JiAngelo

There is no difference in protection whether the GFCI is in the service panel or Receptacle A. Most homes, we use two circuits to feed kitchen countertop outlets which must be GFCI protected. We alternate the outlets so that any two adjacent outlets are on different circuits and using multiple adjacent countertop appliances (like an air fryer, a toaster and a blender) aren't all pulling amperage from the same circuit. To save money, we wire the 4-5 dining room outlets using Circuit 1 (20amp breaker), then install 1 GFI in the kitchen and protect every other outlet using that. We then wire the 4-5 dinette or living area outlets using Circuit 2 (20 amp breaker), then install a second GFI in the kitchen and protect the other remaining alternating outlets. Similarly, you could wire a bathroom GFI off a guest bedroom using the shared circuit, but bedrooms only require 15amps. To save money, we wire all bathrooms on 1 20amp circuit. Usually putting the GFCI receptacle in the Master, then feeding the kids, guest & half baths downstream. Whether to use a GFCI breaker vs. GFCI receptacle boils down to "how far do you want to travel when it trips?" 1-2 flights of stairs vs. simply leaning over a countertop and hitting reset....personally I'd choose option 2 every day. Especially if I'm in my garage and I trip a circuit. Again - running downstairs to the basement versus resetting a wall outlet in the garage and getting back to work. The choice is yours.

Code requires slats be no more than 4" apart. The picture looks like studs, so oak 2x4's spaced 5.5" on center would work. All rail settings assume newel and balusters are equal x,y widths. I'd recommend using a wall which would achieve this. Steps to reproduce. Make a copy of wall type Interior Railing. Open the new wall type definition dbx (define) and delete drywall on either side. - Note I didn't change pattern/texture to oak here. I wasn't sure it would affect top/bottom plates. Select framing layer and check Framing to change stud spacing to 5.5" - Note: make top/bottom plates thinner (and the count) here if you like. Go to the main wall specification dbx and on the general tab select "No Room Moldings Exterior" and "No Room Moldings Interior" - Note: gets rid of baseboard. Go to Materials tab and select "No Room Wall Coverings" - Note: otherwise you just see a solid wall of stud material....not sure why. Open your 3d view and the wall should look like the above. - Note: I then painted the studs and rails Anderson Oak from the library. To make it look like your left picture, I then did the following. Open an elevation view looking at the wall with the stairs on the other side. Turn on wall framing layer. Go back to plan view change the wall back to the regular interior railing definition - Note, if you don't you can't select the wall in 3D only the studs. In elevation view, select just the wall, not the room, and break the midpoint of the top of the wall. Slide the walls upper left corner down to match the handrail height. Slide the walls midpoint over to match the handrail meeting the ceiling (in my example.) Open the stair dbx and delete the rail on this wall. - Note, you could delete the other too - but continuous rail to the top of stairs is coded required. Change the wall definition back to your copy of interior railing (no drywall) Regenerate framing and you should see something like this. Of course the wall cuts ceiling. But when I tried the above steps using a rail wall it wouldn't let me break it. So I cheated, added a slab 5/8" thick at 109 1/8" high, changed its' material to drywall and colored it to match the ceiling. Hopefully these steps achieve the look you want.

Learn something new every day I've been drawing a second control object, usually a small circle nearby, then selected both to move the entire object. This is much simpler.

Any chance you are measuring room area to surface materials vs wall face? 51' 1" x 101' 1" = 5163sf. 6.5" of exterior materials like brick/stone and an air gap?

And again, by default the polygon box is to the exterior surfaces. You can move it to the main layer It changes my total sq. ft. to 1715 from 1727 using my example rooms

I have the active layer pane open on the right, when the polygon is selected, select Polyline labels Then at the bottom of the screen change the text style. Also you sometimes have to zoom in to see the selection dot of the label so that you can move it to where you want it.

On second thought. You could make a perimeter building polyline of the outside of the building. Then reduce just that polygon 5/6 (=2500/3000) Change it to a different color and position it over your 3000sf floorplan. First decision you'll need to make is ensuring the garage size still works inside the smaller space. Once that at least meets the minimums, then start adjusting all the remaining rooms until they fit in your 2500sf box.

Your wall widths, doors, windows, cabinetry and fixtures don't get proportionally smaller. Hallways generally stay the same size and 2 foot deep closets don't get reduced either.

Michael, If you right-click about 4" outside of your building, it will highlight the perimeter (similar to right-clicking inside a room. On the bottom bar you will see the following Click the fourth one from the right to create a room polyline, like so, Open the dbx and select "Label", then "Specify Label" and enter "%area%" macro (not the quotes). Close dbx, but while the polygon is still selected, change your "Polyline, Labels" layer to match your "Room Label Style". Now select the polygon label and slide it into position near your living area label. (Then change the polygon label to 1/4" Text Style to match the living area text.) Lastly, if you want to get rid of the decimal, go back to the label dbx and change it to %area.round% You can adjust the polyline to match what you want to show. Leave out the porch, measure only to framed walls, versus surfaces, etc... Hope this helps.

Deactivate your license on your computer, enter your license on his computer for his use while you are gone then revert everything when.you get back.

You need to paste, not place the second doorway. Place the first one. Copy that one, control v and aim about 4" left or right of the first opening and click there to paste. Mull them together and there is no inner framing or jamb material. I can't get the same result with windows.

Copy and paste a second door w/ zero separation between the two. Raise the sill on one to your kneewall height off the floor. (see left opening below) Widen each door from the opposite end until they represent the proper width. Select both and mull them together. (see right opening below): I couldn't get it to work properly using a window. And, I'd cheat and use a slab or solid to create the sill cap - the cap disappears when mulled, even if you raise the lower door to give it a sill as well.

Make the fireplace chase "room" 20' tall temporarily and uncheck roof over this room on the structure tab. The long walls of the FP need to be gable roof. Then create your room addition and you should see the fireplace sticking out of the roof. Then take a cross section and change the FP room height to 2 feet min. Above the ridge, per code. 14'-15' is what it looks like in your picture. There's a chimney cap in the library that I often use or I will draw a slab and place it to act as a cap. You could also place a roof with 1/12 slope and reduce the overhangs to 4" to give a similar look.

Rob, For the typical house/garage scenario, where the garage floor is 1' below the stem wall, unchecking on the foundation room's structure tab "Room Supplies Floor for the Room Above" leaves the foundation garage floor where it was and creates another slab for the room above (because it is named garage). If you then change that room above to be named study, for example, and set its floor height to 0, you have a framed floor drawn flush with the existing house and you can still see the slab at 1' below. For this "Garage to Living Space" question, it is a bit trickier because the top of stem wall for the garage area is ~2' below the house (your 3' is due to the additional distance of the house subfloor.) Best way to show this building on the example above would be to make the foundation walls pony walls. First I changed the Foundation garage floor to -2' and then I dropped the upper pony walls another -1'8" so that the garage foundation is about 4" above the existing concrete floor (this looks like your example picture above.) I then selected the "Study" exterior walls and on the structure tab selected "Balloon Through Floor Below". Turn on framing layers and Chief even draws the interior rim board for the balloon framing automatically. All done with auto-framing on.

Short of designing your own door, for every door style you may want to use a pet door in, I placed two "Euro H Plank" cabinet doors back-to-back - resized them both to be 10"x16"x1.5" and 3" up off the ground to maintain the integrity of the door frame and the door sweep. I centered them on the back of the door and then moved them 2" forward into the wall. You can then material paint each side a contrasting color Or view them easily in technical or hand drawn lines. You can cad block the two doors and save this to any library to use on any door style. This doesn't create a hole, but then we look at all our other doors closed typically, so showing a louvered flap like above, or using a shaker panel cabinet door style should suffice.

That trapezoid is the room you need to create on the second floor. Make the room height the smallest trap leg. It will then be under the existing roof. (Unless the height is too tall) Once you are done with any roof work turn auto roof off and then open the room and make it's ceiling the default height you want. Chief will create the trap shape along with a ceiling line telling you where the slope down begins. Make the second floor wall a rail overlooking the lower room.

This wouldn't address walls spanning several rooms with multiple heights. I created a 3 room box, (2) 9' ceilings, (1) 10' ceiling. The only schedule change was Chief additionally count's the (2) 1'3 1/6" walls sticking above the 9' ceilings until the roof intersects them. It still only sees two sets of outside walls. And consider the interior wall of the Study, it is 9' drywall on its side, but 10' on the Entry side. Next, if you break every wall intersection, the 1'3 1/16" wall sections aren't counted anymore and the total is off by another 3-1/2" or so, after excluding those two walls.. Of course, the room schedule gives you the ceiling height, but won't return the perimeter.

Most convert to raster or the vector data is inaccurate. Also you would need to resize the result to match real world dimensions. For small sites it is easier to import the pdf, scale it to real world dimensions, lock the layer and draw terrain, lot lines and elevations over it. For larger sites, our auditor has dwg/dxf files we can download with terrain elevation data using Arcgis. Your New York area uses this system as well. Here's a link. 2023 Erie County Tax Parcel Data now available! Erie County makes available tax parcel data in GIS format for free. As of October, our 2023 parcel data can be downloaded. If you are interested in obtaining the 2023 GIS dataset of tax parcels,… read more

You need to do the reverse. Keep the DWG in its own file, then reference the house plan file into it. Here's the help page. Contact ReneRabbitt for better instructions. I'm still wrapping my head around this, but it works similar to the cad detail footprint. you can select the entire referenced plan, point-to-point move it and rotated it to match your dwg lot orientation. You can also raise or lower it on the z axis to get your garage doors to match up with the driveway, for example) Not as good an option, but one I'm more familiar with is to export the house as a Collada model then import it as a library object. You can manipulate it the same way, just have to remember the model is oversized to include your gutter and overhangs, so you can't manipulate it with the same precision. It also hogs resources, which isn't a problem for me until I have more than 10 models in the same plan (like a subdivision).

Printed fine for me. I've attached your plan so that you can try it out. Create a view with normal walls locked makes it easier to maneuver and place the cad boxes. (otherwise you have to cycle through Chief selecting wall elements first every time you want to grab a side of a box and stretch it to cover the gaps. 1553193773_HatchingFail.plan Test Hatch Walls.pdf

With auto-roofs on this is a problem. I set those rooms to the lowest height I want, typically 4' 1-1/2", no flat ceilings, draw everything the way you want it, then turn auto roofs off. Then raise those room ceiling heights to 8' (or whatever you are wanting to use for the flat height) and Chief will redraw the room with the slopes. that match your sketch. They will even show a solid dotted line where the slope changes to flat.

Alternatively, you can make a layer called "Walls, Hatching 2" for example, then created a filled-by-layer CAD box and change it to reside on that layer. Then paste those boxes resized over the individual gaps. Turn off both layers to see your normal plan, turn on both layers to see Marketing plan. I'm showing the layer in red first, then black, then hatching off, walls on.

Create a wall schedule, add "Total Width" to "Columns to Include" and "Display Totals Row" Multiply wall length by ceiling height and you have your wall area of both interior and exterior walls. In the past I've also changed drywall materials to measure by square foot rather than per sheet. The materials list would then give you the square footage. I use "drywall taped" for exterior walls and make a copy renamed "Drywall Taped2" and use that for one side of the interior walls. WB1 is ceiling finish (see room specification). WB2 is the other side of your interior wall in sheets. WB3 is ceiling drywall sheets. WB4 is exterior wall areas WB5 is interior wall areas. Measurements are off by the intersections, of course. But if you did the same thing for siding, you'd get the deck exterior included in the sf. Not perfect, but pretty close. EDIT - compare 27.75 wall length x 9' wall height = 249.75 with WB6 239.23 -which is missing 1 intersection. and compare 68 wall length x 9' wall height = 612.00 with WB5 572.27 - which as 4 overlaps in the outside corners and missing 3 intersections with interior walls.

SInce the treads are already built, make a template of a few of them (to verify their consistency) take one and add control lines using a square that plumbs the nosing overhang of the tread above (to subtract this), and then measure 6" in from either end of the template tread nosing and square a line 90 degrees off the front tread you can determine the rear offsets of the nosing overhang. In chief you can draw the inner trapezoid fairly easily. Then extrapolate the template tread using the control line offset measurements. Now extend the front nosing line and the rear nosing line of the tread above out until they intersect and you will have your radius.. .

I have all schedules in one cad detail named "SCHEDULES." I zoom in to the schedule I want, then send current view to layout, adjust scale and box perimeter. Since I know where the other schedules are in the cad detail, I can cut and paste the same box and simply slide the box perimeter to bring the desired schedule into view, OR return to the detail zoom to desired schedule and repeat. Added bonus, on new floorplans I can cut and ctrl-v paste the schedules from one plan to the new plan's cad detail also named SCHEDULE and they repopulate with that plans data. By using the same detail name, opening an earlier layout and changing the plan file name to the new plan causes all schedules within the layout itself to re-populate, only caveat is adjusting boxes if a plan has more items to display than the current box location allows. If you use the same camera names you can cut and paste them as well and they will update to match the plan name as well.