Richard_Morrison

Presumably, this is a crawlspace addition in front of the existing garage slab. I would be VERY surprised to see an existing 28" deep existing garage footing for a 1955 slab in this geographic area. You will likely need to reinforce the existing footing where it gets undermined by the new crawlspace excavation. Also, keep in mind that if a garage slab, there is probably a slope to it, so floor joists will need to be ripped. This could mean a difference of an inch or two in the lumber size. Your anchor bolt design will likely either split the mudsill or spall the concrete. There are better systems for this situation; see the Simpson Strong-Tie catalog. I don't now how much addition you're talking about, but by the time you get done with all of the excavation and underpinning, and worrying about crawlspace venting and access, you may be be better off just extending the slab.

Rene, This was a big issue quite a few versions ago (like around v10 or so, I think). This got fixed for the most part for plan files, but I guess it never got addressed for layouts. Sadly, since Chief announced quite awhile ago that there will be no more updates to X10, you are out of luck for this version. Maybe X11. Or not. After losing hours of work on stuff like this, many people just hit the wall and start looking around for alternatives. I suspect this issue could have been fixed in less time than the time you've already lost.

In California, for example, the limits of what an unlicensed person can do are spelled out here: https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/pubs/building_design_auth.pdf If the work falls outside of these limits, then you can certainly draft directly for a licensed professional, but if you are designing a project and or providing documents for construction, then I probably would not want to have my title block on any drawings. Building departments may let things slide if they see an engineer's stamp on some of the drawings, but they don't always perceive that it's their job to enforce the Architects or Engineers license laws. In California, any investigation and fines probably would be handled by the California Architects Board. In most states, it only takes a report by a disgruntled client, or a pissed-off architect, who discovers you working beyond your legal authority to make your life suddenly very difficult. "Getting away with it" on a regular basis should not instill a sense of confidence. (Usually this just means the penalties are more severe when they finally catch up to you.) The definition of "responsible charge" varies between states, as well. In some, if an unlicensed person even contracts with someone other than a licensed design professional for work involving a non-exempt building, even if only just for design ideas, they can get nailed. It's important to know the laws of your state.

It would be hard to come up with any details or calc's without knowing the span of the guard and design of the rails in cross-section. Not offering to do it, but just pointing out that we aren't psychic structural designers.

The problem is independent of the font. Happens with Arial, too. I have sent a number of plans in to Support, but they can never find anything, and they seem to have given up on trying to fix it. This is the only software program I have that has ever exhibited this behavior. As Mick says, it's easy to fix -- unless you miss it. And then it just makes you look bad.

Dan, I don't normally critique details, but you should look carefully at this for the minimum edge distance for the anchor bolt. With a 2x6 mudsill, you've only got about 3/4" or less concrete cover, which won't meet code. Others can opine on Chief's CAD detail system setup. This is very primitive in CA at the moment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for X11.

I think you mean 2" RADIUS. Many years ago, my boss was telling me about a stair railing he had designed as a young architect for an airport. He accidentally wrote 2" R, rather than 2" D, on the condocs. Nobody caught it, and the contractor just went ahead and installed a 4" DIAMETER handrail, which looked silly, of course. When my boss went for a field inspection at the airport after the railing was installed, the contractor just grinned and said, "Nice rail, huh?" Not sure that exactly cemented the contractor/architect relationship, but the story made an impression on me thirty-some years ago.

But how would the attic walls know which roofs to extend to?

I like Dropbox rather than Google Drive because of the faster syncs, but I have been working this way for years. I don't know why you wouldn't put ALL of your libraries on the shared drive; every time you add a Bonus Library or update the Core Library, you only have to do it once. It's also nice for updating toolbars and hotkeys in one place.

Mick, That was meant mostly in jest. I think what tech support meant was that although 0" is already showing for "normal" people, you need to go in and change 0.01" to 0.00" so it's REALLY 0" and not an approximate 0". I'm not sure how people are supposed to know this except by reading posts like this.

No, mostly due to the wall definitions in the other program. I was using the wall outlines only for Exporting. EDIT: Heard back from tech support as follows: " The issue you describe is due to the fact that the housewrap layer in wall types that are installed with Chief Architect aren't actually 0" thick. They are reported as such, typically, because the default Number Style in dialogs is Fractional Inches - but if you switch to Decimal Inches, you'll see that the thickness of the housewrap is actually 0.01". To avoid the unwanted thickness, you can change the housewrap thickness to 0". " So there you go. Start working in decimal inches to avoid errors. And don't forget to change that housewrap thickness from 0" to 0"!

I exported a plan with 5 1/2" walls to a DWG, and used this for tracing in another CAD program. In Chief, this showed as a 5 1/2" wall, however, it also included a 0" thickness layer of Housewrap. When I exported the file, it actually exported as 5 33/64" thick. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until after I had traced all of the walls, so many of the rooms are 1/64" off. Not much, of course, but it throws all of the automatic dimensioning off in my other CAD program, and will take some time to fix. When I deleted the housewrap from Chief's wall definition, it exported correctly as 5 1/2". I've reported this to tech support, of course. Hope this saves you folks from some needless agony.

Batteries are the first thing I would check before taking it apart.

I believe that the font is Graphite. Probably the nicest hand-drawn font ever, IMO.

We don't see her here much anymore, but I would include Wendy Welton.

Welcome to the club! or

I would not recommend this approach, especially for someone who has no way of checking the engineer's work. When you contract an engineer yourself, you have the opportunity to make additional profit, but you also take on liability for any mistakes that your subcontracted engineer makes. Many architects insist that engineering be subcontracted directly with the client for this reason.

I think you need to be assertive and explain that structural design wasn't in the agreement, you don't do structural design/drafting, and you will be happy to refer them to a structural engineer who does. The client is sucking you into enormous liability if you don't say no to this.

The wall hatching bug was an issue in X9. I reported it back then, and they fixed it. It reappeared in X10, and still has not been fixed, which is disappointing, since they clearly know what to do, and presumably have most of the code available to fix it. This bug is more of a petty annoyance, though. The PDF failure to update is a scary issue that could cost us some major embarrassment, if not some serious money. This is in a whole 'nuther league of potential liability, and I can't understand why this is being ignored.

This is extremely disappointing. A number of reported bugs, such as niches making wall hatching go wonky (reported back in Feb.), are still not fixed. Makes you wonder about the value of reporting bugs, especially when they are lingering for many months, if not years.

You can completely close out of Chief and reopen, the revised PDF will appear. This is a big pain in the butt, though, and updating should be enabled. I consider this a bug that has lasted multiple versions, which has been complained about over multiple versions.

Dan Baumann has several such cross-sections as a PDF. However, this was something that you filled in by hand during a site measure. Maybe you are thinking of this?

While I agree that Chief's terrain paradigm is terrible, replacing one bad approximation with another -- even if it's easier to place initially -- is not the way to go. We need to know that a particular elevation contour line is at that exact elevation, not an approximation. A spot elevation should be exactly there. I suspect that this means a triangulated irregular network method, rather than a warped surface.

Just responding facetiously to your statement that "there is no such thing as a 'Wall Guard.'" (And BTW, I did healthcare work for about 15 years.) Lighten up, Joe. It's a beautiful day outside.