CJSpud

Here's a ray trace of one of the niches I created using a pass through opening and drywall and tile fillers in the opening's back side:

I just did a couple using a window opening. For the back side to fill in, I used a material region. I had tile on the layer facing into the shower and drywall on the layer facing into the opposite room on the back side of the wall. You can set those layers to whatever materials thickness you need. I sized the materials regions in a section view. Edit: I just checked the plan I did and I used a "pass through" for the opening in the wall ... no casing, "0" sash dimensions ... adjusted the materials as needed. It looks like the two layers I used show up as soffits. I thought I had used a materials region. You could fill the back side of the opening with PL solids ... whatever works for you.

I think that all materials that you include in each project need to be in that plan's folder. I am not sure that their just being in your library is sufficient. If you have your materials in both locations, I think it is safe to delete them from other locations.

Allan/Mick: Thanks for the info. Mick: I will be curious to see how well you like using your new toy after you get a mile or two on it. Please give us an update down the road a piece and let us know your thoughts.

Thanks Joe

Aaron: I think you've discovered a bug. I can get a railing looking correct all the way up the stairs but I have a curved chunks of 2nd floor platform hanging level in mid air above the railing that I can't figure out how to get rid of. By the way, I did the stairs on the 2nd level using the "click stairs" to place it; then butted it up against the 2nd floor platform; then clicked and ALT drug the bottom handle to curve the stairs. I have the newels 30" O.C. so the railing follows the stairs better. I am not so sure that cable railing is a good choice for a curved stairs?? All my efforst at drawing the stairs from Floor 1 to Floor 2 ended up in the same disaster as you are experiencing. The curved chunk of floor platform isn't present when doing the stairs this way but the The last section of railing (controlled by the newell spacing) still dives down to the Floor 1 floor surface. I tried to trick Chief by making the newel spacing 1 inch (lowest spacing value available) and then giving the newels an opening - no material property but as you can see in the 2nd image, Chief still displays the presence of an aritfact of the 1st and last newels diving down to the floor surface. I figured if it would have looked OK, you could have manually placed newels where desired along the railing and at least get it to model decently in camera views. I suggest you call Tech Support and discuss this with them. Maybe there's a way to make it work with Chief ... I just can figure it out. I know that Joe or some of the other symbols guru's could come up with a solution - I haven't learned how to do that sort of stuff very well yet.

Allan: Is there any functionality for the joy stick and Chief?

Joe: Thank you. Nice selection. I noticed there is no number 4 so your total is 49 images. For anyone interested in what you get, here's images of what Joe has included in his files: Images 1-3, 5-10 Images 11-20 Images 21-30 Images 31-40 Images 41-50 Alan has provided two images: a lady dog-walker and a man walking Alan also provided a 2D silhouette of a man with his hands in his pocket: Thanks Alan.

Thanks Dennis. That's quite a light fixture.

Dennis: Can you post an image of this symbol? Thanks.

Chief will only "auto-generate" a roof truss as you do it "manually" by dragging (from eave to eave or ....) while in roof truss mode and, as noted by others, when you have a roof present. Once you have one truss drawn, it can be copied as needed for your plan. Individual trusses can be altered to be end trusses (gable trusses); setup for energy heels, dropped gables, etc. in the dialog box for the truss. But you probably already had all that figured out. For "open trusses", I do as others by creating them with polyline solids. I also custom create the connecting plates with Chief's CAD tools per the engineers spec's. Although these may be shown in 3D camera views, the details of how the plates are to be built are shown via CAD details for each different plate required. Here's some CAD details for an open timber truss for a recent project:

I think group selecting is a plan view option only. If there's a way to do it in an elevation view, I would like to know that as well.

OK Chief programmers ... if I have to call the plumber for my client because the shower head spout doesn't work, and the plumber discovers Mona Lisa is plugging the darn thing up, whose going to pay the bill? I really do think you need to put a pizza "in the oven" of one of the library ovens (or maybe some ice cream in a freezer) and see who the 1st user to discover it is. I did that once with one of my customers who was using the demo version to review my plan changes. He found the pizza and we had a pretty good chuckle over that.

I was changing the materials for a shower head and control that I got from the library and was surprised to discover the material Chief had supplied for the spout: I could understand if the programmers put a pizza in one of their ovens, but Mona Lisa in a shower head spout is beyond me!

One thing about the new tabbed setup for when multiple windows are open is that I have "many times" clicked on the tab to look at (go back to) the plan view and accidentally clicked on the "X" on the tab to close the plan. Thankfully, Chief asks me if I want to save the plan 1st. At this point in time I am leaning toward "wishing" that we only have the option of closing the plan by clicking the X in the right hand corner of the screen when the view is open, not on the tab. However, I often click on the X's on the tabs to close views (sections/3D views) as well. I am sort of torn between what I think is best. For now, I am trying to remember to be careful where I click on the tabs when swapping views. Not sure if this has anything to do with your problem but I thought I would mention it just in case you had a severe case of clickitis and cruised on by a dbx without reading it (which I have been known to be guilty of on many ocasions.

Here's my garage room specification dialog box: Not sure why it takes so much time and effort to figure these things out sometimes. Can be pretty frustrating. Hope this helps.

Jared: For the garage, had to follow Robert's recommendation. Make the SWT -2.25" and also make the garage SW height 23.25". The results of that are as shown below:

Actually, I see the garage stemwall is too high. Grrrrhhhh. I will look at it a bit more.

Jared: Try to put a wall break in the top house/garage foundation wall where the up/down wall intersects it. Then I think you might be able to get your settings to work right. Also, make sure the garage stemwalls are unchecked for "Hang floor platform above on wall". I think this image is what you are after. I put some floor joists in for the house for show and tell.

Jared: What exactly do you mean by a hung joist(s) for your floor. In your plan I only see 3/4" subfloor in the floor structure of the dialog. I also see that for the garage room, you have the top of strem wall set at -3/4". Are the joists missing in your floor definition and shouldn't the stemwall top be set at "0"?

Larry: I don't seem to be having that problem on my end. I wonder if you have something misbehaving with your mouse? I am sure Tech Support could help you trouble shoot that much better than I can. You might give them a call ... they should still be there.

Wow ... 300 passes in 20 minutes. I wonder how my setup would do with that plan. Is that something you wouldn't mind posting so I could do a test to see how my computer performs? Hope that Asus continues to give you good results. I was looking at the Digital Storm website and some of their models and was pretty impressed with them. It is good to have lots of options when it comes to computers. I hate the fact that software and hardware spec's are constantly undergoing change (improvement) so its possilbe to be on the short end of the technology in two or three years depending on what configuration we are using.

Larry/Jim: May I ask who/what you are using for your backups? Thanks.

Larry: Are you experiencing one of those situations that if you scroll just a little (zoom), then the action will take place? I will be working on a roof a little later so will watch to see if I can duplicate what you are describing.

Perry: But you live in a land where all the fruits and nutcakes have lots of money. Here almost everyone has a piggy bank and watches Home Time and This Old House. This is DIY country and lots of folks' budgets are 1/2 or 3/4 the cost to build. Every once in awhile, I go and do a custom build on Puget's website and drool a little ... then wake up and go about my business.