Richard_Morrison

Personally, I like Scott Harris's (free) How-to Design videos done as part of the example projects in the Samples Gallery. They aren't on a specific topic area, but they cover a lot of topics very well, and have some interesting tips, too.

I would try a few things: 1) Update the driver. 2) Play around with the Acceleration settings. This is just as important as the mouse speed, and allows you to be quick, but also more accurate when moving slowly. 3) Try a different mouse pad.

Regulation is "over-regulation" when it produces very little benefit at very high cost. Requiring improvements in structural design (primarily relating to load path continuity) and fire-safety does not fall into this category. I'm not sure how many people have to die before some of you decide that this isn't "over-regulation." Since seat belt laws were instituted, it's been estimated that well over 250,000 deaths have been prevented. I remember how this was viewed as government "nannyism" at the time, and many of my friends refused to wear them. Including one who was killed in an auto accident where he probably would have lived if he'd worn his seat belt. Home fires cause around 3000 deaths annually. Sprinklers and smoke detectors cut the death rate by over 80%. $5K-$10K for a sprinkler installation costs maybe an extra $25-40/mo. in a mortgage, which is then reduced by lower insurance premiums. This "over-regulation" has negligible costs and potentially huge benefits. I doubt that $20/mo is going to prevent a family from building their dream house.

This whole argument about some extra holdowns or framing hardware, and extra sheetrock, being expensive "over-regulation" sounds very much like a yacht owner complaining about the Coast Guard mandates to carry life preservers (PDFs), flares, and horns, as "over-regulation." You can claim that boat owners (and their passengers) have the god-given American right to die on the water (and many do) if they don't want to purchase minimal safety equipment, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this line of thinking.

Okay, Michael. Here is a 1973 Building Code. https://archive.org/details/standardbuilding00unse 36" min. hallways. 36" wide stairs min. Treads & risers virtually unchanged from today. Pretty much same live loads. You have a very selective memory. And frankly, if someone is building new, rather than remodeling, they don't have the same argument to make. ("Gosh, I really want 30" hallways in my new 4000 s.f. house. Why is the building department making me build extra square footage?") I also did not say that smaller house construction costs were the same as a larger house. What I said, or at least meant to say, was that the cost per square foot to BUY a median house has not changed appreciatively over the past decades, even after all this "over-regulation," after being adjusted for inflation. You can spend $500K to build a house that will only sell for $250K. I think it's the $250K number that's important, because that's what "poor" families are going to be facing. I would venture to guess that people who complain about the 6% "extra" costs mentioned by Jay will be the first in line at FEMA or their insurance company if their houses fail in a hurricane, flood, or earthquake, and expect the rest of us to foot the bill for their failure to take advantage of improved knowledge of building performance.

Every city around these parts has their own set of requirements. There is no "one size fits all" possible. For example, the County of San Mateo requires cast iron waste lines; no plastic pipe is acceptable. Hillsborough requires metal electrical boxes and flex cable, no Romex. San Francisco requires EMT. How are you going to write generic notes with requirements like this?

An increase over WHAT? Not having to comply with these code amendments? You are assuming that this money would be happily credited back to Owners and that the construction cost would be reduced accordingly. In fact, construction costs pretty much align with sales prices and cost of living which are NOT based on code amendments. In California, construction costs in the Bay Area are often $300/SF or more, compared with less than $200/SF in other parts of the state. Do we have 50% more regulation than 50 miles away? Or 50% higher materials costs? Of course not. The construction price is driven by the comparable sales prices in the area and the higher cost of living here.

Now you're just getting silly. Point to a current code section that has significantly changed the mandatory square footage or volume. I think the 3' minimum hallway requirement hasn't changed since the code book I was using in the 70's. The latest round of the code reduced the minimum ceiling height in some areas, and egress window sizes. (You can have a ceiling height of 7' throughout. How is this restrictive? Are you designing for poor hobbits? And I'd guess a 7' ceiling costs more than an 8' ceiling due to non-standard materials.) And, in fact, you are now allowed to cheaper materials like wood foundation systems and PEX domestic piping that were not even legal when I started in this business. Story limitations on wood frame construction have been relaxed a bit, etc.

Jay, But the point is that houses don't cost more now than they have historically, even with so-called "over-regulation", that is, even with increased safety and energy efficiency. If you want 4,000 s.f. and can afford it, go for it. Whining about how much more it costs now because of regulation and "safety issues," ignores the basic fact that it doesn't. The ratio of housing cost to income is not much different than it was 30 years before all this regulation. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/us-house-prices And this is with significantly larger houses. There was a blip in the pre-2008 housing bubble where price to income was crazy, but we all knew that. This argument is like claiming that seat belts, air bags, and energy regulations are responsible for the "high cost" of cars. In fact, car costs have come down historically as a proportion of income, and we are now getting more fuel efficiency and better maintenance for less cost. http://www.freeby50.com/2008/11/history-of-new-car-costs-and-average.html

Here's the problem with your argument, Michael. You don't get to whine about the cost of homes skyrocketing without including the fact that houses are FAR larger than they were 40 years ago. The inflation-adjusted cost per square foot hasn't changed that much. People just want more and more square footage, but complain when the total price for it is also more. Boohoo. https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/

Great minds....

The Living Area polyline will show you what the program THINKS is living area, at least how it's being calculated. You can also use the Match Properties tool to find out which rooms are being included in the Living Area.

This situation can actually be fairly dangerous, and a reason why the Code requires makeup air. http://pureairplus.com/nap.htm

Clearly, every page has color. That means the individual views will have color, too. (You can't switch off colors in individual views, although could "switch off" color in individual images by changing them to grayscale.) So, in your example, the plan and CAD views had to have been sent to Layout with a B&W layer set. Obviously you have those already, so just pick the views while in Layout and change to the correct layer set using the Layer Display Options that pops up in the Edit Toolbar when you pick a view.

Sandi, I don't know any way to get a mixture of B&W plans with colored images on the same page, unless you have chosen a B&W layer set for the plans. In other words, everything has to be color or everything B&W in the layout. If everything in layout is color, to get the images correct, then the B&W plans need to have B&W as their "color." A few minutes with layer sets to create ones that are B&W only, and you should be good. Maybe someone else know a way around this.

Sandi, You need to make sure that "color" is selected both in Chief's printing DBX, as well as the PDF printer driver, unless you are using Chief's "Save as PDF." If you are using separate PDF software rather than Chief's internal PDF creator, then color needs to be checked in both places. Also, you might open the individual images, and make sure that you don't have anything checked under "Display Options."

Or, you could use a symbol from the "Cabinet Mounted" outlet section of the Library.

I am all for the government staying out of areas of our lives where we can take personal responsibility for the results of our actions. However, a house is not of those. Decisions about materials and construction affect the life-safety of people who usually don't get a say in the matter: spouses, children, friends, neighbors, future owners, and a firefighter who might need to walk across your unprotected TJIs.

I haven't tested this for performance improvement, but can you put the PDFs on a separate layer and turn off until you need them? If you want to convert to an image, I'd suggest .PNG, not .JPG.

Michael, It's a good video, but doesn't really get down to the basement level. I'd love to see the next one in the series. A lot of the videos on the US side have been taken off, and it's hard to find something exactly on point. A search for "foundations" doesn't bring up that many videos. I'd love to view all of the latest monoslab & foundation videos, but not sure they are all there.

Pline solids can't be created in a CAD detail. That's why I suggested you copy them back to the elevation view. While you are in a CAD detail, you will need to select all the verticals, then click between them to cut the line. Or maybe you just copy a short line forming the end.

I don't know how much faster it is, but you could do a CAD detail from view, and create a series of polyline rectangles using the CAD tools (Trim & extend), copy those back onto the elevation, and turn them all into polyline solids in one operation. I thought you might be able to do this directly on the elevation, but for some reason, trim/extend operations only work there with a maximum of one line selected. Not sure why this is; maybe a bug.

Well, Perry, that was my point. It is different now, but not in a good way.

Sometimes a very thin (1/16" thick) invisible wall is helpful for situations like this. Put it up against and parallel to the exterior wall, and let the interior wall butt into this.

Joey, There are a couple of good tips here. However, the DBX does NOT work anymore the way DAN explains it. It is helpful to know that ceiling height controls the floor height in the basement. (Yeah, and how intuitive is THAT?), but in his video, reducing the stem wall height to 0" only makes the footing rise as far as the floor structure, and it goes no further. Now, if you set it to 0", it takes the floor with it, and screws everything up. I'm not sure in which version this got changed, but it is not a good change IMO and should be changed back, unless someone can point out a good reason for the current system.