kevin30

I’ll email you Larry. Thanks

Either way works for us. If just pdf’s you would have to be available to make any changes if requested (obviously extra cost for your time). If you want to sell us the chief files then we would own them at that point. The goal here is to just offer more plans to our clients that are pre-designed off the shelf which includes our local codes/engineering.

Anyone interested is selling some of their designs/plans? Anything under 3,000sqft would be ideal. We are looking to offer our clients more of a selection beyond what we currently have. We are based in Florida and would handle all the engineering and code requirements…..

Looking for a way to quickly changed my annotations when they are already draw. I have some older plans that I need to send to layout in a different scales. Probably a simple fix but can’t seem to find a way. Thanks in advance!

Hi, I understand a new feature in chief 11 is importing autocad files and still keeping the mulitleader text function as used in autocad. I tried and the arrow and text import fine but the leader line does not. Also, I was assuming if it imported correctly the text, arrow, and leader line should all be connected as if you used the same tool in chief. I have quite a bit of details to transfer over and it would be pain to have to adjust every single leader line. Any help would be appreciated.

We use enercal for steel, masonry,(wood sometimes) and foundation design. Woodworks is awesome for lateral and wood connections but use mostly forte for quick wood calcs. Fortes online software is pretty snappy now and works for 80%-90% of our wood projects. Truss engineering gets sent out to lumber yards but we still need to put together the layouts and load takedowns. If we get into a large CMU house on piles we will use the NCMA software. Framers around here (north Florida) avoid using steel like the plague so we try to stay away from it with residential. Commercial is a different story....but we try to stick with LVL's/PSL's unless an architect dreams up a wide open floor plan with windows everywhere then steel might be the only option.

Yes we do alot of the designing as well as the engineering and it would be really nice to use chief for the structural plans. Just need to get a good process down. Right now we are doing the floor plans, elevations, ect. in chief then switching over to autocad for the structural. Forte is awesome for wood and doing design very quickly....we have other programs that we use for heavier structural design that most designers wouldn't need or even want to dive into. Doing truss layouts are fairly easy in chief actually but we are having issues trying to get chief to do what we want for the foundation and framing plans. Its probably simple but we are so busy that its hard to spend the time to get up to speed when we can just knock it out in autocad.

1st floor is existing, 2nd floor is a new addition. Would like to have a lighter line weight for the first floor exterior and darker for the seconds floor exterior. What is the easiest way to do this? I went into wall types but I think the settings are for plan view not elevations. Help!

Engineer here making the switch from autocad to chief....man what a difference. We do a lot of residential structural engineering right now and productivity and speed with framing plans, truss plans, and foundation plans are priority. Detailing seems to be a pain but I’m sure it will get better. I see the light but it’s been a pain trying to make the switch. Any advice on how to get quicker and more productive with framing?