yusuf-333

Unchecking the 'post to rail' option allows it, if I am not missing some thing.

Wendy thank you very much, keep up the good work.

Thanks Wendy, this is very much helpful. Keep up the good work.

+111.....

OK. But how do you do that --- adjust the number and spacing of the balusters using just the Stair Tool?

By the way I have posted in earlier thread on how that could be done. Just make the newels to have the size and spacing of your intended size of ballesters, and make the width of the normal ballesters ZERO. THAT is very helpful for various stair problems.

In this series of 6 videos called "Walk Up Attic with Dormer...", the first 3 deal with converting an auto floating dormer to a usable attic gable dormer.  The next 2 deal with manually creating the classic New England expanded cape type rear shed, where the ridge line matches the main roof.

And the last one shows how to replicate the front dormers

 

http://www.screencast.com/t/FotMcxvnpAI

Thanks again, very nice.

There may be different ways to do that. One way is to use the ballesters of the stair it self and at the same time use the manual rail to show the newel by entering zero value to the bullester width not to be seen. An other way is to overlap a ramp parallel to the stair so it is exactly at the line between the threads and the waste of stair, so when a railing is set to follow stair, and there are a ramp and stair overlapped THE RAIL WILL ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RAMP, NO MATTER WHICH OF THE TWO IS UPPER OR LOWER. THE RAMP SHOULD BE SET NO RAILS AND WASTE THICKNESS 0, if you choose to use the later. But for this case I think glenn's method of converting the rail to wall and adjusting the top and bottom heights and again making it a rail will work best.

Hi Curt,

 

I tried your suggestion for the railing, but it replaces the wall under the stairs.  Then I unchecked the "Open underneath" box so it would draw the fake wall to hide the balusters going all the way through to the floor, but that prevents me from putting a door into the closet under there.

 

So, I guess I will have to live with the screwy first tread newel until I can learn how to work around it, or until the CA folks decide to fix the coding.

 

Thanks for trying to help.  Cheers!

 

Russ

Assign the railing wall 'no locate', 'no room definitio'n and draw an other wall on it, that will avoid the replacement and allows both of them to occupy the same space. No need need to live with your user error, so please ask what to do, before............. Again you can put the door in place and undo the 'open underneath' since it works as you wanted.

I do this all the time. That is how I design many of my projects. I use chief to "sketch" and I dont worry about all the 1/16"s etc. I am just sculpting. Sometimes, I even alter room DBX's to create offsets in roof planes very quickly..etc.

When I start to get close, and am happy with my shape, I turn off all the layers that are not important, and do a cad detail from view. I now start a new plan (from one of my save as templates that best fits it) and I redraw the house.

The CAD overlay makes this VERY quick. This time, I know where all my important points are (eg important centers, and things that need to align or offset). I now bring the model into dimensional accuracy and eliminate all the odd dimensions.

All told, I can redraw a model in less than an hour in this method. I open the original and copy over areas I spent a lot of time on (cabinet layouts in kitchens..etc).

I cant tell you how useful this is to me. I am working on a new personal house and the versions just keep piling up. When I am finally happy, I will just redraw.

EDIT....I attached some pics that show the evolution of a project. These are all basically the same plan. It is still in flux with me doing the "dirty" drawing right now.

Very nice of you. Thanks That is how chief make easy to develope ideas one after the other, until you decide the stage that best for what you wanted from your inside.

Here's to you Yusuf!... There is no doubt one's mindset of thinking of problems brings more problems and a resistance to learning new ways. Thinking of possibilities (open mind) is the core of progress.. I think we get more rigid as we get older...

 

Rashid thanks for this inspiring pick.

I like itit really.

I'm interested in the insights of advanced CA users re their workflow in highly custom designs.   Part of my work is designing very modern houses that are somewhat sculptural in shape, with may different floor levels and unusual roof lines.  The interiors often feature clerestories and lofts.  Sometimes I'm starting with an existing house which is incorporated into a new building, sometimes it's from scratch.  The common demoninator is that I have no idea what the house is going to look like when I start designing.  My process is to iterate very quickly, essentially sketching with Chief like I used to do on trace years ago.  I want to pull and push on the walls and roofs while constantly viewing the model from various angles until the shape I'm looking for starts to emerge.  Typically I'm doing "save as" when a plan has a few elements I like but I want to try another direction on some part of the house, while retaining parts I like.  On average I usually go through 10-20 major iterations and maybe another 20 minor ones.

 

The problem with my method is that all this pushing and pulling on the model (manual roofs, manual wall edits) leaves me with a hopeless kluged-up model.  A couple of Chief wise men (I will let them identify themselves if they so choose) have told me that my method is fundamentally incompatible with Cheif, because I am not establishing defaults at the outset, and all the manual editing of roofs and walls creates screw-ups that can't be undone.  Accepting the wise mens' word as gospel (which I do), what is to be done?  I can only think of three options:

 

1) use my method to arrive at the design, then start from scratch and recreate the entire model with defaults and auto-roofs derived from the finished plan info

2) do my initial modeling in sketch up or another program, if it has to be recreated from scratch anyway

3) continue my method and accept the fact the my finished model is going to be full of patches and polyline solids masking the kluged up parts

 

Anyone have any suggestions or insights as to how to address this problem- in other words, how do you use Chief if the house is going to be uncoventional and you want to sculpt the shape as you go?

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

Surprisingly my method and yours have 0% deviation and that is how I use it exactly. You left nothing for me to add even the number of personal archived files and I put them in the order of stage 1,2;stage 2 1.... And some times I have special folder for some unintended outcomes during work, that obvieously help for an other job. I call that files "ideas folder from PR x stage y....I said the same thing to yours in an earlier thread, I can't remember. This method some times would lead you get frustrated and put me in an endless ocean. But I suggest it, because it isn't only important to learn the programme but also let's you develope a natural understanding to architecture and design by default time after time.

Method and habits may become confused. I learned from Dan Baumann and I ascribe to his philosophy from the standpoint of planning out your design before you actually start to create it. By that I mean sketch out the floor levels using 2CAD and dimensions so I already have a good understanding of floor levels, floor platform thicknesses etc. Then I set ALL applicable defaults (it saves time and clicks later on). Then you start actually creating the 3D model. Often times as the design takes shape, certain fixed ideas I or the client had fall away and evolve. There is no system that would fit all users and clients. The key is taking the time to fully understand what you are doing and how to best use your tools and then enjoy the process. Let the nit-pickers waste their time worrying. There are some constructs that are more difficult than others (requiring thinking out of the box), a great example of this is the work of Yusuf in Ethiopia. He has figured out ways to create effects that others missed using Chief. DJP

David, thank you very much!! Many men are really grateful to your kindly treatments. You are so kind and encourager to all of us here. Thanks again for addressing my works as an example David.

Hi Yusuf,

You and I differ a little in our approach to the problem. I think both are good solutions. 

 

I do understand what your saying about creating a point of tangency for the two arcs.

 

That said, using Chief's tools for roofs and walls we can only approximate an ellipse by combining arcs. 

 

I use a standard (but old) method of approximating an ellipse that produces a fairly smooth curve.  The geometric construction gives me all the information I need to produce a roof in an easy predictable way, and all I need to do is to enter the information from the construction into the DBX.  This has some advantages.

 

You'll notice that my roof planes come quite close to the point of tangency that you describe without a lot of manipulation.

Thanks bill, I am cureous the two methods are good as you say and complement each other. To get the initial startup boundaries one should use your method to predict the arrangements and limits of the drawing, but then since you can't snap it as you said you should use finally my method to get the tangency point smooth. I mean, after setting up the drawing limits you should just copy the ridge angle of the lower roof and paste it in the eave angle of the upper roof and again put half of the same number in to the roof pitch dbx and click OK ...done it. So the 2 of us are necessary to get a predictable roofs and smooth connections at the same time.

thanks bill.

OK nice mark, actually I wasn't around PC but exactly that was was what I meant. And one important thing to know here is, the ridge angle of the wings must be equal to the eave angle of the middle one. Also included the same roof done by 4 roof planes. The only difference is the pitched of the two roof planes in the middle will have a pitch equal to 1/2 x thier eave angle( the ridge angle of the wings). The cross check is also included in the plan for the formula.

Bill, may be you didn't read carefully this post, yours is a graphical approximation of this concept.here I put one step and exact relation ship between the two (left and right )ones and the two (middle roofs). Read carefully how one's ridge angle is related to the other's eave angle. Open the plan and see the two options one(Four roof planes on the right side)

Or some one who understands my broken English can interpret it. No need for trial and error, if you really get my point. So you see..... I won, but that isn't really why I am back tracking. It is very important to understand that concept.

Scott is right, 3 arched roof planes can do it. The middle one flat but smoothly connected to the left an right wing which have relatively less radius of curvature compared to the middle one.

OK nice mark, actually I wasn't around PC but exactly that was was what I meant. And one important thing to know here is, the ridge angle of the wings must be equal to the eave angle of the middle one. Also included the same roof done by 4 roof planes. The only difference is the pitched of the two roof planes in the middle will have a pitch equal to 1/2 x thier eave angle( the ridge angle of the wings). The cross check is also included in the plan for the formula.

ell roof 1.plan

Scott is right, 3 arched roof planes can do it. The middle one flat but smoothly connected to the left an right wing which have relatively less radius of curvature compared to the middle one.

Troll anyone?... This why some boards are aggressively moderated.

I was wondering the same thing.

I was wondering if some one was trolling us, so that the strongly prohipted act of rudeness gets approval to continue..........

this is totally a different issue.

Thank you everyone for your feedback.  I have downloaded the trial version of Chief and am trying to learn to draw exterior walls.  Extremely frustrating.  I am following the scenario given in the Users Guide, and it seems that I do what they tell me to do, but it doesn't work the way they say it should.  I have always been a good student and good at following directions, so I suspect that this is a case of badly written directions.  If this is true, it would be very disappointing for such an expensive, highly touted, program.  Any comments?

Too early to critisize! I think this guy failed to imitate an honest frustrated newbee. But no matter what things you are hiding to show us. A good student comes up with some really nice critique after some hard work. I have a doubt what type of student this guy was.

Thanks, Mark & Joe for the help.

You can copy and paste cells as text, cell borders will show in rich text. In both cases all spreadsheet function is lost.

Mark thanks, I didn't know that. But please make it some more clearer regarding how to.

Thanks again

As a picture, I think you can select the exel tables and paste it simply. That is all me knows about this case. OK if you are working on terrain? Yesss, there is a way.

Your welcome Mickey...

this is the only RayTrace I have them in at the moment , I made the back wall of the shower invisible to get a view of the bathroom but it should give you an idea.

Shower to Vanity View White 18x12 1800 x 1400_2.jpg

M.

Interesting Mick, it looks real combination.

Yusuf-333 = the roof plane MASTER. Very creative my friend.

Thanks ShaneK.

Thanks Yusuf - this is very interesting and I didn't even think of using a roof poly. I will check this out and try it.

Thanks johnny, I am glad if that helps.

Here is it,

https://youtu.be/6q3-nGUJEU0

Did I not see a video on you doing this Yusef ?

Actually yes, it was posted on my YouTube channel. It is a short vid with bad resolution. I will post a HQ one with "how to". but I think the plan is more helpful for now since it is just a roof that makes the trick.

battered wall.plan

Yusuf,

Am I correct that you are using "Skylight" openings where the doors and windows are in the walls?

Sure Joe, you are about the opening. You started, let's continue questions and answers session, what do you think the white casing is?, what is the framing also? $-- question.