Richard_Morrison

Thanks, @Chopsaw! That gets me much closer. I've looked at the "Wall ID", too, and have no idea where that number comes from.

I am being required by a plan checker to tabulate wall lengths for a whole house remodeling: Existing, Demo, and New. This is supposed to demonstrate that the new + demo'd walls are less than 50% of the length of the existing house walls. I am trying to do this in Chief; the Wall Schedule is somewhat close, but not close enough to be useful. I am supposed to provide a diagram for the plan checker. I thought that a plan like the attached would work. Wall labels show up fine, but the labels do not show up in the wall schedule. I have no idea why not. Bug? It looks like wall hatching (which I use to show new walls) is capable of having its own label and being scheduled, but I can't figure out a way to get the hatching lengths to appear in any schedule. Any suggestions?

Not only does the fire protection need to work from both top and bottom sides of the floor assembly, when you create a 2nd dwelling unit below, you will need to meet upgraded acoustical separation requirements per the building code. Also, the new unit will need its own mechanical system. You should pay attention to the details of any penetrations of the fire-rated assembly. Recessed lights will need their own fire protection, for example. Also, the current stairs between the units will have to be detailed correctly, and in some cities, removed. Check with your planning department.

I'd like to think of it more as "semi-retired" just to leave the door open. But it's true I'm not taking on any more work. However, I do know other architects in the immediate area, if Chief does not have to be a criterion. If you haven't done a second-story project in Menlo Park before, well, you are in for one of Dante's circles of hell. If you think you can just design and draw a second-story addition --- mwahahaha. There will be months of a design review process before you can even submit for a permit, and the CD's will be brutal. I just finished a kitchen remodel in Menlo Park as one of my last projects. I moved the door (2'-8" wide) from the garage to the kitchen 3' over on the same wall and had to do a structural calc for the new header. Not a single square foot added, but had to do a full-house lateral calc to justify the remaining walls at a new french door to the exterior in the same location as a window. (The new door was 1' wider than the window.) Sorry, but my body is starting to involuntarily twitch thinking about it.

What is it that you want to do that Default Sets are not doing for you?

I fell asleep to many of his videos. I always thought that he would have had a great career as a professional hypnotist.

An oldie but goodie: http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?26332-Foundations-below-grade

Did you know that you can press F1, type "waterfall", and get an answer immediately? Amazing!

I went through this awhile ago. I found that a backsplash works better, although I don't recall exactly why. In elevation, just draw a single tall batten and convert to a backsplash. Then, you can multiple-copy across the wall. Doors and windows will be cut out automatically, but you can adjust height individually, group select and center on a window, etc.

I'm curious as to what you see as a significant benefit in this feature. We could use an attached text arrow macro with more flexibility in formatting to get essentially the same result for quite awhile now. Now, if we could schedule these polylines, we'd have something. But I haven't been able to figure out how to do this easily.

I think Joe was alluding to this, but it hasn't been made very clear. My experience (and understanding) is the main issue appears when you are printing PDFs of layouts where there are many PDFs that have been placed. PDFs of PDFs is the killer. If you can place PNGs on the layouts, rather than PDFs, it all goes much better. Another possible solution is to print the pages in smaller batches and then reassemble them into a single larger document later. But I agree that PDF printing in Chief is seriously bad.

I just went back to X12 to try this out. Polyline solids are not editable by Boolean operations in a 3D view. Try creating a couple of polyline solids in X12, then go to 3D view and select both of them. I don't get any Boolean operations available at all in 3D, and in X12, if you Union a couple of polyline solids, they don't retain their individual heights.

Yes, compared to X12, X13 is like modeling clay. I admit that fill origin offsets were improved somewhere along the way. It used to be that fill origin offsets acted globally, I believe, somewhere in the distant past, and I just never noticed when they became individually controllable.

Another feature that I think is incredible (but seems to be getting a "meh" reaction) is the ability to do Boolean operations on polyline solids, and then edit the created object (or the original object) in any view, including 3D views. This is getting pretty darn close to Sketchup.

One feature that is HUGE for me is the fill origin offset. This means that tile layouts in CAD elevations can actually be accurate now. In fact, it was sometimes the one feature that would make me do projects in Archicad, rather than keep them in Chief. For interior designers, this is NOT a trivial feature, but I don't see it even listed on the "New Features in X13" page!