ACADuser

Bill, My process is to draw Railing Walls in the attic. Set the height as desired. You can use the railing cap for the top of wall flashing but a molding line may be best at the rear top of the wall. The roof plane will cut the rear wall. Set the 2nd-floor ceiling structure to 0 so the parapet walls will build on the top plate. Framing for me is like foundations, use the auto to get the basics correct then switch to manual framing. The front parapet wall can sit on top of the trusses. I like 8 to 10" min height to allow flashing & cap. Although I have one contractor that just add a flashing to top of trusses. I think this is messy when transitioning to the side walls. To get the front wall on top of the trusses, frame the wall at your 44" or whatever & then with wall selected open the Wall Detail. Make sure the framing layer is unlocked, select the bottom plate, use transform replicate & raise the plate in the Y direction as needed. With the plate still selected trim the studs. Simple as that. OH forgot, if the studds are too short there is a bug in Chief that will not trim them properly. In that case drag on stud into place, delete the others & transform replicate the correct length studs into place.

Here is my take, no 3rd floor, attic walls Note that the exterior walls 2nd floor need to be selected, DBX/Structure/Default wall top height checked to reset them. I think when you drag the wall up in 3D that is unchecked by Chief. 20-2052 600 Floyd - AB.zip

It would be nice if Chief had smart Undo & display on a command line what actions it was undoing. It appears as if Chief is just doing a partial save & restore. They do not save the commands they are undoing. Just a guess on my part. I have run across some actions that can not be undone. So my guess is they did not do a save during that action.

Fire Hydrant in the Bonus Catalog.

Thanks for the tip. I already added dimensions to the floor above on a special layer. My goal was to have any (minor) updates to the floor plan automatically change the foundation plan.

Oh shoot, Forgot this house got the garage pushed back. I have several versions of this model. Thanks Eric.

I tried to alter the attic wall but no joy. Why is the sloped ceiling appearing on the gable end? I can turn the ceiling surface layer off but I should no half to. Emma 2205.zip

Yes, I see the dimension will not snap to the rough framing in the wall ref set. Which is what I use. So I guess we are forced to dimension on the floor above using a special layer.

OK went back to the old plan & added the reference layer & changed the walls to Wall Plumbing Using the Wall plumbing & Wall, Main Layer Only I got the rough wall outline. This is great Eric. Thanks

Well with the cabinet issue solved I'll try it on my next plan. Thanks

Very clever Eric! Now can you solve the wall issue?

Here is the problem I ran into trying to use referenced layer sets. Solver has a good example in the plan he posted. The sinks are in cabinets typically & do not show up unless you turn on the cabinet layer. I do not want to show all cabinets. In fact, I prefer to show the sink only an not cabinet. The stand-alone fixtures show up fine. Toilet's, tubs water heater, etc. The sinks are an issue for me. Next are plumbing walls. I do not want ALL walls to be displayed so the plumbing walls need to be on a separate layer. You can use the layer trick with cabinets with sinks but as I said I don't want the cabinets, only the sink to display. So for me using 2D representations is what I do. The big downside of this method is that if you modify/move something on the floor above the foundation does not update. The reference display of the floor above will guide you so you can align CAD objects to match the modified locations. I'm not happy with this method but the work to make the reference display as I want it is not worth the effort. Thanks my 2 cents. And I hope someone has a better answer.

KD you didn't say what version of Chief you are using. Fix that by adding to your signature. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/18908-signature-here-at-chief-talk/ After you review the info Dermot provided I would look at Close the LAYOUT File. Also notes & schedules, also auto rebuild, If you have a complex terrain that can cause slowdowns. Those are the obvious ones for me with my limited knowledge.

I too will not go back to Autocad to create house plans but for details & section views a more robust CAD environment would be so nice. Another area I feel is lacking in Chief is Ruby. Autocad has exposed most of the inner working & provided so much language support to the programer that many things are possible in Autocad.

Well, it's obvious that the terrain need not rebuild for things unrelated to the terrain. So the rebuild routine should be made more selective OR the user should be given the option of turning that indicator off individually. I guess you could save a copy of the plan file and then delete the terrain from the current plan. Yes, that's a sledgehammer solution. Personally I just turn auto terrain on and live with any slow down that it causes.

I've requested this a couple of times but no joy. Cursor Method to select "Crossing" or 'Contained" selections. When the cursor in the click-drag moves in the relative -X direction (left) the "Crossing Method" is used. When the cursor in the click-drag moves in the relative +X direction (right) the "Contained Method" is used. No buttons or No Hotkeys needed.

I was hoping that Joe had a Macro that would read a text/csv file with that info in it.

Mick, I was afraid that was the case. David, thanks for sharing your wisdom. Mark, very clever solution. I'll stay with the manual method for now.

Is there a setting to get auto-build roof too add the shed roof portion?

Yes but no way to eliminate the user catalog. Although mine is still somewhat small. Speaking of user catalog, when I select user catalog/ notes I have many notes & some subfolders. It takes a long time to open due to the display of all the notes. I wish there was a way to turn off the display for selected folders.

Great tips, thanks The filter is more than I need at this time but good to know. Odd that you can not filter on/off the USER CATALOG. The right-click is exactly what I need at this time.

Is there a way to limit your library search to "User Library" only?

OK found it: Distributed Objects The Distributed Object tools allow you to place multiple copies of an object in an evenly spaced array, either within a region or along a path. Select Build> Distributed Object to access these tools.

Another method is to use your TAB key when dragging so you can enter a distance. Wall do love to snap to other walls but that is another issue.

Forgive my ignorance but what is a "distribution line"?