plannedRITE

12 hours ago, DBCooper said:

There was a link to the notes on the update page:

https://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/documentation/chief-architect-x17-update-notes.pdf

 

I always forget this...woops. Thanks.

Will we be receiving a changelog for this release from the prior beta version?

If you set a wall to no room definition, you can actually place 2 walls in the same position, that can be used with railings. But, since Chief still foolishly treats the center of a full wall assembly as center as opposed to the main layer (as it should and as we've asked for), it's not that quick to stack/center them together.

Turn off the "Rooms, Interior Dimensions" layer - 

I have a detailed setup for automating glazing & vent calcs. But first, I highly recommend using Rene's macro page on his site...it's extremely useful. https://www.rabbittdesign.net/macros

I spent quite a while creating this sucker but I'll share it...here you go:

I've attached a simple plan that has everything you need inside. It's pretty darn accurate, far more than any reviewer should care to see. Few things to know - 

1. If there is glass in a door, make sure to mark it as tempered in its DBX. However, if it's a hinged exterior door with its style being a symbol that uses glass, it'll always report 30% of its area as glazing. There is no way to accurately measure this since chief can't analyze a symbol like that. 30% is close enough for most doors we use but you can finagle the number yourself if you need to in either that door's custom object field or the glazing_door macro.

2. I keep the schedules in a CAD detail for my layout. You'll want to make a copy of that schedule template for each room that needs to report these values. In the schedule, select the room it's in and add the name of the room to the main title (I wish we could use a macro for the title to save time...).

Here's a video walkthrough: 

Glazing&Ventilation.zip

6 hours ago, TennVol said:

Are any of you incorporating drone services as part of what you offer, i.e. site overviews / mapping, construction progress, other, etc? Have been thinking about it and wanted to get some feedback on how viable it might be. I know the Part 107 license is needed, just wanted to get you guy's thoughts overall.  Hope everybody had a Merry Christmas....and Happy New Year to all! 

 

Thanks

I've used my drones for progress pics for my own marketing but the best use-case has been for getting roof shots for asbuilts. 

As far as selling it as a service, you'll have the best luck offering it to the builder for them to use for their own marketing. Homeowners will like it but I'm not sure how many will actually want to pay for it.

There's a drop down that allows you to choose if a specified shadow board will show on the Eave, Gable, or both. You can also select a roof plane and, under Shadow Boards, choose if it will show on that selected edge or not.

Can you clarify what it is that you're trying to accomplish? Which are the new 5 windows? If this schedule is showing more windows than you like, it's due to you sending the extra windows to that schedule. If you only want to show 5 of your windows in that schedule, you'll need to either uncheck Include in Schedule on the others.

It will be located in the roof defaults. In the structures tab, under the Roof Layers section, you'll want to click edit on the structure to edit the rafter sizing. With the framing layer selected, check Auto Detail as Insulation.

1 hour ago, TommyOLDC said:

How do you create a seemless texture?

The simplest way is to use Rene's search on his website to look for seamless textures. That's always my first go-to. https://www.rabbittdesign.net/texture

Making one is more difficult...you typically need some photoshop/photo editing knowhow. There are tools that supposedly can do it for you, they pop up after a Google search. They might work?

Can you share the plan file? That's a fairly simple wall intersection and works fine when I quickly replicate it so I'm curious to see what is done in your file.

That being said, Chief can have a difficult time handling complicated wall intersections and may even fight any manual layer editing that you may do. But this is simple enough that it should be fixable.

Michael gave you a simple way to fix the issue. It's better to adjust your way of thinking to how Chief wants you to think - "slab" being the floor under the room, not necessarily a concrete slab. 

The model has a handful of problems in this area but if you only want to fix the material & fill pattern shown just select the displayed slab at your carport (it's a terrain feature that you placed, 1" thick with a concrete material) and change that concrete material to the river rock that you were trying to use as gravel. Then adjust the bounds of that terrain feature however you'd like, in case it's extending out to the street or something.


Then, on whatever plan view you are trying to show this on, make sure that your terrain feature layer is displayed. And the design being showed is something that you must have accidentally set so in that terrain feature's DBX, set the fill style to whatever it is you're looking for (you have decorative block shown, hence the pattern).
 

Plan view shows the selected fill type.
Most 3D views will show the material.

Chief sees faces of 3d objects so that's normal behavior. That's the reason that the foundation, walls, and slab are all empty too.

I sure hope that Chief will allow us to slope floors sooner than later...this has been requested for many, many years. The new Poche tool in x16 beta would fix this beautifully if the floors could slope.

(per what Kevin said below, if you only want to show the outline then make sure the layer is on)

13 hours ago, mtldesigns said:

Sorry, wife had me putting up shelves all evening after work.  IKEA is becoming a PITB.  Nice stuff, easy to put together. But mounting 8 of these things to a wall was just the best time ever..

 

To your wall..  Hope you figured it out since I was absent.

You can see the dashed line is my divider wall, dim'd 4" off the "apparent" intersection.  I stretched the horiz wall to that divider, then connected.  

I was able to replicate it perfectly when copying your screenshot, with all walls being 4". But when copying the OPs screenshot (with the 6" wall) it no longer works. I tinkered for a bit and couldn't find a solution. Try the 6" like they are showing, perhaps you'll have better luck than myself?

Not a perfect example, as it continues to the end walls, but I imagine that it would likely be similar. Though this builder is working on a different one of our projects, this isn't one of ours so I don't have details that I can share. 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cn4cUHorowQ/

I'm interested to see how you detail it out, share updates!

37 minutes ago, robdyck said:

Well, I think so...if you post your plan file or send me a PM with a dropbox / google drive link to download your plan file, I'll take a look and see how I can help.

I can't share this one but, as a reference, here are the included framing categories. No rim joist, I checked older versions as well with the same result. (To be clear, I'm really not that concerned about this, custom categories are a quick workaround even though it's a bandaid. Just odd to me since Chief has rim joists as a Role and even an OOTB layer.)

8 minutes ago, robdyck said:

I'm not seeing that behavior. This likely means you've used a rim joist for a joist, or your schedule doesn't include the appropriate categories to differentiate.

The only way that I'm seeing to differentiate the two is to manually set one of them to report to a custom schedule category. The default framing categories do not include rim joists as a standalone option. Am I missing something?

51 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

you can make anything that reports to a schedule report to a custom schedule.

Yeah, not sure why I'm trying to go about it a different way.

This was a bit of a stupid question...I've worked on this template for too long 

Not a great title but I'm not sure how to best summarize.

Is there a way to create separate schedules for the same framing categories within the same view/plan? It almost works perfectly by using rooms but the rim joists are not contained within a room, darn it. Can I somehow create a schedule for the members in Module "A" and a separate one for Module "B"?

I'm hoping to accomplish something similar to this:

I also noticed that chief puts rim joists and floor joists both under the same category for schedules, even though they are specified under different "Roles". Not sure if much can be done about that one.

I appreciate the input.

17 hours ago, rgardner said:

So assuming the following;

1. That you just want that page in your final documents as it is from the engineer with their title block.

2. You want to add that page to your sheet index

 

If this is the case then you can do what I usually do with any consultants’ sheets and not import the pages at all in Chief.  I will put a blank page with the engineers sheet name/number and place a single cad item on that page so the sheet will show in the index appropriately. Print the pdf set and then use any standard pdf viewer to remove the empty sheets and add the engineers sheets.  It results with the full set with structural sheets included both in the location you want them as well as how you want them and you don’t get file bloat from importing a pdf into a sheet.  I use this technique with structural and mechanical engineers, title 24, cal green, interior designers, spec sheets. etc.

This is exactly how we do it. It's the way to go.

I haven't tried adding them to Chief in a few versions but I know that it used to skyrocket the file size when done that way, never understood why. 

1 hour ago, GeneDavis said:

Sounds like panelized, not modular.

 

Since you're editing all those framing elevations to show blocking (and more), it's just a click and drag to get the plate-thru-door thing.

 

Chief will autoframe it if you do the door-raise-and-shorten thing, but that has its downsides.  Editing the plate is fast and easy.

 

But hey, if you think Chief should have an option in autoframe for this, make the suggestion.

Exactly. They are panelized walls for modular construction, per the company, but that's precisely what we are creating.

And yes, at this point that is our process. Although, wouldn't it be neat if Chief acted on suggestions? This is low on the totem pole of things I've discussed with them so I'll just deal with it for now 

20 minutes ago, GeneDavis said:

I gotta ask @plannedRITE.    What's the point of this?  If it's for material list accuracy, don't the extra cut lengths added by pro users to cover culls and the full-plate under doors cover this?  Sure, we frame the walls this way and then cut after, but why exactly show this in elevations?  

 

A good framer puts in blocking for cabinets, fixtures like towel and toilet paper holders, and more places.  Are you detailing this all out in your framing details, so the material list gets counts for blocking?

It's for modular home construction so the wall details do have to be highly detailed. Yes, blocking for cabinets and whatnot are a part of the drawings. But due to the modular nature, the continuous bottom plate is needed for transporting the walls. Just trying to stick with their current process as closely as possible for a smooth transition to our work.

As much as I'd prefer to not break the auto wall framing, I do believe that it has to happen due to this bottom plate situation as well as adding in the blocking...oh well. Fortunately, these aren't created until we have the rest of the plans finished so there *shouldn't* be changes that would cause a need to rebuild the wall framing.

Is there a setting that I may be overlooking to build the bottom plate at a door opening? (Yes, it is something we need)

Since manually bringing across the bottom plate stops the auto wall framing, I really would like to avoid that option...as we are providing wall framing details for every wall.

Thank you!

1 hour ago, HumbleChief said:

Thanks Ethan it does indeed look easy but brain's just not grasping the technique. I'll try again.

All good! It can be tricky but I've done a few like this lately so it just happens to be somewhat fresh in my brain. 

You'll need to close the plan in Chief and then share the file or it won't share properly. It can't be opened.