suspect that your beams [multiple beams may be required on each side] will need to have considerable depth, possibly even more than 18" depending on roof loads and additional inboard support columns as well. I don't have a clue what your regulatory requirements are in Serbia for projects such as this but it seems like there should be engineering involvement early on if you want to get the structural stuff right the first time and not have go back and redo stuff because of improper member sizing etc. If you have seismic loads in the project area, then engineering is even more important. At this point, I think your beam can be used for rafter attachment and the 2x10 can go away, at least in the clerestory area depending on the design. I think you can also do away with the bottom plate hidden in the beam or raise it up to sit on the beam .... you'll need to do something to get the top edge of the beam down under your roof rafters and sheathing if it will extend out as shown on the test model. Perhaps all those short cripple studs (buried in the beams) can go away or some other framing solution used to get the window elevations right. If there will be snow build-up at the bottoms of the clerestory windows, then I think they should be raised up several inches to give you room for some good vertical flashing to minimize moisture intrusion problems. Lots of stuff to consider. Maybe something like this: To really be able to assist you, I think it would be helpful to be able to look at your actual plan, rather than a test plan. Nevertheless, it may be possible to provide some guidance based upon your test plan, if you are under severe time constraints and haven't attempted to build the clerestory on your project's model at this time. I really like the other images you've posted. That's a great looking project and from what I see, it looks like you've done a nice job with the design, landscaping, etc. I agree that sometimes it is very hard to get the model perfect. That's where the CAD details are the icing on the cake for the builders.

Joey: You owe us a camera view of your results. Glad if I was able to help out.

I can get an OK stepped fence using Glenn's suggestion (see white picket fence in the foreground). When I "tried" Jon's suggestion of using the landscape block wall material, it starts getting too juicy for the time I had to mess around with it so I did my own thing. Zeroing out the newels in the Jon's block wall (my version) levels out the top of the wall (no steps) so I start doing other things that look more productive. This morning I tried to make a fence type out of the library's CMU materials but didn't have much success so gave that up too. I wanted to have the footing attached to the CMU's and then have it step like Glenn's method but I failed. Maybe it can be done ... I got frustrated and moved on.

Yup ... everything done manually once I placed the walls. Then went to elevation views for each and moved the bottoms down to the desired location first, then edited the tops to somewhat correspond with what I did at the footing level. I just sort of eyeballed the footing tops and wall tops to try to match seams of the block wall texture. I made the wall specs for the block 8 x 16 x 8. What is nice with what I did is that you can edit the vertical edges of the stepped footings to put a little more concrete at the step locations (if desired). Here's the plan I used if anyone wants to check it out. SteppedBlockWallFenceTest.zip

Here's what I envisioned you doing with a "block" foundation wall. Just stepped it in elevation views to follow the terrain and adjusted the tops of the walls as shown. Takes a little time but not too bad. I tried the stepping to follow terrain suggestion but found that not very useful for my way of thinking. The footing for the block wall can be set to whatever size you need. You could cap the walls if desired or even put a railing on top of the blocks ... but then you'd have fun making that look good at any elevation changes. Hopefully someone else will show you a better way. Best I can come up with for now. I think you should craft your idea as a suggestion for the suggestion forum. It would be nice to be able to set the block wall height and then have its "base" step to follow the terrain. Of course you would want to specify how deep the footing would build with respect to the top of the terrain. I am sure a little more thought would need to be put into this before requesting a new feature. In the meantime, if what I am showing is close to what you had in mind, then at least you can get that part of your project completed without too much effort.

Glenn: I didn't even know that option was there. GREAT call. Thanks.

Providing your plan with what you've accomplished so far would be helpful.

Maybe just a foundation wall with stepped footings???

Bill: Thanks for the tip ... great stuff.

I do the same as Graeme .... foundations at level or floor = 0. BUT, there are many Chiefers who prefer to have there foundation level at floor 1 because of code/building department issues, etc. You'll have to decide what works best for you.

I use CutePDF and think it prints just fine. BlueBeam is nice because you can zoom by using the mouse wheel.

I think many users will agree that there are changes that should be made to improve the way we can build railings for both decks and stairs. Nevertheless, I don't expect Chief OTB to be able to resolve all of the railing design issues that I come up against. That's where a little creativity using some of the other tools often comes in to play. And there's always a bunch of other Chiefers and/or CA staff members on ChiefTalk that just seem to be able to figure things out and are always willing to come to the rescue. I have been very pleased with the help that I have received from Tech Support over the years. They've been very good at helping me resolve problems I couldn't figure out. They are all good people IMO.

I haven't spent too much time on this but those back-to-back cabinet module lines only seem to appear when you have at least two cabinets on one side and at least one cabinet opposite, and their sides are offset. If you have only one cabinet on each side and their sides are offset, the back module line doesn't show up. Just one of those Chief things. I don't know that I would call that a bug but it wouldn't hurt to report it as the line(s) really shouldn't be there unless module lines are checked for display IMO.

And a good CA video on template plans: http://video.chiefarchitect.com/?search=template+plan

Here's some links on template plans: http://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/category/271/0/10/Chief-Architect/Templates/

Alexander: I have had that happen to me as well. Generally, at some point I like to have the module lines turned on so I can make sure all the cabinets look like they are butted up tight to each other. If the module lines for adjacent cabinets look a bit heavy or I see a tiny jog in them, I know I have to zoom in close to verify that I have a problem and then go about fixing things. It doesn't appear you have module lines on in your image. I suggest you display them and then closely inspect how your cabinets are butting up to each other. "Maybe" there's a problem there and that's why you are seeing that line.

Here's one of my dimension plans as well as another I call a presentation plan from a recent project. Nothing too fancy.

yusuf: I must have been doing something wrong the first time I tried it. Thanks.

Have you tried working in plan rather than layout. Select a room and assign a solid fill color to the room and then in the line style tab, make sure the fill is in back group. You could set this up with an anno set and layer set to your spec's.

I do them manually. The Auto Elevations defaults aren't very well set up for what you want to do as far as I can tell. Looks like this would be a good suggestion to put in on the Suggestion Forum.

It would be nice if the room divider worked for Bill's method but I can't get it to work. Thanks for the tip Bill. Edit: Just hide the invisible walls by making their line color white or no color, or if possible, just turn the layer off. This takes care of any undesirable plan view issues regarding using invisible walls.

I use an Anno set specifically for showing how all the walls are dimensioned. I have floor materials patterns, cabinets, fixtures, etc. displayed with a medium to light gray color so the dimensions stand out better yet the other information is still there. Because most of the new home plans I do are using ICF construction, my dimension plans aren't conventional. By that I mean that in addition to the typical "exterior" dimension strings locating framed partition walls connecting to the exterior ICF walls, I also show those same walls' locations dimensioned with interior dimension strings. The reason for this is the ICF walls almost always go to the roof and it isn't possible to locate interior partition walls by measuring to the outside edge of the ICF walls. Those measurements are taken from the interior side of the ICF forms. I use 4.5" number and arrow height for my 1/4" dimension strings.

If you are interested in seeing wall framing for individual walls, just select the wall and then in the edit tool bar, click on the tool I have circled: Using the dimension tools, you can check the rough framing dimensions for any framed wall section: