CJSpud

$%&*, I am lucky to get on ChiefTalk anymore. What a PIT royal A. I normally don't use such refined English but I am finding this new forum and whatever changes that were made under the hood to be very frustrating, VERY user UNFRIENDLY. I just posted the same in the Suggestions forum. I have called TS on the problem. Nothing is changing. If this keeps up, I will likely not be showing up anymore as it is a total waste of my time just trying to get onto the forum anymore. The old legacy ChiefTalk worked so much better IMO, I am beginning to wonder why "fix" something that wasn't broken. Scott, I have experienced exactly what you are talking about the last time I was able to use ChiefTalk. Please FIX this stuff or give us the legacy CT back.

Maybe Scott was talking about "rail style" - Solid, panel, etc. ???

Another option a little different than Mike's suggestion if you just want a stucco material covering the deck outside perimeter rim joists is to just make a copy of the rim joists (copy outward) and resize as needed and then assign a stucco material to the copies. Before you do that, if you want your deck planking to overhang the new stucco material, make sure to increase the planking overhang as needed. If you go to room defaults > deck room, you can make some of your needed default changes there before you get started. If you plan to use any of Chief's deck planking materials, you may have trouble having the texture pattern match up with how the deck planks are built (i.e., where the spacing between the planks are). This may not be an issue for you unless you zoom in with a 3D camera ... then the mis-match of the deck plank texture and the actual deck plank spaces is very noticeable. You might be better off just using a wood material from the library. I have struggled trying to get the texture pattern to match with the actual planks and can't say I ever succeeded in that exercise. To make matters worse, there seems to be two different pattern lines with the deck planking from the library ... one on the top surface and another on the ends of the planks. I suspect that this can be resolved with much fussing but I don't have that much time or patience to mess with it. The image below is showing an Ash wood material for the deck planks. Looks good compared to the 3D view above with the library deck planking material.

Gene: The images below are a simplified example of how I do my ICF walkout basements. Most of the ICF projects I do have all the foundation walls ICF so that is what I am showing below. As Perry suggested, I will use reference sets to show other "stuff" as needed such as plumbing fixtures for DWV penetrations through the slab. For the basement floor plan, I will put the "additional" framed partition walls on their own layer so that they don't show on the foundation plan. Our area has a moderate seismic rating so I don't normally don't need structural engineering for the foundations provided I follow the manufacturer's and/or code prescriptive requirements for reinforcement, etc. I am perfectly happy with having my basement as the "0" floor level and don't see much benefit in having the basement as floor 1 and the frost walls and footings below on floor 0. I need to put in a suggestion for being able to snap dimensions to wherever we put breaks in the bottom of a foundation wall where footing steps are to be located. The same goes for the foundation plan view - we should be able to snap dimensions to the location of the footing/foundation wall step indicators . Please note on the last 3D image that I used a material region to show where the parge cote was to be applied over the ICF forms. I hadn't tried that before and it works pretty good. I could have used the same for the below grade portions of the foundation requiring water proofing and/or drainage protection board.

Regarding the dormer, It looks to me like those dormer roof planes aren't square to the house ... i.e. if you imagine them having level ridges, starting at the gable point of the dormer roof, the ridges for each roof plane would be heading at an angle roughly 15 to 25° either side of perpendicular. In other words, the baselines for these two roof planes are at whatever the existing roof planes require. If you knew all the specs .... dormer gable overhang, dormer roof plane pitches, dormer roof planes ridge length, main house roof pitch ... or perhaps a couple of those spec's, you should be able to come very close to replicating what you are showing on your images. Of course if you don't want to get up on the roof to see what is there, you should be able to come close to what is shown by best guessing some of those spec's. If you go up top to do some measuring, be careful! Once you decide which way you are going to proceed, then position your roof planes and manually manipulate there shapes as needed and connect to the main roof. For the bay, just bring your 2nd story room gable wall out so that it lines up with the outer bay wall.

Lisa: Welcome to ChiefTalk. Are you an X6 user with SSA? It really helps to know what CA product you are using and it is recommended you put that information in your signature. I agree with Perry ... lots of resources to learn from in addition to reading threads/posts here on ChiefTalk. I don't know of any very active CA users' groups in Idaho but you could either check on the user's groups forum or call CA and see what you can find out. I am located in north central ID near Kamiah. Are you anywhere close to my location? I don't have GoToMeeting or any of the other online meeting options but I will occasionally help someone out via the phone when I have time. My goto sources of help are Tech Support and ChiefTalk .... TS if I am pressed for time and need a quick answer (and it is during CA's working hours) or ChiefTalk if I am not in much of a hurry or TS is off work (nights/weekends). I still go to the CA training videos from time to time and to ChiefTutor's video archives as well. Quite often, D. Scott Hall will post a video on YouTube (he'll usually provide a link on ChiefTalk when he does) that are very informative and helpful as well. Others have provided some how to videos via ChiefTalk as well. Please consider that most often your best help is helping yourself. By that I mean putting forth a diligent effort to learn CA, whether that includes reading the manual, watching videos, trial and error, etc. If you watch a video and learn something new, make sure you open a plan and try what you learned to make sure you are able to replicate the results. Don't get hung up on doing manual roofs like I did when I first started using Chief (v7). Just dive into the darn things and see what kind of results you get. I wanted Chief to do roof for me automatically but eventually I ran into a design that required some manual editing and that is when I finally learned how to work on roofs manually. WATCH the roof videos and practice. Learn inside and out what the various roof settings are and how they can be used. Chief's a super program that does TONS of stuff, but there is a learning curve to getting proficient with it so YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES with an investment of your time in learning all the features. Best of luck to you. Give me a call at (208) 935-1521 if you're in a pinch and/or don't get quick results to your posts on ChiefTalk or if TS is off duty.

Richard: Actually, Glenn W. is the one who came up with that solution .... someone else's thread but the essentially the same answer. I am sure that I have missed that little nugget in the past myself. Joe: Thanks but I am just glad Glenn was able to help Richard. I really don't need the points. There are more important things for me to be worried about - in my life in general or here as a ChiefTalk participant. I too wish they would just remove the darn "feature" as I really don't see much value in it.

Gene: I do my basements as Foor 0 and just drag the walkout wall and two side walls down in elevation views with breaks in the bottoms of the side walls where needed to get the footings set at the right frost elevations. If the walkout is going to be a framed wall, then I would make the walkout wall a pony wall with the upper part (above slab level) your framed wall and the lower "foundation" wall your ICF wall type. I "always" specify foam insulation under the whole slab as opposed to only doing insulation around the perimeter as most codes have required (the minimum). If a basement is to have a design temp of ±70°F and the ground temp under the basement slab is ±55°F, then it is easy to see where the bigger thermal energy leak in the basement is going to be if there isn't "complete" insulation under the whole slab area.

Richard: For your front overhanging wall, put a check in "Default Wall Bottom Height" in the Structure Tab .... same for the 2nd floor wall on the left side.

I almost couldn't get on ChiefTalk today ... even had to call TS .... then it miraculously connected without ever figuring out why I was having so much trouble. PITB

Nelson: I really like the nice look to your range top and hood. I always struggle with SS appliances and have never been happy with the results I get. What material are you using there and what setting/properties did you use for your view(s)? Thanks. PS: I think everyone who starts doing ray traces is unhappy with the OTB dark ceilings.

Lots of prior threads on this ... do a search and you'll see all sorts of suggestions. What immediately comes to my mind are: 1. Make your ceiling a little bit emissive. 2. Turn up your interior ambient light setting. 3. Do a search and see what the experts recommended.

Louie: Following is an old video Allan Brown did (found on www.ChiefTutor.com > Allan Brown Videos) with X1 that should help you: http://www.chieftutor.com/allenbrown/archedbrick.html I like this method as the mortar and brick shape looks good IMO. If you want to add keystones, I suppose you could do this manually. I thought I remember there being another way to do these with window treatments or ??? but haven't been able to figure out just what that is. There's also an article in the Help Database using CAD Blocks > Detail Components > Modular Brick > Engineer Modular that might give you some ideas. The article shows up if you do a search using "arched brick soldier course" or something similar.

The texture is basically just a picture of a particular material so for any available texture from the library, etc., you are limited to what is shown. About all you can do with them is change the scaling or color. What you could try to do is find a real world example of a material the same as or similar to your material that has grout lines and take a photo of it (as square to as possible and with good lighting ... no shaddows) and attempt to create your own texture for that material. You have to be very careful to crop it just right so that you minimize the "tiling effect" when the texture is repeated on a Chief surface such as a wall. I suppose you could also try to "assemble" your own material piecemeal and then use a polyline solid slightly behind the surfaces of the individual pices and give it a color/material that will make it show as grout joints (lines) as needed. There might be an application available from the Internet that will allow you to create your own texture and grout joints. Here's one I have bookmarked that a Chief user posted awhile back that I have not used: http://www.bricksntiles.com/features/ Edit: Here's another link that has LOTS of textures available ... you might find one here that is better for you: http://www.cgtextures.com/index.php

Looks nice Charlie ....

Toby: I don't have the problem you are having. I haven't installed the latest update yet.

I totally agree with Scott's comments about Glenn. He is exceptionally knowledgeable about using Chief Architect and I too am very confident you couldn't go wrong with having Glenn help you get set up with Chief for your business.

Glenn: You are a genious ... I thought about using the Edit Wall Layer Intersections tool but for some reason didn't think it would work. But that was the tool I needed to clean things up with. Thank you.

I do lots of plans with ICF exterior walls. Below are four different wall types with angular intersections (45 & 90 degrees) and different material definitions for the main layer(s). Here's the breakdown of wall types, main layer(s) and materials: A. X6's Out-of-the Box brick-6 with the main layer being 5.5" framing. There are several other layers that I haven't listed ... all not included in the main layer. B. ICF with 4" exterior stone,[2.75" foam insulation, 6.25" concrete, 2.75" foam insulation], 1/2" drywall. The three layers in brackets are checked for main layer. C. ICF with 4" exterior stone, 11.75" concrete, 1/2" drywall. The concrete layer is the main layer. D. ICF with 4" exterior stone, 11.75" framing, 1/2" drywall. The framing layer is the main layer. For "C", I have swapped out the concrete main layer with "Insulation Air Gap" and "Opening - No Material" and the angular wall intersections (45 degree) show the same gaps. I experimented with the Wall Intersections settings (Through Wall at Start & Through Wall At End) settings and the only result was that it shift the location of the gaps at the 45 degree wall intersections. As near as I can tell, this is a bug in the program that needs to be fixed. Has anyone else had issues with wall intersections and gaps and ugly lines with materials other than framing as I have experienced? The only solution I have found to eliminate the gaps is to keep the main layer as one layer only and make that layer as framing as is shown in "D".

Bill: This is an interesting exercise in changing the shape of a roof by altering roof pitches of the three outer roof planes. When I say changing the "shape", I am talking about moving the point of intersection of the two side roof planes (that actually connect with the brick wall) for the bay with the three triangular shaped bay roof planes. All 5 of those roof planes have one common point of intersection. I am under the assumption that the two side roof planes will be at the 4:12 roof pitch shown in your plan (although they don't have to be). I was playing around with your plan and if I make the ridge length of the two side roof planes 77-79/128" (pitch at 4:12 and fascia top at 112-1/4"), then the center triangular roof plane for the bay ends up having a pitch of 7-9/16:12 while the two triangular roof planes on either side have a pitch of ~ 5-3/8:12. If you want to move point of intersection back towards the house to flatten the pitch of those three triangular shaped roof planes then you have to "manually" shorten the length of the flat ridge (i.e., move outer the point of intersection of the two side roof planes (the distance from the brick wall to the point of intersection) and then "manually" matching (moving) the top points of intersection of the three triangular roof planes and then "manually" changing the ridge heights in the dialog box for each of the three roof planes while keeping the fascia top at 112-1/4". If you try to get Chief to join any of those roof planes to fix all the lines of intersection, you will probably get a "shooting" roof plane. If you are unfamiliar with manually manipulating roof planes, trying to explain this so you can understand it isn't super easy. I am not sure that you can get Chief to auto build this part of the roof unless you have pre-determined with Trig or CAD what the roof pitches should be. If you haven't totally figured this out yet, give me a call at (208) 935-1521 and I will try to talk you through it. I didn't watch Scott's video. To simplify the design, I don't think you need to have those extra short lines of intersection Scott shows in the image he posted. I think Gene's and Rich's 3D images are the way you want to go. Rich's plan image looks like it needs to be cleaned up ... I think he has overlapping roof planes. As I said, there are many possible solutions you can have with this roof design. The geometry of the walls of the bay and the porch and the corresponding roof pitches are what make this exercise a good one for learning how to manually manipulate roof planes.

Shooting from the hip but is it possible you have something in the plan that is located a ways from your model that could be causing this? What happens in plan (you might have to check this on each floor) when you fill the screen? If the model centers up nicely and pretty much fills the screen, then this probably has nothing to do with your problem. If you have terrain and the model isn't centered on the terrain, that might change the camera location a bit. If your post #13 was your solution, then please pretend you didn't read this post.

After I deleted your garage wall and replaced it, I got the gable line tool to work OK. Did you know you have one roof plane that is 8:12? Also, you may want to change the wall type for that small gable wall at the end of your porch roof near the entry door.

You didn't get back with a response to say whether or not Mark's advice was helpful. Attached is "my revised" version of your plan. This is my recommendation on how to do the roof ... in the bumped out area where the door is .... I just made a gable roof for that area. There are other ways you could do it but .... that's your call. Because your upstairs floor overhangs the room you are having trouble with, it is a bit messy to deal with in the structure tab. To keep it simple, I opted to just put a soffit in the skinny room I created under the overhanging 2nd story to get the ceiling for that part where it should be. I may not have got the room elevation exactly where you want it and therefore the roof might be off a little in elevation, but you can fix that yourself with the transform/replicate edit tool by moving it in the 'z' direction as required. There are probably other ways to skin this cat ... this is the method I chose. I had to add a couple of attic walls and close up some holes in the siding by editing the walls in the camera view ... there's still a little triangular hole on the door side above the roof that is showing that should be closed up. The roof planes I put on manually as I didn't want to mess with your other ones, although I did give them boxed eaves as shown. You can change that if you don't need them. Don't have any more time to try anything else. Hope this helps. 6151 15th Road - render help.zip

Jeremy: I suggest you save and close your plan, make a zipped (compressed) copy and post it here. However, before doing that, please take the text tool and type the ceiling height for each room in the plan. That will be the critical information for you to get good help. If you have any "open below" rooms for the upper level(s), please note those. Same goes for any rooms that might have a vaulted ceiling - please provide that information as well.

As near as I can tell, this is a flaw in the program. The skylight "should not" be cutting a hole in the soffit of an overhanging roof above. I think this should be sent in as a suggestion for change. I have looked at as many settings as I could find for the roof and skylights and I haven't been able to find one that fixes this. Strangely, the skylight will only cut a hole in the soffit above, not the roof plane above the soffit. Go figure. OK, where's Glenn .... he probably knows how to fix this with a setting somewhere?