PMMully

Doing a plan with lots of modifications to an existing structure. I modeled a pre-existing existing edition as a garage room type to get the auto-dropdown of the floor. A portion of that preexisting addition was converted to a laundry room with the floor drop from the main house. I went in and changed the flooring in that room to a white tile but it is not showing up in the 3D views. It captures it in the materials section of the plan just fine. I looked in the docs and did not see anything jump out at me regarding garages. Should I have created this a just another interior room and drop the floor?

RIP

Update: I have solved this by searching around this forum and finding a member post about drawing tightly connected landings together. It is all perfect now. It was yet another great lesson in when to stop trying to make it work one way and trying another.

Here is the other plan file, it was causing an error for some reason. stairgames.plan

Attached is a plan that shows some odd behavior. Here is the situation: Attached Stairgames2.plan/pdf On the left is a generated staircase with a winder calculated by CA, and a generated stairwell. All is well. On the right, this is an existing staircase I am trying to model that was built in the 60's. It has 11 treads on the straight section, and 3 in the winder, manually set by me. The winder looks fine in plan view, but if you look at the winder in 3D, one can see the incorrect generation of the winder. I did not generate a stairwell here to focus on this one aspect. No matter what I have tried, I can not seem to get this to generate correctly for this real-life situation. Suggestions on how to get around this other than with than all CAD work? Attached Stairgames.plan/pdf On the left is the same generated staircase with a winder calculated by CA as above. But notice the hole in the stairwell, this is only happening when I generate the right stairwell. If I removed this generated stairwell on the right staircase, it all goes back to normal. On the right stairwell, all things look to be off kilter. Aside from the incorrect winder molding, when I generate the stairwell it appears to ignore the winder being attached to the wall, and generates railing, etc. The first floor view has a odd wall segment, the second floor view seems to have generated a stairwell that is in the attic. In the plan view, it shows a stairwell on floor 2, and not the attic (the reference display shows the stairwell from the attic), so that is normal. I really have no idea what is happening here, but I am sure it is probably a setting I am missing. I imagine I am just overdriving the system with this "odd tread configuration? The workarounds might be: Make your own stairwell versus having one generated Use cad/polyline solids to "fix" the odd generation in 3D Listen to this forum to point out something I have missed :-) stairgames.pdf stairgames2.pdf stairgames2.plan

@Dermotthank you for the detailed explanation, it helps a great deal. I will do as suggested. But, since we went this deep, under what conditions would it be correct to have Connect Island Rooms" turned off? Moving along I did your suggestion of "or here" earlier today, and it indeed went away. :-)

That was it, uncheck "connect the island" and it went away.

OK, so this is a 60's house here in FL. The way the plan is drawn is the way it is actually built today. They either knocked out the block for the frame-wall addition, or there was a massive slider, or whatever, but the frame wall with opening is correct. The current owner has the reversed prints and it shows a SGD. It is interesting because there is a second story along that wall line. The owner is a structural engineer so he is investigating the setup. We can only assume they built a girder truss setup in. After I sent it in, I did extend the block wall and put a door opening in there but it had no effect. @glennw I will try your suggestions. Thanks all!

Hi all, I am sure I did something wrong here, but heck if I can find it. In the middle of this plan, there is a mysterious room divider which I did not put on the plan that I remember. I can select it, see the wall type, etc, but I simply can not delete it. I deleted the east walls, etc, trying to get rid of it. If I do that, I can actually delete it, then I save the file, but when I connect the exterior walls, presto, it comes back. I annotated it in a red text box. The rest of the plan was smooth as silk. Kennon-ASBUILT.plan

Ok, I missed the point about "plan materials" in the actual dialog. Thank you all!

Rename it where in the plan? I went to the wall type definition in plan and I could not rename the layer in the wall definition.

LOL, Joe are clearly a genius :-). Pretty much exactly what I did. Very cool. So let me hit that gray matter one more time.... I would like to change the name of something in the library. Make "Cat face - Beige - 1/2" to "Stucco - 1/2". I see I can copy something in the library, but no option to paste it, or edit it. I know I can create a new material, but it would be able to copy and modify some things.

The problem is I can not see how to attach a more detailed description to a wall type definition that could be included in the schedule. versus just the "Name" of the wall type. The default %automatic_description% macro is pulling in the wall type "name" via the description field in the object information, which is pointing to the macro. The macro in this case points back to the "name" of wall type. So for example in row three above, I want to have that description be associated with all walls of the same type. In this example, I removed the macro and manually typed this in.

Wall type definitions do not seem to have a description field other than the wall type field. The default object type for a wall looks to have %automatic_description% as the macro in the description field. This feeds the description of the automatic wall schedule. However, I would like to have a short name for my wall type and a longer description of the w all. Is there a way to tie a customer wall description to the wall type? Right now it seems like I have to add a description for every wall. Here is the example below where the macro is grabbing the default wall type name, and an example of where I put in a description on a specific wall. That last row is what I am looking for.

I put my templates in a separate directory from the stock CA templates for automated backup reasons. Is a template really just a plan file that would normally be be saved in the default location, with the added notations of the "Save as Template" dialog box? If I want to add CAD blocks to a template, is it best to open the template itself and go to it, or is better to have a plan file that corresponds to a template file where you do the CAD block work? I do add things to the library, but I also export types into my custom folders for automated backup. That way is the fan hits the Kaka, I can remover the bulk of my setup even if I lost the template.

Doh!!!!! Thank you. I knew it was a cockpit error.

Hi all, I have seen other members do this, not sure what is wrong with my settings. I can not seem to get the orthographic framing overview to work on wall sections. I looked at every setting I can think of but clearly missing something. Layers/layerset looks ok. I put a wall section on a plan, then hit orthographic framing overview, but nothing shows up. I saved the camera. Thank you in advance. isometricframingtest.plan

In what looks to be an exterior wall, it always works. The issue was when I had a porch in an as-built, then enclosed some of the porch, the second exterior wall was not on the perimeter is when the issue came up.

Exactly the case.

Thanks. I think I may have perfected the FL Porch Room Type. These rooms drop like a garage. Those under normal house truss have the same foundations as the test of the house. So now I specify them as this new room type that has the garage function, but different label. Seems to do the trick. In this plan I had two garages side by side. The SGD still does not function correctly regarding the sill height. But that is fixed by adjusting the sill height. It all works just peachy and generates the right foundation. This is in contrast to the porch room that also needs to drop but you need to tweak the ceiling and SWT settings. Either way works, but the garage method for mono slabs sems to be the fastest. But the real trick is the dimensions to sill height, it fixes it all up.

Thank you for pointing this out regarding room function. I searched on the word function and I did not see this, I must have misspelled it on the search because as you have pointed out the information is there with no lack of detail. It all makes sense. A few observations in this case: I had two porch room/function types next to one another, and for the joining wall between them, it behaved as if it were two interior rooms regarding the door placement per the "rules". I imagine it was because the joining wall in question was not on the perimeter of the entire structure so it did not compensate for that. A search of the "interior vs exterior doors" supports this as well. The core problem was the sill did not show up even though it was checked. So to outsmart it, I defined one porch as an interior room as suggested above. That works, but then you have to undo all the other "rules" for that room/function type back to a porch. From what I can tell, if you have an interior door, which is auto-assigned by the fact that it is internal to exterior walls or not, the "Sill" attribute has no bearing when considered an interior door. I tested this even on an exterior wall placed with four exterior walls. I simply can not get the sill to show up. The simple fix from the CA side is "honor the sill attribute" regardless of the auto-assigned wall-type and wall-location placement. Then the room type/function would work just fine. I think I learned that when doing monolithic slabs, which is the norm here in FL.... defining all porches as a garage room type and just change the label, or maybe the room function as well, to the porch as they are all hybrid room functions. That way, I get the benefit of the automagically generated foundation and floor drop-downs. This alone might be worth the price of admission for the CA episode :-)

Interesting how it just blows out the main layers...

I know defining wall types is the correct way to specify how thick a wall is via layers. What is the impact of changing the width in the wall specification itself? Any downstream stuff?

Makes sense. In my case, just make it look like a porch, or "exterior room". Exterior rooms in FL come under building code requirements for AC/electrical, etc. I will try the "unspecified" type. In either case, no big deal once you understand it. Just wish one did not have to spend time figuring these nuances out. But hey, I have yet to find anything I can not do (especially since I have honed my polyline skills).

Understood. But if behaviors of things like doors and windows, floor, etc are tied to room types and then function. It would be great to be able to define our own room functions as well as room types. I was referring to creating our own room functions to associate with room types. Unless that dropdown has a "add new" option. I took your suggestion and made the second porch an interior room, then it worked. Prior to that, both room types/functions were porch. A very odd thing to have to do. I looked in the reference guide and.its not clear what room function controls versus room type. Room types make perfect sense. Room function, really what is it?