RickyP

I manually insert all the structural members to the New Zealand building code myself.  Been doing it so long now it has become quite easy.

I do all the floor joists, ceiling joists, rafters but leave roof trusses to the fabricators.

It is extremely handy when designing a complicated house with multi levels etc, I can make sure everything fits, and no one will bang their head on a beam.

Making use of the TIME LOG EXPORT.

I love the time log function in Chief but have suffered so much frustration with totaling up the exported times in Excel.

There are occasions where I wanted to summarize times with sub totals for stages etc, and Excel just will not play ball with the exported data regardless how you export it from Chief or import it to Excel.

The answer is, don't use Excel use Google Sheets.

Export from the Time Log as a .txt file and open it in a Google Sheet.

You need to tell Google Sheets not to Auto Detect data type by selecting the radio button that tell it to just import data as text.

You will see the values of each line's time has not been converted into some gibberish that Microsoft thinks you want, but just a value exactly as it appears in the Time Log.

Click on the "Time Elapsed" (third column "C") column header to select the entire column.

Go to "Format" and click, select "Number" and click, select "Time Duration" 13th row down, and that's it.

You can now use simple "SUM" functions just like Excel to subtotal and total time etc.

If anyone has trouble with the instructions, please drop me a line.

Cheers,

Rick

Hi Norm,

How is your learning curve going?

Are you looking for work?

I have too much.

I'm based in Dunedin but do work for all of NZ.

Please let me know, thanks.

Cheers,

Rick

I see your pain.  I thought X12 would make this easier.

I would really like to be able to edit the wall bridging material also.  The default is 38mm lumber and in New Zealand the minimum is 45mm lumber, so every wall frame requires manual editing.  The facility to specify the number of rows of blocking and the spacing would be great also.  Our Building Code requires bridging at 800mm CRS so every frame has a minimum of two rows.

It is really a Chief Architect software development issue.

I often do this.

There are a couple of ways I do it.

1. Ensure you un-tick all the auto roof framing check boxes so they become manual framing members.

OR

2. Make a glass roof plane that will be invisible in 3d views.

Rick

Hi

I am an X6 user that lives in New Zealand.  I could look at doing some work for you.

Currently doing design work for the Christchurch earthquake rebuild and have discovered you don't need to be in the same city as the house you are designing, so whats an ocean.

Just a thought. I would love to move to the US.

Regards

Rick Peters