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Thank you Glen, That's probably the correct way to do it. I also found just creating a duplicate of the wall type with a slightly different name also seems to work. Clutters up the wall type list though. Regarding the wall height issue, I found that the interior/exterior of a wall seems to set which room adjacent to the wall defines the wall height. I've always kind of ignored interior/exterior for internal walls, as it didn't seem important, but with regard to dominant room height, this is apparently very important. Rotating these walls 180 degrees fixed a lot of areas where wall height was problematic for me. I must have missed this in my Chief Architect 101 class. Hopefully this might help someone else who missed the same lesson.

My plan looks like a box with a load bearing cross wall dividing the bedrooms at the rear and great room at the front roughly 1/3:2/3. I want the load bearing Cross Wall to penetrate through the Side Walls to be flush with the exterior. I set it to Through Wall at End/Start under Structure, but this is not enough. If I Break the Side Walls at the Cross Walls, perfect, now my cross wall penetrates the side walls to flush with the exterior. Then after some amount of time, the Side Walls "heal" and I'm back where I started. I've noticed that unless there is something different between two co-lineal abutting walls, they seem to self heal. Is there a way to turn off this behavior? Is there something trivial I can make different between the two co-lineal abutting walls so they won't heal back together? Perhaps related or not but another little problem, My ceiling heights are different on either side of the cross wall (8' bedroom - 9' great room). The height of my cross wall defaults to the 9'ceiling. I want it to default to the height of the 8'ceiling. The missing foot of wall will be provided by a wall one floor above ballooned through it's floor. This works perfect and finds the 8' ceiling to stop at, but my Cross Wall is a foot to high, so the framing of each overlap. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Regards, JGM

I am trying to implement a rain screen wall by adding a second framing layer of 3/4X2 pressure treated furring strips between the house wrap and the siding.. I've set 0 top and bottom plates and all seems to be working well, except I also end up with 3/4x7-1/4 "headers" over the doors and windows. Not unreasonable, but is there any way to suppress them, obviously only in the 2nd framing layer? I've tried setting wall parameters in Structure to furred wall and split wall, no effect. I've tried setting header to inside wall in the Windows dialogue, no effect. I could manually put the unwanted headers on a different layer and turn off the layer, but then I have to turn off auto-wall framing which I'd like to avoid doing. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Regards

Solved, Seems Open Below defaults the walls to balloon through. I guess as wall details are organized by floor, CA can't generate a wall detail for ballooned through walls? Changed the walls to stop at ceiling and stop at floor and all seems well.

I have a few walls which don't show up as wall details in the project Browser. No auto label either, although they do show up in a wall schedule. In plan view with the Wall Framing layer on, I see the ends of all the studs. In a clipped cross-section, the framing looks perfect, but no associated wall detail. Seems localized to three of 4 walls that form an elevator shaft on 1st and 2nd floor. The upper floor is Clear Below. It is surrounded on three sides by a stairwell which is also Clear Below on the upper floor. Both share a common front wall that generates a Wall Detail just fine. As this seemed suspicious, three walls with open below surrounded by open below, I temporarily changed all to Utility but still no Wall Details or labels. Any suggestions? Regards

Yes glennw, as an engineer and mariner with over 30 years of field survey experience, I'm pretty sure I have a good idea of what a contour line is. So, the most complete answer is from Chopsaw, thank you Chopsaw. As slope is changing in both x and y at a constant rate, this can be represented as two linear equations. The intersection points of the two linear equations result in linear contour lines at an angle to the slope i.e. at a diagonal, as opposed to my first suspicion that this might result in contour lines of circular arcs. If the slopes are equal in x and y, the angle of the diagonal contour lines will be 45 degrees. I verified this by creating a spreadsheet of points sloping 1/4" per foot in both X and Y and importing to CA. The resulting terrain contour lines are attached. Thank you all for participating and resolving the question. Regards As an engineer, mariner and years of field survey work, I'm well aware of what a countour line is. I can assure you simulktaneous slope in orthagonal directions (x and y)

Thank you Mark, But how to do as you say in both X and Y? Say the most important is sloping the lot down from back to front. So I could create elevation lines parallel to the X axis from left to right terrain boundary every 10 feet, down 10/4 (for a 1/4 in 12 slope) in elevation. Lets call these primary elevation lines. Now how do I create slope from side to side? If I create elevation lines now at right angles (parallel to the Y axis) to those first created, won't they be in conflict with those parallel to the x-axis? I can certainly see how to create slope in one axis, but not in both at the same time unless I draw small individual elevation lines (secondary) parallel to the Y axis, in between each primary elevation lines. But this I think is going to create little 10 foot by ten foot flat areas . Maybe CA will smooth it a bit? So with a 70 by 40 (50 actually, but keep the numbers divisible) foot lot at 10 feet between elevation lines, I'm going to need to draw 8 primary elevation lines, and 40 secondary ( 5 between each pair of primary elevation lines at 10 foot intervals), for 48 elevation lines. But, I don't think this will work either though as the primaries are going to be set to a constant elevation parallel to the X axis, while the secondaries are going to be trying to lower that as it gets closer to the side lot lines. So I think I will need to break the 8 primaries into 5 little pieces each and forego any secondaries for 40 elevation lines and hope CA smooths them somewhat. So, I'm suspicious that the same slope in X and Y will result in contour lines of constant elevation that will be circular arcs (X^2+Y^2=Z^2), not the easiest thing to draw accurately with the elevation spine tool. As I originally said, surely there is a simpler way? Thank you for taking the time to converse about the issue. Regards

I am working on a grading plan for my building site. I need to create terrain slope in x and y directions simultaneously, i.e; slope down from the sides of the house to the sides of the lot and slope down from the back of the lot to the front. It would be quite simple to do if I could add sloped elevation lines, but elevation lines are a constant elevation. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this? I tried a Terrain Break line with an elevation point at both ends hoping it would create a sloping "ridge" along the Break line, but the effect of the elevation points are very local to their placement. It seems I would need to externally calculate and then place a large matrix of elevation points to accomplish my goal. There must be an easier way? Regards

I had the same problem, but alas was unable to find a solution. I will follow your thread in hopes that someone is smarter than I. Regards.

Hi Eric, from your simple example seems to work fine. I my complex situation with a ballooned wall and an adjacent roof plane (parapet roof deck), CA separates the pony wall into two, with plates at the change in siding. I've given up on the pony wall idea and just going to ignore it even though my roof plane framing overlaps the siding where it shouldn't be. I'll make a note on the drawings, and siding materials will be a little overstated. Thank you for your advice.

Thank you for your suggestions. I deleted all adjacent walls to the problem area and rebuilt them one room at time watching and setting my ceiling heights as I went. The problem did not re-occur. As my son would say when he was little; "I dunno know!".

I am creating a dropped ceiling under roof trusses using a manual ceiling plane and 2X4s vertically. The longitudinal 2X4 joists build correctly, but no end (rim) joists or blocking. Is this expected?, or do I need to change a setting somewhere to enable automatic end joists and blocking? Regards

I'm new to Chief Architect but have used Home Designer Pro for a number of years. I'm working on a plan started in Home Designer, now in Chief Architect. I need adjacent rooms separated by an invisible wall to have different ceiling heights as this sets the wall height to the top plates. (Manual hip roof planes are not symetrical so one exterior hip wall needs to be lower than the other exterior wall.) When I change the ceiling height in one room, some adjacent rooms change to the same height as well but others don't. This is the opposite behavior to Home Designer where a change only affects one room.. Is there a default setting somewhere that needs to be disabled to allow adjacent rooms to have a different ceiling height? I have already found in Roof defaults and disabled: "Same Roof Height at exterior walls", and; "Same Height Eaves" I have also tried making the wall visible as a test, and; Disabling Roof and Ceiling over these rooms in the Room Dialogue. I still can't set different room heights. Thanks

I need to change siding materials half way up a wall. I thought a pony wall would be perfect. However, CA frames this as two stacked walls each with their own top and bottom plates. I'm ballooned through the floor with the "Stop at floor below" structure option if this makes a difference. I just want 1 bottom and 2 top plates, continuous studs with the siding change at the specified pony wall height. Any suggestion on how to achieve this? Thank you, in advance, for your kind assistance.

Thank you for the feedback

Perhaps this is odd, but I need to turn the rafter direction of a shed roof 90 degrees from the slope. Structurally, this shortens my clear-span length considerably. I've tried adding a joist direction to both the top floor and the attic floor with no effect. I've turned the roof plane 90 degrees, but the slope moves with it, ignoring the hip and high gable wall settings (which appear to be unnecessary). Is there a way to accomplish this with auto framing?, or do I need to manually frame this application? Any help would be appreciated. Regards