Richard_Morrison

I usually just put these fixtures on a demo layer with a dashed line, and turn off the layer in a perspective view. No separate 2D symbol required.

In days of yore, we used to use very small landings (say, 1/16" of an inch) at junctions like this, with a separate flight above and below the landing. Might try that if nothing else works.

In New Jersey, a licensed architect or engineer must prepare the permit plans for a single-family dwelling, unless the homeowner PERSONALLY prepares the plans himself. (or herself) Probably why the OP requested an ARCHITECT.

I think it is worth considering whether you are using the right tool for a project like this. There is no question that there are workarounds, as mentioned above. However, just for grins, I exported the plan to ArchiCAD 19, and redrew it completely in 3D, with all buildings on the same floor, and added a bunch of internal doors and roofs, and even made the exterior walls brick. (This took maybe 5 minutes.) Zooms and pans and 3D views were virtually instantaneous in all views. Elevations with full brick hatching and shadows took maybe a couple seconds the first time, but with the background processing that ArchiCAD has, was instantaneous subsequently, too. At some point, you need to toss the hammer and move to a nail gun. This is not meant to denigrate Chief, but just to say that it probably is not the best software for all project types.

6 AM client meeting?!

And just in time for National Hairball Awareness Day. (Well, just a day late.) Thank you, Alan! http://www.bustle.com/articles/145831-7-ways-to-celebrate-national-hairball-awareness-day-cause-this-menace-needs-a-psa

Is there a good supplier of 26' long 2x10's in the area?

Well, then you've probably been wasting the homeowner's money for 40 years. I've talked to MANY structural engineers, and run the numbers myself. Here's an example calculation of tension forces in a collar tie, if you used it that way: http://mathscinotes.com/2010/11/the-mathematics-of-rafter-and-collar-ties/ You can see that the tension forces in that collar tie are running over 2000 lbs. Given that a 16d nail can handle somewhere around 100 lbs in shear, you would be looking at using around 20 nails in the rafter/collar tie connection. Or a couple of bolts, which likely wouldn't hold without splitting the wood. As the pitch gets shallower, the forces get larger. Of course, as dshall mentions, they probably won't do any harm.

Ceiling ties (i.e. joists) can have a truss effect, if properly nailed. If you tried to use a collar tie for truss forces, it would require so many nails that the wood would split. (Same is true for ceiling joists in a low pitched roof.) Also, for a truss effect, you really need "triangles" of framing. If you think you are getting any real truss-like benefit out of a collar tie (i.e. in the top third of the rafter) you are deluding yourself.

Here's a discussion: http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/qa/removing-collar-ties.aspx The author neglects to consider the main purpose of the ties, which is to keep the rafter tops spreading during wind uplift, but this is done much more cheaply through metal straps. They might also reduce the deflection on very steeply pitched and undersized rafters in an existing structure. Here's a better technical article: http://www.finehomebuilding.com/pdf/021240018.pdf

Most engineers have done away with collar ties because they don't do that much. A metal strap at the ridge can do as well or better.

I have been using both Chief and ArchiCAD since the 90's, and have and use the current versions of both. For people doing fairly mainstream residential, as most here are, Chief is the clear winner, and I wouldn't even waste time looking elsewhere. However, for projects with really finicky, intricate details, or larger construction document sets (say 50 or 100 sheets), or you need to produce a project as a team, then it's worth looking at ArchiCAD. 2D CAD is amazing, you can do canted (or actually any profile) walls and insert doors/windows in them, terrain meshes are absolutely precise, referenced callouts stay connected to the details so that if you move a detail to another sheet, the reference updates correctly, and a bizillion other things. However, you pay for all of this capability with a steeper learning curve. Roughing out floor plans is WAY faster in Chief, and you can get to a walkthrough or rendered view faster, mostly because a lot of the design is automated. Floors and ceilings are being automatically generated in Chief, which is both a blessing and a curse. I think for residential work in ArchiCAD, you need a few add-ons, as Michaelgia pointed out. OOTB cabinets in AC are fairly simplistic and there is not the huge library of residential items. Residential interior designers/decorators/K&B folks will be happier with the vast libraries that Chief has to offer. AC also doesn't have terribly sophisticated framing; Chief's is much better. Of course, most of the projects being done with AC have structural engineers involved, so framing is not necessarily as critical. On the other hand, AC has "morphs," which function almost identically to Sketchup objects with pushing and pulling and deforming, so a skilled user can get virtually anything they want, and any object in the library can be converted with a couple of clicks to a morph, modified, and then saved as a new library object. Finally, I should mention that there is a new ArchiCAD SOLO version available for about the same price as Chief, which doesn't have Teamwork or high-end rendering features, but might be attractive to some. So price shouldn't necessarily be the deciding factor. I've tried Revit briefly, but couldn't stand the user interface, and I also abhor Autodesk's business model, so I'm pretty happy to stay with AC and CA. Hope that helps.

I strongly recommend that you put your details into a detail window (or multiple windows) in your LAYOUT file, and then send that window to that same layout. If you save the layout as a template, the details will be there for every layout. If you have a fair amount of details, there is no reason to clutter up the PLAN file with them. Each detail window can have a separate scale, and can be automatically labeled.

I think the warehouse idea has merit. Let's not forget that Chief has 30 floors available. (5th floor - tables and chairs, 24th floor - stationery and leather goods, etc.)

This is way too simplistic. The butt-to-butt idea works okay on most interior doors, but falls apart when you're dealing with mortised locksets (usually at exterior doors) or other non-reversible hardware. Calling a door a "left hand door" when it's really a "right hand reverse" door could get you the wrong hardware. The CORRECT way to determine the hand of a door is to stand outside of the door - on the exterior side, the hall side, or the main room to subsidiary room (like bedroom going into bathroom)-- and see which side the hinges are on. If on the right, and the door swings away from you as you are entering, it is a right hand door. If it swings toward you, it is right hand reverse, not left hand. This is probably "old school" with cheapo locksets that are reversible now, but I don't see how this could be a regional thing.

Maybe here? https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/1948-roll-up-garage-door-symbol/

Because then you could give your client the ability to see their project in 3D, without sending them the whole Chief file, which is modifiable by them (bad, bad, bad), and which they can send to someone else to use. (bad, bad, bad) If this viewer works as described, its arrival would not be a moment too soon.

You can consider yourself whatever you want, of course, but unless you have an actual Architect's license issued by the State of California, advertising or selling "architectural" services (including using the phrase in your work), or calling yourself an Architect is illegal -- meaning a crime -- for which you could probably lose your contractor's license, too. Not a good idea.

ALL CAD details should be drawn at full size. You can then create a new CAD Detail window (see CAD Detail Management), and set the scale there for preview purposes (Drawing Sheet Setup), and then send to layout with that scale, or whatever scale you wish.

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/resources/viewerrequest.php

Bryce, Just a thought. While I know you are starting the plan in X8, any chance that your blank template is actually a resurrected plan from earlier versions? (check the Time Tracker) I have had some weird results from blank plans unwittingly moved forward through versions.

I'm wondering which piece of design software actually allows multiple licenses for a single user. ArchiCAD doesn't. Vectorworks doesn't. I know that Revit used to, but they are now charging $2700/year (or thereabouts), every year, and the software stops working if you don't cough up the money. You want Chief to be more like Autodesk? I don't. Chief has a discounted second license option available if you need that. Sure, I would like something for nothing, too, but I think the current pricing scheme is pretty fair. And the license activation/deactivation works pretty well. Get a mobile hotspot on your cell phone if you don't have easy internet access. I'm not sure what the software check-in frequency is, but I believe that, in a pinch, you could probably turn off the internet access and work for a few times if you haven't already deactivated that computer. In the old days, I left my hardware lock at the wrong place too many times to even think about going back to that.

This has been happening for almost as long as I can remember, and it's been reported many, many times. I don't know why this can't get fixed permanently. It always seems to be too mysterious to track down.

Sadly, the gutter rebuilds itself without much prompting. I have reported this a number of times with very little joy. It sometimes is better to leave the gutter off entirely and explicitly create a molding polyline with a gutter profile. This stays where you want it.

You might try drawing a Polyline Solid in elevation view, although I can't remember if Chief did these back in X3.