JiAngelo

@Renerabbittyou were 100% correct. It is a daunting task with regards to converting an entire plan file. I was focused on the question of accuracy - which does work when converting inches to millimeters with 4th decimal accuracy, but not the other way. I knew this from having to work through several European cut sheets for tubs, bases & cabinetry. This mainly entailed converting dimensioning within specific rooms to set fixtures and determine centerlines accurately. - No comparison to converting an entire plan file. To be fair, we'd hiked some caves that day. And a bit of drinking ensued. Sorry I doubted you. O-H, I-O !

The 3D data is in the DWG file. You can see it using TrueView's Named Views or 3DORBIT command. The data is locked inside of a cad block on C-TOPO. To test this, If you import only C-TOPO you get nothing. If you import only CONT-MINOR and CONT-MAJOR you get nothing. Importing all 3 gives you the contours inside a CAD block with no elevation data. There appears to be blocks on other layers as well, and there is no boundary polygon to import as a terrain perimeter. Have your surveyor resend the DWG unblocking the CONT-xx layer contours. See Also, https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00719/importing-terrain-elevation-data-from-a-dwg-or-dxf-file.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00719/importing-terrain-elevation-data-from-a-dwg-or-dxf-file.html Both state Chief only imports Model Space items and cad blocks all Paper Space items.

Cut and paste between mixed unit plans wasn't the topic of discussion. Rene, if you open and convert the imperial plan to metric (4 decimal mm accuracy) then cut and paste from that plan to your other metric plan. Does this work? Then convert your previous plan back to Imperial, or simply close it without saving. I'm on vacation this week, so I can't test this.

When not under a wall, or if irregularly shaped, use a pier or concrete pad. I normally have it 12" high at -4" (below the concrete slab, which nets 16" overall.)

DB, I guess the last sentence of the caution symbol message was my answer. "There are Joist Direction Lines with different build specifications within this platform, unable to determine which line should be used. Either delete the extra lines or open the lines for specification and ensure each field in the Floor Joists Panel are the same for each line." I'd already boxed out that area with bearing lines to try and isolate it like I would a cantilever. However, I read the help file a little more extensively last night and I think my problem is the 7' x.19' area I need 16oc is over a 15' x 21' kitchen - meaning it's not entirely contained within a single room below it. And the remainder of the kitchen is further divided with trusses over part of it. And 2nd deck 19.2" oc over the rest of it. I decided to keep the 19.2"oc spacing uniform and added another joist (on a copy of Joist layer named "Framing, Floor Joists DBLRS") beside every other joist. Doubling every other one gives me the strength I need to using the TJI-210's spanning 19'. This leaves space for tub drain, toilet flange, and HVAC. Here's the images w/ trusses turned on. I change the material for my beams and for those doubler joists so that I can see them better. The colored truss is a carrier for the floor beam (carrying both 2nd floor deck and 1st/2nd floor truss loads.) All accomplished with automatic framing still turned on. Thus far the only framing I need to manually clean up is the stair hole on the other side of the house. Below the back header circled in blue needs raised to min. 7' above the stair nosings.

I have a plan I'm working on that is using TJI-210's at 19.2" (aka 19 3/16" or 1'-7 3/16") on center. But I have an area on the back side of a middle bearing wall where I need the TJI's to be 16" on center. When I tell my joist direction line in this area to be 16" on center, a caution triangle appears over all bearing lines front/rear of the middle wall to the left (not to the right???) The joists in that area remain become 19 1/4" (no longer 19 3/16") with the bearing line saying 16" oc. AND the joists in front of the middle beam are now 17-15/16" with bearing saying 19 3/16" oc. The red circle is the area I need to be 16" oc. The blue circles are the highlighting the mistakes. ON A SIDE NOTE, I have a middle beam over a doorway that is in line with the joists. When it is 4-1/4" wide it shows correctly with the joists flush to either side. But the wall it is over is 4" wide. And when the beam is 4" the back joists automatically create a tiny overlap that is separate from the joist itself. .This isn't a big deal, but it is maddening. I can work around both problems after turning off automatic framing, but would like know if automatically addressing it is possible. . . Any advice would be appreciated.

All my files are on onedrive and active projects are synced local. No problems thus far. Every new computer I connect onedrive, give it time for active folders to sync, and I'm up and running. Only downside I've experienced is 1) explorer won't search folders not stored locally. Using a browser I can search, find an old file location and then sync that folder. 2) We hit the 2T limit and had to add dummy users to get their 25 Terabyte storage plan.

Place some invisible walls to separate the lower ceiling areas from the raised ceiling area. Raise the ceiling, then use 2" tall soffit (or slabs) to define the perimeter and then paint them your desired colors.

I had to look crenellations up. I would probably build a slab (or use solids) to merlon height across the area to be topped. Then copy in place a second slab and either A) decrease the second slab the thickness of your merlons then subtract this from your first slab, or expand the second slab the thickness of your merlons and subtract the first slab if you plan to use corbels to hold support the merlons. Next create your crenellation slab with its top even with merlon height & thickness, then make it your desired crenellation depth. Copy and paste these crenelations around the outer wall in the merlon slab. Then subtract those crenelations from the merlon slab. Create, place, and subtract any loophole details in the same manner. for the second merlon above, in elevation view, draw cad lines to create the arc V shape and connect the top to create a polyline. Convert to slab and.make.it the merlon wall thickness. In plan view place all of these where you want them and the silubtract all of the from the merlon wall. You may have to subtract these one at a time. Let me know if this helps. I've used a similar method to create layered exterior corner/window/door details in brick or EIFS

Excellent video. You could also lock the framing layers if you wanted to see them, but not select them, in plan view. And placing the dirt slab as Mark showed works whether terrain is there or not.

Second camera includes attic walls. circled in red.

You have a bunch of dashed cad lines drawn on multiple layers. It's like you imported a dxf of another chief file. Those lines exist on Layers "windows", "doors", "walls, normal", "walls, foundation", etc... Change Layer set to "All layers OFF" Turn on Layers "WIndows" and "Doors" - now you can easily select those. (you can't see the real windows and doors unless the wall layer is also turned on.) Turn those layers off Turn on Layer "Walls, Foundation" - again you can easily see a lot of dotted lines that exist on that layer. Turn that layer off Turn on "Walls, Normal" - try and select a dotted line and the wall gets selected first. Select next and you now can delete that solid line. Unfortunately you would have to do this for every line. Another approach is to window select the dotted lines, then press CNTRL and deselect the wall itself. Now you can delete a group of dotted lines at once. Next time you import something like this, select all and move all those cad lines to a single layer, like "Walls, Existing", and you will have more control. You can turn the layer off when you don't want to see them, or create a Layer Set that only has that layer turned on and then you can quickly flip to that view, delete the lines you no longer want, then flip back to your working layer view.

Based on what you've drawn, extend the porch wall temporarily throught the triple window room on the left. Break the ext. walls at the intersection on either side. Turn on automatic roofs with all walls set to desired pitch or gable setting and Chief should build your valley automatically. You can then delete the porch wall bisecting that room.

If it is a road, then yes it should. And I just checked, polylines roads will cut the curb at driveways. But they don't merge well with intersecting roads. The road with the red arrows is a polyline road that includes parking for a building not shown. The concrete driveway is to a triplex unit not shown.

Driveways don't have curbs. Only roads have curbs. Having curbs specified for roads and drawing driveways won't produce curbs on driveways.

HERE'S AN AUTOMATIC ROOF METHOD. Use an invisible exterior wall to define the 38" exterior space, like you would for a porch (if you want concrete floor below it) or open below (if you want terrain below it.) Use same exterior wall to ensure same exterior material thicknesses, then make them invisible. Specify the exterior room to be either "porch" (if you want concrete below) or "open below" if you want terrain. Specify the exterior room to have your net 18" overhang (56-38) - Actually it should be 16 13/16" (56" - 39 3/8") based on your drawing dimensions, but this is just a demonstration. Make the room's rough ceiling to be 13.5" below your interior room ceilings. (107.5" - 94") based on your drawing dimensions shown and assuming same thickness of material.) I don't know about the rest of your structure, but on my model, I specified all trusses with roof automatically drawn and 6-1/4" heel height initially. Chief raised the open below areas to 8-9/16" automatically and left the rest of my model at 6-1/4" heel height. Elevation camera with framing layer set turned on doesn't show the lower soffit finish material. However elevation camera with section view layer set turned on and within that layer set turn on framing for roof & walls and it now shows. I found best was backclipped cross section camera, which isolates the truss without showing gable end of my model, with same section view layer set w/ framing for roof/walls turned on, I'm getting a extra 1/8" on the overhang, but everything else matches your drawings. Note: Chief adjusted heel height here to 8 9/16" above top plates. I forgot to dimension this. UNFORTUNATELY, manually modifying the trusses was a problem I couldn't readily solve. Again, with heel height = 8 9/16. No invisible wall outside the building. Just 56" overhang. Break the truss outside the room and drop 13.5" to match above. Unfortunately the under soffit and exterior materials continue to extend to the top wall plates intersection point. Even creating a zero pitch flat ceiling plane at the correct soffit height doesn't change #4 . I use the automatic method most all the time. I've tried this using soffits but can't seem to get the framing automatically right. Here's the plan view of the automatic method. Remember overhang is specified from the Invisible Open Below walls. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

OPTION 1 - Use a 3/4" slab w/ a 1/2" footing at drop ceiling height and use "rectangle ceiling tiles" for materials. You can specify ceiling lights a set distance from the room ceiling to be in the drop panels. In plan view you can specify your 2x4 or 4x2 grid pattern and offset it accordingly so that it looks correct on the plans (for locating lighting and hvac vents.) However you have no control over the grid pattern in camera view. OPTION 2 - Same 3/4" slab no footer at drop ceiling height, . Use a stucco texture color eggshell in Cat Face, Dash, or Lace. (This gives you a ceiling panel look.) Then add 1" x 1-1/4" molding lines in a running 2' x 4' plus 1 continuous molding line around the perimeter of the room (all 1/2" below drop ceiling surface.) Now you can see your entire ceiling grid if you turn the slab off. Isolate the drop ceiling molding lines and slab to their own layers and you won't affect the rest of your drawing turning these layers on/off. Here's the plan view. And here's another bathroom with a drop ceiling from a project I helped model with another chief user. Slab and molding lines can be broken and adjusted to match/follow any room's shape.

Generally plan files are stored locally (to the computer you are working on.) Either copy the plan files you want to a thumb drive and transfer them to your laptop. (And transfer them back if you want to work with them on your other computer later on.) OR use a cloud storage system where both computers can access the same files. I personally use Onedrive with all my plan files stored locally and in the cloud. When I get a new computer I add both Chief and Onedrive, downloading my ART folder to the new computer. Note you have to.make sure you don't have the plan file open on both systems at the same time. And you need to allow files to cloud sync before opening them on the next computer.

The "Short Panel - Square Grille" stretches to fit the door size. You want the 8' wide look times 2. Unfortunatley Chief doesn't have a Horizontal Panel multiplier like it does for Vertical Panels on the Options DBX. To work around this, Make your door 8' wide to one side. Copy & paste to the side a second 8x9 with no gap between them. (red 2) Then mull the unit together to act as one 16090MU. (red 3) This will give you the look you want. But there is no control over the handles with this symbol. To work around this, Before mulling them together reverse the symbol (bottom of the General DBX) The handles are now inside the garage, which generally doesn't matter since we don't often show interior elevations of the garage. Clopay needs to revamp their Chief library. I hope this helps.

Your windows are on the attic level in the gable wall. This is why they show a negative distance. They are being measured from the attic level. IF you select the left trapezoid and mirror copy it using the window itself and not the doors below, it will appear in the right location. And you can mull all three together. And it shows the same negative distance as the others. I tried mirroring it using the door and it appeared inside the door itself, so it mirrored properly but was attached to the first floor. . .Hope this helps.

Follow @ValleyGuy's instructions. Leave Room Type alone and use it as Chief intended.

Metallica, Enter Sandman. https://youtu.be/jY8DLFy31Bg?si=Vx_0qNsPOeO_d23m

Chief needs a "build group" setting similar to "roof group" setting. Multiplex units could share the same roof group, but rooms belong to different build groups and each gets it's own living area just like detached buildings do in the same plan file. Schedules could be limited by build group or include a column in the schedule like I did with unit no.

Keep the room types their defaults. Open a room dbx. Create new custom schedule categories Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, etc... Create new custom object field "Unit No." Bulk select the rooms inside of Unit 1, open the Room Specification DBX, Schedule and select Custom> "Unit 1". Leave the existing room categories alone. Go to Object Information and enter Field Value 1 for Unit No. Bulk select the rooms inside of Unit 2 and per the instructions above, Custom>"Unit 2" and OI Field Value 2 for Unit No. Keep doing this for each Unit. Now create a room Schedule. For columns/rows add "Unit No." to include. Then on General deselect all room categories. Select only Custom categories > Unit 1, Unit 2, Or Unit 3 OR you can select all of them if you want to see the entire building in one table. (If those are all the custom categories you have, then you can simply select custom to select all.) In the example below I was working on a house, selected 4 rooms on the right side for Unit 1, and 7 rooms on the left for Unit 2. I also used 01 and 02 in case you have over 9 units in a building. You could also use 001, 101, 201, if you had rooms on different floors. This way it doesn't matter if you have 3 kitchens, 3 baths, 9 bedrooms in a building, each gets assigned to its Unit No. I haven't messed with my room defaults and I don't even have to delete what I've done within this plan - my schedules don't group information in that manner. The categories helps you sort/filter a Schedule. But you can't include category on the schedule so that is why you need the Unit No. to identify within each schedule what is being shown to you (a single unit, groups of units, or all units.) Hope this helps.

Based on your blue grid background size and the dimensions shown, did you import "inches" when it should have been "feet" ?