HumbleChief

i give up,  why even request this.....  "but for now I'll use CAD fill and move on for the ConDocs" ........ yep,  let's not find out what we don't know,  I just don't get this approach.......  I don't think I have ever had this problem.......  good job Larry,  stick your head in the sand....  Glenn wants to help and you don't help him help you....  I just don't get it....

Come on Scott, lighten up a little. My time is pretty precious and I posted thinking someone had had this kind of experience before and could shed some light. Apparently not and I'm over it. I don't really HAVE to have the answer but it would have been nice and AS ALWAYS I appreciate ALL the help I receive here EVERY time, this time being no exception. In this case, and in most every other case what I really need are good Con Docs, not always a perfect model. Sure I could spend hours trying to get a plan that showed this behavior in the few instances I've seen it or trying to reduce the size of the model and zipping it but those hours would not be worth it - to me.

My head is not in the sand, conversely it is focused on the job at hand - producing ConDocs - and I posted to see if there was anyone who had this experience before and could offer a quick fix. I don't have the time to pursue it any further but as always I appreciate the help and if I discover the problem I'll post the solution. Think about it - hours (I've already spent a lot of time on this) pursuing the perfect model or minutes with a simple CAD box? We each have different methods and different priorities and mine must lean towards the quicker fix at this point knowing the state and schedule of this project.

"Another possibility is there is a room at level one that has a lowered floor."

That's a great suggestion. When I get back to the plan I'll check it out.

Do you have monolithic slab checked? I get that all the time until it's a room.  Do your footings have the same main layer checked. Just guessing.  I would remove that footing and attach to a good one and bring it around to connect.

Thanks Perry

Yes on the MS and for some reason it won't connect as a room. I'll check the main layer and yes I've 'brought a good one around' to connect but no love. I'll probably stumble upon it but for now I'll use CAD fill and move on for the ConDocs.

Larry,

 

Can you post a small plan that demonstrates the problem?

Any manually drawn foundation wall that's not connected to form a 'room' draws with a concrete fill like the problem wall and as soon as those walls are connected to form a room the fill changes to the solid white fill. The wall is not invisible and I've drawn it 20 times in every different way I can think of but it won't 'connect' to form a room, if indeed that's the problem. May have to bail out and go with a CAD fill.

I always wondered why the footings will display differently depending on some factor I can't seem to figure out. I can usually re-draw a wall to cure it but in this plan (WAY too big to attach) I can't seem to get the footings to display consistently. The white fill on the left is how every footing is filled except for the one footing on the right corner.

If I understood why they display differently (in this plan and many times others) I might be able to fix it.

I've got a dual Xeon processor setup (check my sig) and they are overclocked and move more data (giga flops) than the fastest single Xeon Processor by a very small margin but are they fast at RayTracing? MUCH faster (close to half the time) than my previous i7, can't remember which but an earlier model that was overclocked as well. But is it fast? No way to really tell without a test plan and all the details that that involves. I got a really good deal ($2500) on the set-up so I jumped but I would not expect blazing speed unless you really spend a boatload on fast(er) dual Xeons.

Also remember that not all Motherboards allow Xeons to be over-clocked so a real world test of some kind is in order before spending the cash. The person who built my machine  suggested the Xeons he had on hand after I told him that RayTracing is about CPU and moving data. Overall i'm happy with the system but certainly not blown away by the speed increase.

I think it would still take that boatload of money to get real breakthrough RayTrace speed with today's technology - at least until they find a way to offload the RT work to the GPU - that's when the game will change completely.

Great thread. Always re-thinking detail management and am using separate plan, different floors but the different floors serves no real purpose in my system. Just spreads things out too much. Love the idea of a separate detail plan for Foundation, Windows etc. but don't manage my Layouts well enough to keep those detail plans up to date and that looks like what I'm going to change. Managing Layout is as important as any aspect in CA, associating files etc. and that's my weakest and hence most time consuming task in CA. Again great thread and thanks for the ideas.

You can also create a second (or upper) floor for all your attic walls. Wall heights controlled by roofs. Sometimes this is the only way to stay sane when afflicted with unruly attic walls.

Alt-Q is your friend.

I've used this program for a very long time starting with CA version 8 and nothing makes me feel more stupid than trying to figure out your problem. I downloaded your plan and couldn't figure it out.To this day I do not understand the structure dbx and I'm guessing I never will. That either means I really am stupid or the structure dbx is evil. Hopefully those who are smarter will assist.

Just found out my plan doesn't have 'user defined' option when using macros in the windows dbx. That's where the magic happens. Wow. Was on the phone with tech support and I'll post this in case anyone else runs into this.

This problem, missing user defined macro button, was plan specific. New plans are OK.

Solution. Open new plan. CAD>Text> CADText management>export. Select the ones you want (I selected all of them) Export then import into current plan. User defined option now appears.

I can specify each window number W01 etc. and label with Chief's macros but the 'label' I get shows 3636 (inches) for a 3030 window. Can we specify a label that reads 3030 for a 3030 window instead of 3636? Worthless without this ability.

Why not upgrade to Adobe X or XI never any problems with that. I use X and it work great.

Maybe because it cost quite a bit - $450 from the Adobe site. I use Bull Zip and it's been pretty good - and free. I don't highly recommend it but it's been pretty reliable.

I tried a different one on the recommendation from another thread - I think it was PDF Writer - but had to uninstall and actually got my money back. Just didn't work on my system.

Blue Beam sounds interesting.

Vinnie,

It's good to know what your going to do with Chief. Will you RayTrace a lot? Get the fastest CPU you can afford.

3D rendering? Get the fastest gaming video card you can afford.

Other than that get a reasonable amount of memory, 16 gb should do it, and a reasonably fast hard drive, 1 tb should be large enough. A large enough power supply to run all your stuff and you're off to the races.

I started off with pretty small models but got bigger and bigger jobs and needed to upgrade to make working in Chief easier/faster. Buy as much as you can afford with the CPU and video card your main focus.

Larry,  tiff's are very large files-- I would never use those

Yeah but I wasn't trying to make a point about file size, I was making a point about what works best on my system and for me TIFF's (I receive both TIFF's and PDF's from my Title 24 guy) are way faster and better behaved than PDFs, even though they may be large files. I know it must be something on my end but I can't track it down nor can tech support so I'm out of the PDF business until something changes.

Heck I can hardly print a full page (8 forms) of my T24 PDF's as it will only print the top half of a couple different PDF's. I have to print to PDF before I can print PDF's many times. Again just echoing the OP's concerns with PDF's.

I've stopped using PDFs whenever I can. They just bog my system down. Most of mine come from other vendors and even with them trying to print at lower res it still very very slow to print and makes really big files. Very unhappy about this and it seems to be unique somehow to my system as others have not reported too many problems. The PDF feature is one of the best features in Chief and I can't/won't use it anymore.

Called tech support and they were - nice - but no solution. I use TIFF's JPEG's and PNG's whenever I can.

That doesn't help your situation but it might help to know you're not alone with a PDF problem.

Kay,

You might have mad skills and don't know it. I don't think I could get a building to look like that if I tried. No idea what you did but am curious.

Just tried it in X6. Worked as expected. Just basically un-check all the boxes and make the gable sub-fascia the same depth as the rafters and voila.

Can't explain the gremlins. I am working in a plan with only 4 walls and a gable roof to test so maybe on a more complicated plan it gets more ..uhh.. complicated.

...., or the CA gremlins are messing with me. 

...most likely scenario.

...but I wanted add I can't imagine a more automated method - without gremlins of course - and I haven't tried X6 yet.

Could this be a new problem in X6? Sorry I can only use my X5 right now, but I can't find a way to NOT have the gable fascia have the rafter tail design.

In X5 I just tried to get gable end rafter tails and had no problem. Hope this is what you wanted. I've attached a pic and the dbx.

Un-check trim to soffits and soffits in 'options'

I think I see your point now Perry. If I select each member it can be changed that way. Pretty complex roof, was hoping to avoid that.

If you do not have a soffit,  the rafters will match the fascia,  makes sense,  typically this is what you would want.  

 

If you do not want a soffit but you want the fascia and roof framing different materials,  zero out the fascia sizes and then add a shadow board that can be used as the fascia.  You can then have the two different materials.  

Great suggestion Scott. True you would want the rafters to match the fascia but only to the blocking for the outside wall where they would then be their natural color again. In this case I have a black fascia and want to show it as black alone for the framing plan. Your suggestion should work great though, thanks very much.

Hey Perry,

Yeah I have 2 planes and I get the spacing and member 'size' to be different, auto or manual, but it looks like the framing member 'type' (i.e. I-Joist, Lumber Glu-lam) is set up in the defaults and can only be changed there and not per plane. Can you get different member 'types' per plane?

Can't remember how/if this can be done but when I change the fascia color to (let's say) black the roof joists change to black as well. What setting am I missing?

It seems I can change the spacing and size of roof framing members but not the type.

For example if I want to frame one plane with 8" x 18" Glu-Lams @ 48" O.C. and another with I-Joists @ 16" O.C. it seems like I have to choose one or the other. Is there a way to use 2 different types of roof framing members? Using auto roof framing.