CJSpud

To reduce the size of your plan, save it under a new name and then gut it ... get rid of everything but the structure ... no cabinets, no fixtures, no electrical, no arch. blocks, no terrain, etc. - whatever you can remove to reduce the file size. Once you've done that, hopefully you will be able to zip it and post here. If not, zip it and use Dropbox.

Please post your plan with your elevations properly set and I will take a look at it.

Rich: I think your suggestion should actually be used by our political party(ies) ... you know, the republicrats .... stealing all our $'s. That would be a more fitting use in my opinion.

Mike: In the meantime, I would try changing your profile plan to the Chief Profile.plan from the same location as the sample plans and do that simple exercise one more time. If it works OK, then I would definitely get rid of that profile plan and start setting up a new one. Make sure you rename the OTB profile plan and save in Preferences. That sure beats having to re-install Chief.

Mike: Yes, I think something is corrupt. Not sure what for sure. If you have SSA, I would send it in to Tech Support and see what they say. I am beginning to think your X6 is corrupt. One other thing you could try is to open one of Chief's many sample plans and try to build a deck off of one of the floor 1 walls and see what happens. If you can't get a deck with the floor framed on floor 0, then definitely send it in to TS. To get a Chief sample plan, go to your Chief Architect Premier X6 Data folder > Templates and pick any one of the many plans there and try the deck experiment again. Good luck.

Mike: I did see where you don't get deck framing on floor 1 either. That is why I asked you to do the simple experiment in a new plan. I can't get deck framing on floor 1 either although I expected to be able to. Definitely something weird with your plan. Seem like you plan materials are messed up somehow. I am wondering if your X6 is corrupt somehow???

Mike: Hopefully you will see something like this: I am in the framing layer set for the above view and I turned on foundation walls.

Mike: Open a new plan; create a 4-walled house; draw a deck on one wall of the house and make sure it is labeled a deck in the General tab; build a standard OTB foundation; go back to floor 1 and select your deck room and build the deck framing via the deck framing tool in the edit toolbar; go down to floor 0 and with your framing layer set active, do you see any deck floor framing? Make sure all the deck floor framing layer is checked for display. What do you see?

Mike: The more I look at your plan, the more I wonder what is going on with it. Seems like there's something corrupt or unusual about it. Will look some more and get back with anything I find.

You also need to change the materials for your deck structure to fir framing or something similar. If you have SSA, you should watch the split level home videos to give you a better idea on how you might go about setting up your floor elevations.

What floor level do you want your deck to be on. It appears you have your deck on floor "0" and Chief puts the deck framing on the level below the deck itself. Can't be done as is.

Jim: I haven't tried it this way. How do you edit the framing when you do it this way. Even doing it this way, it must take a little time to get everything the way you want it. I have seen builders use several different framing techniques for soffits, but never like wall framing.

You will have to manually create your soffit framing ... Chief doesn't do that (yet).

Kevin: I recently saw a picture of a raised countertop "shelf" that used supports just like or very similar to those in your link. But the top was clean so they must have created a socket on the bottom side of the shelf to implant (epoxy) the upper receiver into. Where the mount was attached to the lower counter, I don't remember there being any evidence of a receiver wider than the support itself. I don't remember where I saw the image at ... houzz.com or Fine Homebuilding or ???? If I see or can find that image, I will post it here.

Lew: Maybe???? There was no indication that the OP knew what type of supports would be used; that's why I answered it the way I did.

I have seen some "elevated" countertops on the www.houzz website. Sometimes people ask questions about posted images to see how things were done. You might go to that site and see if you can find something. Other than that, I would contact a company that sells granite and/or other types of countertops and see what information they can provide you. Some of your local builders might provide that information as well.

"The only downside is that the divider is always centered." The style would be centered when going from a single door to a double door. For the "center rail", it can be almost anywhere vertically in the cabinet depending on what height you plug in for the upper and lower door(s).

Using the same cabinet and specification dbx I showed in my first post, I have clicked on the cabinet doors in the graphic and shortened them to 16.75" tall; doing this creates a blank space on the cabinet below the shortened double door; if you click on the blank space (it will highlight) and then click on the drop down arrow, you can change the blank space to a double door on the bottom of the cabinet as well (it comes in with a 17" height when doing this); then if you "0" the Vertical Overlap, this will create a space between your upper and lower doors (i.e., allow you to see a rail between the upper and lower doors; that same Vertical Overlap setting ("0") will also allow you to have reveal such that you can see the top and bottom rails of the cabinet. In the next image (cabinet section) I have edited the "separations" at the top, middle and bottom of the cabinet by changing them from 3/4" to 1.5". I also changed the vertical overlap to 1/4". As you can see, the top and bottom edges of the doors overlap the door openings by 1/4". The horizontal overlaps should probably also be edited such that the vertical edges of the doors overlap the face frame rather than matching up with the vertical edges of the door openings. Is this the sort of information you were looking for? That is the way I interpreted your 1st post. If you are still having trouble with the settings, give me a call in the morning (I am on Pacific time) and I will try and talk you through some of the things you can do within the cabinet specification dialog box.

Here's a few images from a wall cabinet's specification that I think is what David was eluding to. Select a cabinet; open its spec. dialog box and then click on the door in the graphic on the right side and then proceed on in the front tab as shown in the images (you have to click the drop-down arrow to change a single door to a double door if the cabinet isn't the min. width for a double door). Here's what Help (F1) has to say about some of the settings I have noted: I didn't think the Help explanation was very well written, but, as David suggested, if you play around with all the settings and see what the results are after making changes, you will find out there are quite a few editing options you available for a cabinet which will hopefully help you get the results you are looking for.

Open it (the material region) and assign your drywall material to it or paint color if you're using a paint color for or over the drywall.

I would check it in a back clipped section and see what the wall boundary looks like ... edit it if needed. It might clean up if you rebuild (F12).

I opened up an X6 Premier OTB template plan which has the default cabinet materials defined as Color - Snow White. I placed a base cabinet in the new plan ... all Snow White as expected. Next, I opened the cabinet dbx and changed all the materials of the cabinet to different Alder materials except the door panel which I left at Snow White. Then, with the cabinet selected, I added it to the library. In looking at the 3D graphic in the library window, the cabinet door frame did not retain the material change I had made ... it displays as the default Snow White material. Out of curiosity, I went back and changed the color of the door panel and then added the cabinet to the library. Again, the default Snow White color shows in the library 3D window, not my new color. I don't know what it is about the cabinet door that doesn't allow the material changes to report to the library, but I have sent the plan in to TS to see what they have to say about this. I don't recall this being reported before ... maybe it has and I missed it. IMO, anytime we want to change the properties of an object such as a cabinet and add it to the library for future use with the new properties, the library copy should retain all those changes so they don't have to be edited a 2nd time to get them right. Here's the plan file in the event anyone wants to have a look at it. Out of curiosity, I changed the drawer from a slab to framed thinking there would be two different materials for the drawer frame and the drawer panel, but Chief treats the two as only one material. Why can't we have separate material definitions for drawer frames and drawer panels? As with the door frames and door panels, I think we should have the same options for drawers as well. CabMaterials.zip

Alan: I saw that posted on the Energy Vanguard forum a week or so ago and have downloaded and saved it for reference. They have some nice details. I was particularly interested in their detail on roof kickout flashing and they did a very nice job with that. I hope I can remember to check back once in awhile and see what additions they add to their manual.

There is a Bilco type "cellar" door(s) symbol in the X6 Bonus Library under exterior attachments: You can create the foundation walls and stairs using Chief's walls and/or other tools per your desire and then place the cellar doors on top of the stairwell. The Library has a sump pump. As with the stairwell, you can create the sump with Chief and then place the pump in your sump.

Todd: I think one of the greatest suggestions I have seen for not having a plan get bogged down while you are working in it is to have your layer sets established such that anything you don't need to see, have it turned off in that layer set. For example, if you are working on roof framing, you sure don't need a gob of stuff on for that: turn off cabinets, fixtures, electrical, architectural blocks, stairs ... probably other stuff as well. The set up of your layer sets and anno sets can really help you with your work speed. I still am a bit forgetful about paying close attention to this myself, but when I do, it really helps. It is all about getting into a good work practice methodology and sticking with it and/or refine it as you go. If you digest some of the posts from users like Tommy, Scott, Perry, Joe, Jim and many many others and see how they work, this should help you in deciding what methods may work best for you with the way you work on your projects. There are lots of ways to do things and hopefully you are chipping away at refining those practices as you learn and work with Chief.