PMMully

That makes sense. It seems CA missed something in the meta-model. The ability to define a room function is key, just like a room type. Without that, we are at the mercy of of what appears to be hard-coded logic regarding function. At least I have not found a way to control "function". I imagine playing around with the various room functions, like "unspecified", you might get what you want. In my case, I had two exterior rooms backed up to one another as porches, so it made no sense whatsoever.

The bit about the exterior side, combined with the snaps control, and the mastery of the wall intersection tool is the trick. I now have a bunch of walls successfully joined. Those little nits really cost me a bunch of time but finally there.... for now :-).

All of @SNestor stuff is great!

OK, the video drove something home, reverse the layers to get it to line up. I did that, tweaked the intersections a bit, and this is what I got. It looks perfect to me, see if yall see some buggers. You can see the CAD lines I used to precisely set the wall break. I am familiar with the General Wall Defaults on the "Resize about" settings. My understanding is this can affect how the walls come together, not just on resizing. Do I have this right? wall joins.plan

Hi all, I am watching videos, reading, and trying to learn from others. Here is a classic wall join deal for me with three wall types coming together. Exterior CMU for standard exterior walls but with insulation+furring+DW, exterior garage walls with just struck block, and an interior frame sheer wall to make the garage. Here is a test plan that shows the detail. The funny is I have done some cool stuff, but when I get this dissimilar wall need, I slow down badly. 1) Ideally, the three exterior garage walls should come into the main exterior walls just like it is. That is exactly how it would be built in the field. These are two distinct wall types. 2) The issue comes in when I need to put in that interior shear wall as indicated by the revision clouds (an example is that interior wall just sitting there with the door in it). 3) I have read up on object snaps, etc. I have put wall breaks in, moved the interior wall in, etc. But I keep getting the same issue. The intersections get all wonky. The wall join tool has no effect. I have used the wall intersection tool to some degree and sometimes it seems to work out and others not so much. The result is a break in the drywall, on either side, etc. The reference guide is light. I have found a few videos on the site, but I am not getting this right just yet. This video is getting me close... https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5422/editing-walls.html?playlist=85 garage_porch_foundations.plan

Why would you sell it?

Well, that worked. But of course, it creates other issues. They may be simple ones, but the floor now has to be unfinished, molding removed, etc. I just wish I could tell CA to leave me alone at times :-) What is the "flag" that marks a room as interior or exterior? I do not see anything in the room type defaults. I know I have some funky wall transitions. I am working on that. I know I can align on surfaces, centers, etc. But I just seem to be missing some fine points, or maybe I just can't remember them fast enough :-) But life for me here in FL is a mixture of many wall types and hence thicknesses. I am working on mastering it because it is the number one area that slows me down. I have CBU walls that have stucco+block+insulation+furring+DW (all new construction), just stucco+block+furring+DW (older construction), stucco+block+stucco, stucco+block, and even just block. I have various frame wall thicknesses of stucco/lath+tyvek+sheathing+frame/insulation+furring/drywall, with brick veneer and or Hardie. All of these walls must meet regularly. A garage is common for interior sheets for the frame, some CBU with insulation, and some CBU with just struck block or think stucco skim coat. Any best practices would be greatly appreciated. porchenclosure.plan

In this test plan, I am enclosing a porch. I am using standard exterior walls to enclose the structure and put SGD in it. That seems to work fine except the one wall sees to force me to an interior SGD definition versus an exterior (even will sill clicked on, I get no sill. So the core question is why can I not make the second SGD act like the other SGD. It seems that CA is forcing it to an interior when in fact it is exterior. I have seen this in other plans as well, like kitchens, where I draw interior walls and when I place a door in them, they get delegated as exterior automagically. This makes sense, but I want to override the default door in these cases. porchenclosure.plan

The plan I sent is not 100%, it was meant to serve as a playground on how to best built "custom porches". Let me look at the real plan. Good catch, I have probably have it wrong.

@snestor, here is the plan, l did fix the header. Perrinporchwithrailings.plan

@SNestor as I was struggling with the connection, I went into an elevation, was able to grab the header, and adjust it. Fine points I guess...

@SNestor I fully understand and you can bet I learned from you today :-) I took your inputs which allowed me to figure out the spacing, etc. This is pretty close to reality... I generated a flat roof, then put a custom roof plane on it to get what I want. Not sure why I can not get the header to stay connected to the inside of the outside wall.

@snestor This plan is a complicated two-story. The picture I submitted is a simplified version for the forum and just learn the details of the process. In this case, the posts must be placed exactly as they are on the house. And the roof must show a pitch. This drawing will go through PE engineering for permitting. We are essentially going to modify the headers over the SGDs in my diagram as the SGD will be coming out in favor of one long one that double the length. The current flat wood/asphalt roof will be removed and replace with ledgers on the new headers, etc. Do the drawing must be tight-tight in order for the PE to sign off. The technique you describe would be perfect for conceptual discussions.

@snestor I should have also specified that I used a railing wall, post to beam as well, and it had the exact same result. I went back to the railing version. I see the newel spacing now, great tip. I was able to eliminate a few due to spacing and remove the other center one on the short side by setting the spacing longer than the length of the wall. So that part is solved, and the issue now is I need to show an existing flat asphalt roof with those headers. I have been playing with roof settings but can not seem to get what I want just yet (flat roof attached to headers with hangers). I will look up your videos. I will look at your screen room library though!

Looking for the best practice to build porches with flat roofs that are attached to a dwelling on 1-3 sides, have headers under the roof on any sides that are not attached to the dwelling. The headers can be LVL or concrete precast, supported by columns that could be 4x4 or larger, solid pour, or filled cell CMU, etc. In this snapshot below, I make two CMU stem walls with a monolithic foundation and made the room type a porch. All is well, except for the fact I can not seem to control how many newells/posts there are, or the spacing. The second thing I any roof generation seems to be pretty limited. Note I have the gutter removed off the tile roof on the one side facing the porch. What I have done in the past was created a slab or patio, did a custom roof plane, and added a framing joist as the header, and posts manually. I am asking if there is a better way to take what I have below, gain control of the number of posts and positions, and generate a flat roof in one shot? Or, what would be the best practice overall? I have been looking through the training videos but nothing is jumping out at me.

I deleted the original when I realized I messed up, and you beat me to it with an answer! Thanks Joe!

Joe, this is a roof barrel tile, I am not seeing how to actually change the color to something else on the palette. When I do, it is losing the actual tile look.

I might have just found one example!!!

@robdyck PRESTO, like magic! Thank you so very much! I have yet to find anything in CA that I can not do. The hard part is finding where exactly the instructions on how to do something are located. This forum is a godsend.

I am doing an exterior garage plan that will have a convertible option to turn some of the garage space into an apartment, all one floor. I designed the converted state to include interior walls to dial in slab sanitary, electrical, etc. But, the actual permit will be for an accessory structure only with no interior walls. I noticed both exterior and interior walls appear to be on the "Walls, Normal" so if I turn it off I lose my exterior walls also. I was hoping to just turn off all the internal walls for the truss engineering and final permitting. Is there a way to handle this outside of just making a copy of the plan and deleting all the interior walls?

@Alaskan_Son you nailed it. Worked like a charm. I did try and make it a symbol other than the suggested fixture, but it did not work. What worked was "Fixture/Exterior". To @Dermot's question about cad blocks, I do not really have the experience to answer if having a cad block added to a schedule. Maybe 'yall can chime in. I guess if you had a set of grouped components (i.e. "sub-SKUs") in the block that mapped up to one "super-SKU" as a package, yes, I see where that could be helpful. No use case for me is jumping out though at the moment.

I suspected that would be the answer. Thank you. I did convert it to an exterior fixture but I still did not see the schedule tab show up.

A typical practice in my area is to have a table with all connectors in it, with callouts throughout the plan. So for example, if I have an LVL and I have two concealed hangers that need to installed in CMU,along with 50 typical truss straps for CMU, and a handful of other connectors for say a girder truss, high uplift, etc., So they get the appropriate annotations on the plan so the builder knows what specific connector goes where. For example, if your PE specifies a Simpson HGUS410 for an LVL, you grab it out of the library, all good. It would be great to have a connector schedule to organize it. I created a custom category, a custom schedule, all good. But I can not find a way to mark the "show in schedule" like for a window, door, etc. in the simpson library. So I was hoping to create my own field called Schedule, but it is not gertting it done. The cool thing is it does shows up in the material list, so that part is great to price/order.

Hi all, I was looking to find a way to create a custom schedule for specialized hardware like the Simpson stuff in the libraries. There is no "schedule" metadata field. Is it possible to add one so this the objects could be added to a custom schedule? I played around with the Object Information panel creating a custom object field, but I can not get it to work. Ideas?

@GeneDavisjust absolutely awesome!!!!! Very very nice. Thanks for sharing.