CJSpud

Larry: Sorry for the delay ... been busy. Here's the Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/649qw03d48ipmky/Larry_BoydStation.zip

Wow ... I compressed your folder and it went from over 27 Mb's to just over 2 Mb's. I will try to attach it here and see if you get it OK. By the way, I took several section views and saved them so you should see callouts on the plan where they are located and they should be in your PB as well. BOYD STATION 03132014.zip

Larry: Try this (brain farts are acceptable by the way). Go to your foundation level and select each different wall type you have (I found you have 6", 10" and 12" CMU stemwall types). Open the wall definition for each, click on plan materials, edit and see if the material definition matches the stemwall thickness. When I did this, I think the 12" CMU wall type had the wrong (thickness) material definition. I think your actual wall definitions themselves are OK, unless you want to mess with the dimension reductions I did and add the mortar joints. Just before I closed you plan I clicked on your defaults > floor and defaults > foundation and thought they looked "unusual" (in the structure tab) but I took several sections through your model and all the elevations looked OK so not sure what was going on in the dialog. If you are still having trouble after checking out the material definitions, let me know. I save the plan and can shoot it back to you via dropbox. Reply to your next post that just showed up: Larry ... I will zip your saved plan with my tweaks to it and send you a dropbox link. Give me a couple of minutes to do that.

Larry; I added one more material definition for CMU's so you have 6", 10" and 12" sizes covered. I changed the sizes in the Def. Mtl. General Tab to be nominal - 3/8" and added a 3/8" mortar joint (e.g. 6" CMU changed to 5-5/8"D x 7-5/8"H x 15-5/8"L) and made sure the 8" settings were right (they wanted to be 7-5/8" so I fixed those). I then took a foundation floor overview and all looks good to me. In a back clipped section view, where you slab, insulation and gravel layer connects with the foundation wall, it doesn't go all the way to the upper pony wall CMU's because the overall depth of the combined 3 layers is greater than 8". If you auto detail the wall section, Chief allows us to edit each of those layers so you can get them where you want to by editing the end position of each. You will have to put a break in the gravel layer to make it look right. Other than that, if you make those changes, all looks well to me.

Larry: Just started looking at this. For starters, you need one more CMU wall type definition. You have both the 10" and 12" CMU wall types pointing to the same one as far as I can tell. EDIT: Maybe, .... I think you have only two different material definitions for CMU's and you should have three. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything yet ... but maybe.

Perry: I don't even have Chief Architect listed in the programs as a program to customize so I guess I am totally operating in default mode. I am curious ... do you recall if you were actually able to notice any significant differences in ray trace results when you changed any of your settings? If you did, do you recall what improvements you were able to achieve when you changed your settings? For number "1. Select a program to customize: ", does your program path end with "Cheif Architect Premier X6.exe"? I think it would be helpful if one of Chief's ray trace gurus would provide us with some advice on what Nvidia settings they have tweaked on their VC's and describe what improvements they got with the setting changes they made. Thanks PS: I think the new ChiefTalk has a glitch with the selection button you click on [More Reply Options] to enable posting images and attaching files. I had typed in some text before deciding to add the images above; when I clicked on the button to expand my posting options, it took me back to the home page. This has happened to me several times and it is very frustrating when it does. Please, someone look into this as I believe I remember other members complaining about this as well.

The drag handle for the label is pretty small in my opinion. I would like to see it bigger so you can easily grab it without having to zoom in to find it.

Ron I don't remember X5 or any other prior version working the way you are suggesting. If you had an interior wall intersecting a wall you are placing a door or window in, you can center the window or door in that wall segment using the centering tool "IF" there is a room defined. If there is not room, even with a perpedicular (or maybe some other angle) wall joining the wall, the centering tool doesn't work. To the best of my knowledge, that is the way it has always worked.

Go to the section view layer set then down to foundation walls and make the line type dashed.

Jon: Maybe this thread will help answer your question: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/306-not-showing-foundation-below-grade-line/ It is just a few threads down from yours in the Q & A forum. Edit: I haven't downloaded the latest update to see if something got broke.

My error on not being able to display an insulation fill in the floor joists. I was doing something wrong when I tested it the first time. I can display the fill but for whatever reason, I cannot make it transparent so that I can see the lines of the I-joists, which I would like to see. I would still like to be able to edit the shape of any insulation pattern Chief generates. Right now we can only stretch it (or compress it L/R and U/D.

For the most part, works for me too. HOWEVER, if I have a plan with a crawlspace and I want to show insulation in the floor joist area, when I put a check in the box to autodetail for insulation, and then click on the autodetail tool, Chief automatically unchecks the selection box and will not display the insulation in a section view. If I want to show additional insulation in the ceiling area, and want it to show as "continuous" insulation, I have to select Chief's auto insulation in the joist area and stretch it up for greater depth. I can put another layer on top of the ceiling framing and have it auto detail as insulation but then what is shown is two different insulation layers. It would be nice if Chief would combine two adjacent layers as one insulation fill, if we so choose. It would also be nice if we could select the fill type for the auto insulation Chief puts in for us. I often spec cellulose insulation and I would prefer to use the "particle" pattern Chief provides rather than the typical insulation pattern Chief uses.

Michael: I think I saw something similar to what you were talking about yesterday the 1st time I looked at your door. Yesterday it was very dark ... almost black looking on my monitor. I just imported it again today and as far as I can see it seems to be OK.

Michael: Looks good to me but what do I know about it. Will it only be used in one location/one size?

Tommy: I am glad Doug finally provided the answer you needed. Nevertheless, I appreciated reading everyone else's input on the subject. Good thread in that respect. Thanks.

If you know who's door that is, you might find a symbol someone has made at the 3D warehouse. If not, you may have to make one yourself or find someone to make one for you.

Glenn: Thanks ... I think I have tried to use that before and didn't think it worked. I now see you have to do the settings in a specific order based upon how you mull multiple units together..The sills in the areas of the mullions look a little funky but when I tried it I didn't have a foundation so maybe they will look a little better with one. I will do a little more experimenting with that to see if I can get it to behave any differently. I really appreciate your pointing that out to me. How long have we had the ability to do this? Is it a new X6 feature?

Joe: Yes, I have considered it and may eventually go that direction with the winery project depending on what the customer ultimately wants to do in the existing large opening (16' wide x approx. 80" high). I prefer to try and do things with what Chief already provides us but obviously there are times when other solutions are better. I remember your past thread on storefronts. I may have to go back and review that and refresh my memory as to what exactly you did.

Joe: Thanks for the clarification. At least now I know I am not going crazy. About all I was going to say in my response was that I don't worry about any new materials (colors) I make from online website colors being approximately the same as any colors that are within a Chief library. I just go with the online color, give it the manufacturer's name and/or RGB #'s in my user library. I did ask about Chief's other 3 settings Chief shows/uses: Hue, Saturation, Value I haven't seen any manufacturers using those. Do you know what they mean? I looked in Help and couldn't find much information about them. Curious.

I think we need to have the ability to specify the depth or thickness of a door or multiple door unit's frame thickness and be able to easily select/specify where we want to place it in a wall in the door unit spec dialog. I am specifically talking about placing door units in thick walls such as ICF walls. Chief by default automatically places doors units such that the doors themselves display on the inboard side of any wall. I haven't seen too many door units that have a frame depth of 9-1/2" or more such as are the depths of most ICF's forms. You would need to have a custom door frame built to do this. Most contractors in my area install the door units to the outer side of the wall such that the brick mold or other trim can be attached directly to the outer perimeter of the door buck. The innter portion of the ICF wall thickness inside of a door unit's frame (jamb) is either covered with GWB or some other material (e.g., wood to match wood trim). When I place a multi door unit ( a mulled unit) in an ICF wall, Chief makes the mullions between each unit full depth and they look terrible in camera views. I can get a door to display on the outer side of a wall by making the door an outswing door as shown on the single door on the left side of the image below. But that isn't right either. At this point it appears my best option is to make my door units to "swing both directions" which results in Chief placing the doors directly in the center of a wall (door units on the right side of the image below). At least this way, the way they show in 3D camera views is decent. I hope one day (soon), someone in Chief will take a hard look at how they can make doors and mulled door units to function better with regard to how they are placed or their position adjusted in all types of walls.

From what I can tell, the jambs, at least for doors in exterior walls, only disappears when the "exterior" casing is unchecked. The jamb is retained if only the "interior" casing is unchecked. Doors in interior walls only have the option to uncheck the interior casing .... the exterior casing is greyed out. If you put a window in an interior wall, both the interior and exterior casings are available for display or not displaying and if you uncheck either one or both, the jamb still displays. Go figure. Why are interior windows programmed differently than interior doors with respect to the display of casing? For windows, I am able to uncheck bot the interior and exterior casings and the jamb's display is unaffected. I didn't go check out the previous thread. If you just don't want the casings to display in plan, you could just change the properties of the casing lines is Display Options.

Several days ago Joe Carrick posted a thread about paint colors and the colors available in Chief's library not being accurate or something to that effect. In one of the posts in that thread, he asked me a question in regard to a post I had made in the thread and I had never got back to respond to his question. Last night I found the thread and had typed out a response and then, somehow my response got devoured and, since it was late, I just figured I would respond to his question this morning. Today I have conducted several searches in Q&A and even did a search on Joe's posts and cannot find the thread. I doubt that Joe deleted it. I am wondering if I somehow deleted the thread last night and didn't even know it. I didn't get any dialogs asking me about deleting the thread. I would think that only the original poster would have that option in the 1st place. Where did Joe's thread go ... or is it still there and I missed it somehow?

Gene: If you haven't searched on-line yet, any SIP manufacturer should have some CAD details on all the conventional wall-to-roof connection methods that are most commonly used. The SIPA organization may have the same sort of stuff on their website. Generally, I agree with Milo's response. You will likely have to detail the connections with one or more CAD details similar to the image in your 1st post.

Thanks Andy. Maybe I did ... if so, I might have not looked at it close enough knowing that I had already did my renewal and thinking it didn't apply or something. I only have 8Gb's of Ram ... I think I need more!

I am up and running .... thanks to all who responded. To the Chief dudes, I retract all the nice things I was thinking this a.m. Perry: Didn't they in the past use to send us an email or some sort of notification that we had to get our new product key and do another downloard? Or did I miss an announcement somewhere?