CJSpud

I have a plan in which I have used a couple of barn doors from the Chief library. These report to the Fixture Schedule and are shown as "slabs". I would like to have them on the Doors layer and have them report to the Doors Schedule. Is there anyway to do this with the Chief barn door symbols? I changed the label manually to "barn door" and the layer to Doors but nothing happened. They still report to the Fixture Schedule and are still shown as Slab(s) in that schedule. Thanks.

Joe: What level do you put your terrain on?

Thanks Rene ... keep them coming.

Scott: Thanks for hosting the workshop. Rene: Thanks for sharing your expertise and tips. What you presented was way over my skill level but I took some notes and have some of your techniques to try out for myself.

With the "schedule" open, go up to the top and drag the column handle in to make the 2D CAD block image smaller ... that will make your schedule not so tall (decreases row height too).

My bad. I think you can create this very easily by using an electrical schedule and then adding a column to include the 2D symbol for each fixture. You can rename the schedule to "Legend" and add/delete whatever columns you want .... perhaps just the 2D image and a description is all you need. Edit: Just like Michael showed in his post above. If you wanted to show which room or floor, those are other columns that may be helpful for your electrical contractor.

If Chief's electrical legend doesn't contain all the CAD blocks you need for the electrical symbols you are using, then you may have to get your creative juices flowing and make your own legend that shows only the electrical symbols you are using in your project. For each electrical symbol you are using, you can find a CAD block (Chief's 2D plan representation of each electrical symbol) by going to CAD Block Management (via CAD in the tool bar at the top left of your page). Once you have that open, you can search for each of the electrical symbols' CAD blocks being used and in the CAD Block Management dialog box (dbx) there is a box in the top center that says "Insert" which when clicked will insert the CAD Block in your plan. The dbx shows the CAD block for each electrical fixture in the view port on the right side so you know what each one looks like. Once you have them all placed in your plan, you can assemble them and using CAD or whatever magic you choose to use, along with text, and create your own custom electrical legend. That would be a lot of work I don't think I would do, but it could be done. I would just use Chief's OTB (out of the box) electrical legend and then for the few that you are using that aren't in the legend, I would perhaps create a mini supplemental legend with the ones not shown. There are probably lots of other ways that may be easier to skin this cat. I am sure you'll hear multiple opinions on how you can do this. Once you are done with your custom legend, don't forget to add it to the library so you can use it again for another project if needed. You might even try a search on the Internet ... maybe you can find a more appropriate electrical legend than what Chief is providing.

I did a home design similar to what your are doing many years ago and got the design done OK. Funny thing, that was a 2nd house I designed for my clients ... they scrapped the first one ... and then they found out there were lots of rattlesnakes around/on their property so never built there and sold the lot. The were in fear of one of their grand kids getting bit while visiting them. So they ended up remodeling their existing home in town.

Here's a Chief video that might help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1530/drawing-a-flat-roof-with-center-drain-and-parapet-walls.html

javatom: As Doug pointed out in his last post above, and as shown in my images, Chief has reworked the room specification dbx'x (as Doug shows in his post too). I actually like the graphic much better now. For whatever reason, I could not make changes to the values I noted in my post (and images) without messing up some other setting. By auto rebuilding the foundation, I was able to get the garage stem walls with the curb height I wanted. That finicky behavior cost me a bunch of time and work today. Moral of the story ... set up your defaults properly ahead of time to avoid situations like this. Unfortunately for this project, it was initially set up for ICF construction and with that I didn't need any garage curb heights, etc. Making the switch to stick-built was not such a good thing. We really should have some flexibility with making changes in the room spec. dbx for garages without having to rebuild the entire foundation IMO. Guess I should put that in the suggestion box. Unless of course, I am totally missing something ... which is entirely possible.

Eric: I went ahead and did the auto rebuild and that fixed the garage floor and stem walls to what I wanted. Now I need to go back and do some editing again of some steps I had in the garage stem walls; redo the basement walkout wall to include extra depth for frost protection; and fix the location of the terrain ... it seems to have gained a foot or so in relation to the building.

Eric: Here's a simple plan. Everything seems to be working when it is setup correctly from the beginning. GarageSlab&StemWalls.plan One thing I didn't do with my project plan is put a check in the "Automatically Rebuild Foundation" box in the Foundation Defaults > Foundation dbx. I am a little hesitant to do that because of some editing I've already done to the plan regarding some interior basement bearing walls. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and do that and see what happens.

Eric: Let me see if I can do that. My project file is 36 Mbs before zipping or stripping.

Thanks for the comments on the 6" exterior finish exposure. So my garage rough ceiling elevation is 109-1/8" by default so my garage roof eaves etc. match the house. When I change the garage slab floor to -21" below the subfloor, the room specification graphic shows the stemwall at the same elevation of the slab (-21"). The "SWT To Ceiling" setting changes to 130-1/8" (i.e., 109-1/8" + 21" = 130-1/8"), which matches the new "Rough Ceiling" elevation in the Room Specification dbx. I want to change the "SWT To Ceiling" setting from 130-1/8" to 123-1/4" which will give me a curb height for the foundation stem walls in the garage of 6-7/8" which will match the top of the basement foundation walls. For the Floor 1 Room Specification dbx for the garage, it looks like this should be a simple undertaking by changing the value of the "SWT To Ceiling" setting to the desired 123-1/4" setting. However, when I do that, the ceiling moves down to 102-1/4" while the SWT stays exactly where it was ... even with the top of the slab at -21". If I go down to Floor 0 and open up the garage Room Specification dbx, the settings are different and it appears that I have two different options to move the top of the stem wall up to 123-1/4" as desired: 1. Change the Floor To SWT setting from 0" as shown to 6-7/8" (21" - 12-5/8" - 1-1/2" = 6-7/8"), or 2. Change the Stem Wall setting from 26-7/8" to 33-3/4" (26-7/8" + 6-7/8" = 33-3/4"). However, trying option 1 results in the slab dropping the added 6-7/8" while the stem wall top stays where it was rather than going up. This makes the ceiling height in the garage go to 137", not the 130-1/8" it was suppose to be, and the overall height of the stem wall remains at 26-7/8" as shown below: Trying option 2 just makes the stem wall taller but the top stays fixed at -21" while the bottom and footing are lowered by the 6-7/8". I did go into my foundation defaults and change the setting for "Garage Floor to Stem Wall Top" to 6-7/8" but that didn't seem to work any magic for me in the Room Specification dbx changes I have been attempting to make. So I am apparently having another senior moment trying to get the garage floor and stem walls setup the way I want them [top of garage slab @ -21"; top of garage stem walls @ - 14-1/8" or 6-7/8" above the garage slab]. I would prefer to use the settings in the dbx's if possible rather than trying to move wall tops/bottoms around in elevation cross section views. Can anyone spot something really obvious about where I am screwing up trying to make these changes? PS: I may be wrong about my desired stem wall top elevation of -14-1/8". If the sill plate is part of the stem wall calculation, then I probably should be using -12-5/8".

Ray: I think this project's garage floor will need a little extra base brought in due to the slope of the lot. Is there a minimum curb height on the high end of a garage slab that is commonly used in your area or is it all over the map as far as what builders are doing?

David: Sounds like your talking 20-1/8" from top of subfloor to top of slab next to the house. If the landing in the garage is at subfloor height, that works out pretty nice for stair riser height (3 @ 6.71"). I think that might work out nicely for the stick-built house I am working on. The site isn't surveyed and there is some slight slope from the left side of the garage to the right side. At worst I think only one more step would be needed .... unless some fill is placed inside the stem walls on the downhill side and compacted.

Thanks Ray. I was sort of coming from a fairly level site scenario with my question. I realize that site conditions would certainly affect where an attached garage's slab, stem walls and footings would need to be placed based on the site grade elevations. So I imagine the goal is to try to set the slab elevation such that you wouldn't have to haul in a bunch of engineered fill and then compact it to 95% compaction?

Question: Is there a "standard" attached garage slab elevation that is "typically" used in the home construction industry for a home that is using 11-7/8" I-joists and 23/32" sub-flooring (3/4" nominal)? Should the slab elevation be set based on the recommended 7" stair riser height (±) or does it more have to do with how much stemwall curb is desired to keep the wood framing above the slab surface in case the owner wants to hose down the slab for cleaning? What are Chief designers/architects using for the garage slab elevation? I do mostly ICF designs with those the garage slab is usually the same height as the subfloor. Thanks.

Got it .... someone from Chief may have to chime in for an explanation.

Mick: That looks like 54" x 54" in you image to me ... which is 6" per course for 9 courses.

Here's the plan Mick. PonyWall.plan

Mick: I guess I had a senior moment as I can't figure out a way to make that upper pony wall main layer line type dashed the way I thought it might work for plan views. Maybe the only way to show it dashed is with a white dashed polyline sitting on top of it (brought to the front). Do you see any other way to accomplish that easily?

Thanks for your replies. Sometimes I miss the simple things and didn't want to add a bunch of additional layers if there was a way to accomplish the mission without them. If notes (schedules) could be placed in layout, how would that work .... other than they would just exist on layout sheets? Could they exist in a layout CAD detail or did you have something else in mind?

I am wondering how other Chief users are dealing with notes and the layer they are assigned to. By default, the actual layer a note is assigned to is the "Schedules" layer. If you have multiple note schedules for a plan, do we need to have different layers for each note schedule? If a project has a basement floor and I have three different (or maybe more) views sent to layout and each of those views has its own dedicated note schedule, don't we need a different "note layer" to keep the different note schedules from displaying on each view. For example, for the basement level I have three views sent to layout: 1. Basement plan; 2. Foundation plan; 3. Floor framing plan. And, as stated above, I will have a note schedule for each of those views. It seems to me the only way to only have the desired note schedule displayed for any of the three views is for each view to have a layer dedicated for each note type, i.e., I would have a basement plan note layer, a foundation plan note layer and a floor framing plan note layer. Is this the way it needs to be done or am I missing something? What I want to avoid, if there's a way around this, is not creating a bunch of extra (note) layers if they aren't needed. Your comments on how you are dealing with this are appreciated.

Larry: I think you would need a 2nd layer set to do that. Thanks for catching that.