Steve_Nyhof

I have tried this and it does not copy

A few times I have had to put several projects into one file. Like I am drawing a pool house on one drawing and the residence on another drawing.

I would like to just make a block of sorts, or even a library object would work and paste it into the main drawing.

What I am doing now it just copy and paste, but the defaults in the one drawing including the main floor plane messes up everything in the structure I am pasting in.

Can I just group a structure with the roof and foundation?

Thank you,

Steve

On 8/25/2017 at 6:52 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

As many of you already know, energy heels do not automatically generate properly for some of the most standard truss configurations.  Here's something I would definitely consider a workaround but its a lot quicker than what I think most of us have been doing...

 

• Build all your trusses as usual setting the appropriate trusses to be Energy Heels...

• Group select at least all the energy heel trusses, change top and bottom chords to a very small dimension (1" should probably do it), check Force Truss Rebuild, and click Okay...

• With the trusses still selected, open them right back up, check Lock Truss Envelope, change your top and bottom chord back to what they should be, and click Okay...

 

Again, it would be nice if energy heels behaved properly on their own, but until they do, I think this is the best we can do.  If anyone knows of a more effective solution I'd love to know it.

Very nice! Thank you!!

Just ran out to see The Batman. One word, dark. 

(On my phone now)

trust me, I do honor your years of experience and skills and do take your word for it. I would just like to see an example of how you manipulate frost walls. When you say create a room I have in mind what I think you are on to. 
 

also, just to set the record, the house in the example and half of my larger homes have all the studs, floor joist and trusses added. yes I spend the time at times to figure out my trusses, girders and beams. When I say my heights are perfect, I mean they are perfect. My footings are exactly where I want them, my floor is exactly where I want it, my daylight wall, sill plates, joist and floor boards. 99.9% of my work is done in the dbx. My daylight walls are typically on target unless my basement height changes. I typically go into the dbx to set my pony heights, floors, etc. I mainly drag the frost wall down and adjust the daylight if I’m right there. Most of the time it is on only one or two of the elevations. And to be straight forward, I don’t know how to drop my frost wall from within the dbx. Can’t say I really tried after creating my layer section sets. So I believe I am using CA the way I think it was intended 99.9% of the time.
 

I will add that I wanted from the start to draw as CA intended and you and others have really jump started my learning curve. Thank you!
 

half the reviews on my website are in the last few years. 41 years designing homes and now with CA modeling makes for very satisfied and happy clients. Heck, I’m scheduling people into September now so I’m doing something well. I can’t begin to tell you at 60 years old how it feels to be at the top of my game again. Once again I want to thank you and others who were/are so willing to help out in the forum. I especially want to give a shout out to Steve Nestor @SNestor who scheduled a number of hours with me to teach me the ropes. Amazing fellow! I strongly recommend for newbies!!
 

thank you

Steve

44 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

I didn’t watch the full video the first time through because I was having trouble hearing it in my office at the time, apologies, but now after having watched it I would definitely encourage you to look to some additional approaches. As most of the power users here would agree, manually dragging exterior walls is not a very good practice. This software is platform based and you are not modifying the platform assembly when you manually drag a wall. In fact many of the problems we run into in this forum stem from users manually dragging walls. Pulling a cross section confirms this, your floor heights remain unchanged. Not to mention you would need to manually adjust your walls in other elevations to match. I personally can quickly build out a multiple level walkout just utilizing additional floors with rooms to designate foundation steps.

About your layer settings, you could have a cad detail with different lines and simply delete the lines that aren’t used(again this is with the intention of cleaning up custom layers, which would be my preference) no offense to Scott Hall but trying to work on one of his plans is as dizzying as it gets with so many custom layers. At times it may be necessary to handoff for my workflow anyway.

Is there a reason you are not specifying structure in your floor defaults at the start of a project? Any reason not to specify your floor defaults?

pulling a cross section and using a different active dimension default with the manual dimension tool can perform a platform check Lightning fast

 

There is a lot here, and I would say there is some bias as to dragging walls as my heights are perfect and untouched when I am done, again in seconds really. I understand where people can and do drag things and hope close is close and then fight for the rest of the time. I'm not that guy. I am a perfectionist by fault and for decades have figured out systems and processes to doing things. Not to say they are the best or that I will not change. But there is a lot of assumption in your statements based on many of the people in this forum which I completely understand as I know there are many people that will not figure out steps to assure accuracy. Yes, I do set up my heights in the Defaults before I start any plan, and in fact I also set up many of my materials which are also all set up to my defaults and into my Library. 

Your idea of using a room does intrigue me for my frost wall. If you care to share your idea in a video I would be happy to look into it. Thank you for diligently working the forum to help those of us who are still learning. I do mean that. But I have also drawn 120 homes my first 12 months of using the software, and many are not small or simple...  https://stevenyhofdesigns.com/contemporary-3d-models/

Have a great evening!

Steve

30 minutes ago, solver said:

 

Precise heights for what?

This will help explain what I am doing...

https://www.loom.com/share/5e075ef2a1a7424587fdc15e8c0a3af8

1 minute ago, Renerabbitt said:

Is it that you have a CAD detail that is being used for reference heights?

Yes. In ADT I made a program where I could enter in my wall heights and footings, floor joist and grade, and it would add these "section construction lines" to my 2D area generated from the 3D model. So I am setting up something similar in Chief using layers and objects. Instead of a program generating what I want as reference lines, I can just choose the layer that fits my heights. If there is another way, I am open to see it work on a video.

Now that my work is done and everything set up, and with only one click of a button I have everything I need, how could something else give me all my different heights with an example of the structure? These work in conjunction with my foundation pony walls which are all set up as well to a perfect daylight and walkout wall. I literally spend less than 2 minutes adding my foundation pony walls (daylight) to my generated stem walls and set their heights to frost walls if needed, in my four elevations.

Again, I would love to learn more of what Chief can offer.

Thank you,

Steve

18 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

I think I gathered that you are using layers to drive line style.
I personally think it is far easier to simply use line style from your library or even your toolbars instead, as it is just click and draw and doesnt require having additional layers, modifying multiple layer sets or changing layers/changing the active cad layer
 

"I think I gathered that you are using layers to drive line style."

Nope! I am not drawing these lines. These have been setup to give me precise heights without having to think through this process again. Took me a few hours to setup. I have set up a number of things and now I can crank out plans faster than ADT. The plan I show in the video is like 3000 ish sq.ft. and was completed with 4 sections in less than 35 hours.

Thank you,

Steve

I should add that once I am done setting the heights of my walls, I turn the layer off as I no longer need the lines.

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

I don’t follow what you are showing me here, how are layers controlling your floor joist types? Maybe I have a better method

This will help explain what I am doing...

https://www.loom.com/share/5e075ef2a1a7424587fdc15e8c0a3af8

29 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

hey @stevenyhof long time 
You are creating a new layer and that new layer is visible in the layer set that is active in your current view. When you switch to a camera view, your layer set changes according to the plans defaults for that class of camera view. In the layerset associated with the camera view that new layer would need to be made visible.

I’ve noticed that you have a bunch of custom layers in your default plan. I would strongly recommend that you stay as close to default layers as possible. When you choose to scale your business or collaborate, it makes it that much more difficult for someone else to work with your custom plan.

Ah!! Of course  - Thank you!! I figured it was something simple. 

Yes, I have a few of custom layers, most I have abandoned. But I use some custom layers to set up my different foundation and floor joist types. 

Example

Not sure what it is in the template, but I took the wall from the older plan and pasted that into the template and updated the lines and color, renamed it to what I wanted and it works fine.

I'll add this...
https://www.loom.com/share/55d3a1d485e249ec85b5e286e4fdd32b

Hello,

Anyone know why change a new (copy of a) layer makes it not display?

https://www.loom.com/share/74a91a05a39b4852b611ed0f7ce985b5

Thank you,

Steve

Ah! I see... That makes it simple!

Thank you, Sir!

4 hours ago, rgardner said:

Probably not it and I didn't have a lot of time thus I didn't watch the entirety of it but it looks like the one that wasn't working does not actually have the "Reference Display" toggle button on. (OOB f9)...

I knew it would be something obvious... I was so focused on the list of details below I completely missed the checkbox above 

Thank you!!

I have two jobs open showing the Reference layer - one project is working the other is not ???

https://www.loom.com/share/aaa229e27da84df5b89baa01c889df3a

Thoughts?

Thank you,

Steve

They are on CAD, Elevation Details layer

35 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

All Off layer set perhaps.

This is the trick! Thank you!

Is there a way to erase entities on a visible layer? Or like the shift key, select all from a specific layer?
Or, more specifically, I had to mirror a plan and my sections are messed up with Auto Details that were applied to the section. How do I delete these details so I can apply again?

Thank you,

Steve

I just wanted to add that I cloned the C: drive to a new 1TB Samsung SSD 980 PRO - Replacing my 970 and I can see a considerable difference in the speed of the undo and other functions. X12 was not really an issue with refreshing the 3D model, but in X13 (standard mode) when I delete a roof plane (for example) and then undo, the model would fade for a moment, sometimes like 1 to 2 seconds and then rebuild. Now it is hardly noticeable and the object(s) pop back into place. 

I put my old ram back in, back to 32 from 64 and faster because I was getting a blue blank screen. However, I am still getting this blue screen so looking into why that is happening. When we went to update the graphic driver I would get the blue screen. I am running 4 monitors so thinking of disconnected 2 of them to see how it goes. Maybe something is going on with my driver.

Bottom line, upgrading to the 980 made a noticeable difference for anyone wanting to gain some more speed. I also updated my storage drive D: to a 2TB 980 PRO so loading plans is faster also.

Thank you everyone who helped with advice here!

BTW, I tried using Macrium Reflect but kept getting an error so ended up using AOMEI Backupper which worked perfectly. 

6 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

There are always backups in the Archive Folder , inside the Chief Data Folder which is usually in My Documents unless you specified it to be put somewhere else.

 

With X13 I also Lowered my Autosave time , but you can also set an Auto Archive down lower as well.

 

 

Ah! Right there it is!! Thank you, Mick!

I had the computer crash and the temp files remain. I tested it by opening a plan, making some changes and the undo temp files showed up. When I closed normally the temp files were removed - all good.

Further question on temp files...

When my computer crashed, (I think I over clocked the new ram and put that back to auto) and went back in to open a plan I was working on, it wanted to use an auto saved version, which I excepted. However, it said it was corrupted and would not open. So I went to open the file again without the saved version and it was like an hour old. Most of the things I worked on were gone. That was fine because I was messing around with a portal framing detail. However, if it was a clients plan, I may not be so dismissive. I have the preferences set up to save every 2 minutes. Where can I go to find a backup file that is more than 2 minutes old?

In AutoCAD I created a system to backup with every save which created a copy of the last backup and put that into a separate "Previous" folder and then it would overwrite the file in the main "Current" folder. So even when the software crashed and would possibly corrupts the "Current" file, I always had a "Previous" backup.

Does CA do something similar so I can get my hands on at least a more recent file?

Thank you,

Steve

57 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

typically this happens only when the program doesn't close cleanly as it should "clean up" after each session on it own

but is also one reason I specify my Own Temp and Undo Folders as well, and clean them out myself when Chief is closed if needed.

 

M.

I figured. Now that I have the Temp folder under my own path I will watch it. Thank you

5 minutes ago, Dermot said:

In theory, yes.  I would recommend that you close all programs when you do this though.  Some of those temp files may by in use.

Thank you very much! I do see that on my X12 I used the default Temp folder which is also used by many other programs, where my X13 I set up my own Temp folder.

Can I go into me Temp folder and delete old dated or even all Temp files to clean things up?

2 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Chief is single threaded so all the Cores in New Processors really don't help that much in Chief, I think Graham Korbey did some test about a  year ago here on the Forum, but for multitasking they should. The New 12th gen on Z690 are much better at this which is why gamers are raving about the newer 12th gen as many games are still single threaded too.

Great to know - thank you for the info!