plannedRITE

This uses both "walls with footings" as well as the mono slab and isn't automatically built. Unfortunately, that does not fix the issue here.

It really depends on what roofline you are going for. I only leave auto roof build on for very simple structures, almost any design we do has the planes drawn manually. Not the answer that you are looking for but it may be what needs to be done. You will want to share your plan with us, as TeaTime mentioned it's a bit difficult for us to help in these situations from screenshots. I tried to quickly replicate your layout and it built out that upper wall for me but we probably have different options enabled.

When a new foundation (mono pour) is attached to an existing dropped mono foundation (such as a patio), the shared foundation wall between the two tends to always follow the defaults of the lower floor/foundation. This causes the footing to display improperly in plan AND 3D views. The situation where we consistently run into this is with additions that are built up against an existing patio and the addition will be a mono pour (though there are still issues when the addition is a stem wall footing). We draw the existing first, with the livable rooms on floors 1 & 0 along with their footing walls generally as pour 1 and then the patio room on floors 1 & 0 along with their footing walls as pour 2. Then we add the addition with it's rooms & footings marked as pour 3. The shared footing between the addition and the patio marked as pour 3 to try to tell Chief what room that footing should look at. As you can see in the pictures here, the shared footing wall will drop down, which affects the wall above as well. In a plan view, each of that footing wall is reversed. I've had this show correctly on occasion but it seems to be the luck of the draw...which is why I feel that there is a setting that I have selected on occasion? Guidance would be greatly appreciated, I've attached this example plan in the drive link..thank you all. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XlI-C1x_CO0RCo0Kf9BjaZDeRwyNqAvR/view?usp=drive_link

We've recently switched to showing our thicker walls (8"+) as being double framed, per the request of some of the builders we work with. However, there is now an issue with Chief's headers that I can't find a fix for. When a second framing layer is added to a wall definition, Chief will double up the headers at an opening placed in said wall. So if I have a (2)2x6 specified at an opening in a 12" wall (framed with 2 rows of 2x6) it will build (4)2x6. You can see an a GLB example in the screenshot I attached. This happens when using a furred wall or moving the second framing layer out of the main layer. It works properly if the second layer isn't noted as a framing layer but is there a way (other than that or manually drawing/noting headers) that will keep the headers from doubling up? It may be an oversight and need implemented by Chief but it seems pretty obvious so there may be a setting. Thanks all

Thank you, Glenn! This is a good read that I wish I had gone through some time ago.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm missing an option but custom line styles do not seem to work as I would expect. When drawing details, the finest dashed out-of-the-box lines are generally spaced too far apart. It seems that no matter the length or spacing I set, it ignores it and spaces/sizes the dashes arbitrarily while also starting and ending each segment with a long, solid line. I've drawn these in different views and it seems to give the same result. I definitely do not want the long 3" solid line and I want these gaps/length to be accurate to what I am inputting. Here is a detailed screenshot of what I'm experiencing. I've usually just worked around it but I'd like to get this to work...what could I be missing?

This is actually what I ended up doing, hah. Thanks, you guys.

That was going to be my last resort but it looks like it's come to that. Thanks for the input!

No I did not, or I would not have posted. Placing an insertion point into a CAD block is obviously simple but it seems to not retain that point once assigned to a 3d object.

Is there a way to change the insertion point of a custom electrical fixture? I assume this issue applies to other symbols/fixtures as well. The example that I'm working with here is a regular recessed can that has a waterproof label on it. I'd like the insertion point to be centered to the can light and not the center of the full 2D block. It doesn't matter if I set the insertion point of the 2D block because as soon as it is assigned to the 3D object it ignores it. This quick picture for reference shows a regular light first, then the light with the assigned 2D block, then the bare 2D block properly using the insertion point. I hope there's a way to do this! It's obviously not the end of the world but it's driving me crazy anyways.

Thank you, that is the answer that I was looking for. Hope to see more information moving forward to show in what way the consumer will benefit from this billing shift.

Yes I did read through this but it doesn't say if SSA is an option at that point. SSA is included in the rent to own option at the moment but my questions is once he finishes the 24 months of payments and owns the perpetual license for that version, can he pay for SSA to ensure "free" upgrades to future versions just as it works now? It seems that he would then have to pay the subscription model to upgrade to the future versions.

Additional question: one of my draftsman has been using the rent to own option to have his own license. He is only about 6 months in. So when he finishes the 2 years and owns the perpetual license (X16 at that time, I'm assuming) what happens with SSA? Will he be able to pay the annual $595 a year to receive updates or be forced to pay the $2000 a year to keep his software current with mine so that we can actually work on plans together? I need to know what will happen there so that I can decide if I need to fork over money for additional licenses this month.

This is extremely frustrating news and I can't understand why this is seen as a good option. I feel that common sense would dictate that in a move like this (a MASSIVE price hike) should go hand in hand with an announcement that benefits the consumer. I see almost no benefit anywhere that this will benefit the users. This appears to be a negative for everyone except for Chief's pockets. The only glimmer of hope is that the extra revenue will allow better/more engineers to be hired to sort out issues faster, implement requests faster, and just make a better software that doesn't run so poorly. Where is the benefit to consumers? Why are we just being slapped with a huge price tag or forced to buy multiple licenses now while praying that you don't pray on legacy users and bump our SSA fees to match the subscription fees down the road? My business will not be affected much by this but we are blessed enough to stay busy. New users and users only doing a few plans a year are going to be turned off by this. I'm also shocked at the timing, the market is cooling down so why would this happen now? If I slowed down enough to have to stop paying for SSA I'd probably start looking at other offerings instead of coming back to a big subscription middle finger from CA when I'm ready to pick things back up. I understand that the profit margins may be slim and slimming. But the most foolish POSSIBLE way to pad the pockets is to just slap everyone with a new, higher fee and not offer anything additional to the consumer to make it worth it. Why would this be the announcement and not "Look at these incredible features coming with X15 that will cost our company more but will seriously benefit the user! And due to how great this update is we are changing our pricing model to be XYZ." That I could understand. I'm venting and more frustrated than I probably should be but I just can't understand why this would be a good idea.

The original post seems to be talking about ceiling heights but the flooring/foundation issue that you're talking about acts similarly. You need to know how the foundation will be built first. "Floor supplied by the foundation room below" will be for slab on grade build so don't turn it off unless you're floor framing. But you can still change the floor height just fine with slab on grade, you just need to separate the rooms with a foundation wall. I've found that it often helps to change the pour number for the lower floor too. If there isn't a foundation wall separating the rooms it'll of course drop the floor throughout the building since there's just the one slab not broken up by stem walls. Here's staggered floor and ceiling heights in these pics. Works fine for the most part. There are definitely issues with foundations, I fight with them often, but this usually isn't an issue.

I had issues until I started clipping the views. Clip the sides and elevation of the cross section and/or elevation windows and bring them in as close as you can to the building. I now only have issues on homes with REALLY large footprints (happens on one project I have over 200' wide) where clipping doesn't help. You can also switch to live view from plot lines, though I dislike it as much as anyone else. Still annoying that it's an issue at all but this does help. This second pic is the 200'+wide one, still has the color issues but it's somewhat minimal.

I haven't found a good way to do this quite yet without using solids. I'd prefer to not use them since it shows extra lines in vector views that I have to edit out of my layouts but I'm not sure if there is another way. This is pretty common in our designs, or layouts similar to this, so any input on something that I've overlooked would be great! I'd like to show the upper portion of the doorway/framed out header, have the stem wall cut down but still keep a raised stem under the adjacent wall, and not have the pony wall be cut by a doorway. 3 methods that I've used: 1. I generally use a doorway and throw in a solid at the pony wall cut but do end up with lines in the vector view around the solid. 2. Turning the wall invisible removes the framed out header so a solid needs to be used plus it causes other layers to poke through the side of the wall that can't be edited out. 3. Using a open railing with post to beam also gives the wall layer issue and doesn't let the stem wall be cut down to match the lower slab height. I'll attach a few pics and an example plan. Thanks Pony Wall_Doorway.zip

How has your experience been? I updated yesterday and I'm still freezing up for a few seconds while it autosaves. Darn.

I'm wondering if there is a way to set a room type to report to a schedule(s) prior to drawing the room. That way it could be setup with in the template and you would just have to draw rooms, assign their room type, and they will automatically report to the schedule. Just cuts out that extra step of telling each room to report to the schedule as you set its room type once drawn. I'm guessing that there isn't or it would show the Schedule option in the room type DBX in defaults.

Good tip Michael! So, looking for a way to maybe automate this even further, is there a way to have room types set to report to schedules before the room is created? A default setting for a .plan template?

Yep. Use an ortho view. In the plan view, line up the camera straight to the home, set it's height to like 10' from floor with no tilt, and bring in the FOV to whatever you need (this one is a 45). Built terrain and place an elevation line in front and behind the home at 0 and place one behind your camera at like -10' to make the terrain slope down toward the camera. Add in your driveway as a sidewalk so that it slopes with the terrain. Add in some vegetation and whatnot, pick a backdrop, and turn on the watercolor view. Adjust to your liking. Pretty darn close to what you're looking for:

Oh interesting, thank you. Since the notes didn't specifically callout that they had addressed the autosave issues I didn't think much about it. I had updated but I'll turn auto save back on. Fingers crossed, not all of my guys are diligent with manually saving!

Yes! I have had some of the most ridiculous roof issues with X14. It could absolutely be caused by odd things that I am doing but I do not remember having this many odd bugs in prior versions. Lots of gutter and shadow board oddities in X14 as I use them to try to mimic local designs as I always have.

Depends on your client base and services. For my business it's a necessity as we lean heavily on our models as a marketing tool. We get plenty of new clients that had a friend refer them because of how much they loved being able to see the build in the planning phase. Standard renders are still fine any client but a good PBR just sets you apart. Like Mark said, YMMV.

As everyone else has said, Print to PDF and setup a good watermark. I have one plastered all over but faint enough to not make it annoying to read the plans. I haven't had any complaints. Our first (rough) drafts to clients usually have the watermarked PDF, a link to the 3d viewer model, and a couple of screenshots of a quick PBR. Similarly, I have a few "sample"/"example" plans for clients that ask to see what our work may entail that are watermarked with most details, notes, and dimensions removed. Get accustomed to always using that watermark button when printing off any pdfs for clients unless it's a final set that they've paid for.