pattyw

I tried using the end to end but there is nothing for it to snap too. For example, I need 4' of rebar overlap, so I need to go 2' past the CL of my pile, but there is nothing for me to snap to so I can't add any measurement. I then tried letting it add it to the CL, then I dragged it up out of the way and tried to edit the one side to be another 2' further out but it wouldn't let me, By editing the dimension, I'm not trying to say that I want to edit the label to a different value that what is really there. Would be nice if there was a way that I could start a measurement, then as I drag it, sure, go ahead and show me all the sub dimensions. Then when I drag pass the CL of the pile, I can stop when that sub measure is 2'. Then if I let go, add the measurement as a SINGLE dimension from the starting point.

I am trying to do a rebar takeoff and need dimensions. 1) 1st issue is when I manually place dimensions, a single dimensions is getting broken up into a ton of smaller ones at every point it finds along the way. What is that feature called? How can I turn off? I played around with the Default Settings\Dimensions\Locale Manual\Locate Objects but then I couldn't even place a manual dimension anymore! 2) So right now I place a point to point dimensions and I'm careful to not pick any existing points on model so the dimension is not attached to anything. But then I need to stretch that dimension some to account for rebar splice lap, etc, but I can't edit the dimension? I try grabbing all the various arrows at the endpoints, but I can't edit the dimensions endpoints. The dimension length is fixed. All I can do is rotate the text, shift the text, etc. How can I place an independent dimension and 100% edit all aspects of it? thank you X15 25.2.0.53 Windows 64

Thanks I tried looking into what you suggested but didn't understand it. I finally did figure out how to get the roof closer to what I wanted. There is a another different pitched porch roof on the backside that you can't see in the image. I changed that porch roof's pitch to match the pitch of the main roof in the image (the left side) and a few other tweaks and you can see I now have the fascia heights matching. However, I've got that small part of the roof that sticks out past that wall and was trying to pull that back a little. I tried changing the overhang of that one wall (red line) with the hope that it would shift that one ridge line to the left and thus starting the pitch down sooner to get that roof corner to line up with the wall corner. CA does exactly what I expected, BUT, it decided to raise the entire roof!!! I don't get it. Why is CA moving the entire roof up?

I'm having an issue where the roof over my left wing won't mesh with the rest of the front roof. I have two wings that stick out on either side and a porch in between. The wings have a 4:1 roof and the porch is 2:1. I've got the right side working although the gutters kind of overlap, but the left side is driving me nuts. CA insists on putting it higher. I've gone into all the walls and rooms and verified they all have the same settings, elevations, ceiling structure, finish, etc. Finally while looking at a cross section, for some reason CA on the left side is inserting an extra 5 1/4" between the top of my ceiling and where the top of the wall and trusses would land. I can't figure out where that 5 1/4 gray area you see in the left cross section is coming from. So, then I tried just lowering the ceiling height of that left wing room to match and the whole model falls apart. Then for some reason, the 2:1 porch roof shoots way out, like a 4' overhang. Any ideas on what I might be missing on getting that right side to align better?

Great video Solver, thank you. Another approach that partially worked is I had used soffits. When it comes to accurate renderings from the room's point of view, there are multiple possible solutions if you don't care about what's happening inside the hidden spaces. In this case, soffits was the easiest. But in my case,now I do care what's going on between floors. Plus it helps with more accurate material lists. Even though my county doesn't require any drawings for MEP, the reason I'm trying to do it this way is so that I can accurately draw as much of my MEP stuff as possible to make sure I have no conflicts. Changing the ceiling heights seemed like the best the solution and was easiest UNTIL I had a floor above, then it fell apart. This custom ceiling plane approach seems to be the next best solution if you care about what's going on and just requires a few extra steps cleaning up loose ends. Both these approaches appear so far to do the right framing without excess drywall or moulding. CA seems to be severely lacking when it comes to MEP, maybe even non-existent. I've yet to find an easy way to model the slopes of my pipes. Everything else I am drawing using basic shapes.

To the best of my knowledge, interior non loading bearing walls only need a single top plate.

One thing I did notice is that it looks like it's framing all my walls as load bearing with a double top plate on all of them.

So then I switched to Solver's idea of putting a doorway in that wall and that helped a lot. I still have some wierd issues here and there but I guess I can live with them. The main issue with this custom ceiling plane approach seems to be mouldings. They don't seem to handle custom ceiling planes. They continue to draw at the original ceiling height, so I then figured out to go in, turn off defaults and change the vertical offset for the molding (figured this out after my pics below).

I continued trying with the custom ceiling plane and extra walls with no room definition set but that seamed a dead end. I had to make the walls visible but I just couldn't get it to do what I wanted. I got close, but the ceiling plane kept moving somehow and I had lots of wierd artifacts.

Thank you, I really appreciate the help. I've attached some pics of what I'm seeing right now. This is where I am trying to lower the ceiling over a doorway to the master bedroom so this falls under partial room ceiling drop. I had initially created two invisible walls on either side of the door and had tried changing the ceiling heights of those two small spaces. Now in these pics, I've added the custom ceiling plane, but you can clearly see the molding from the room going into the chase space. I changed the one invisible wall to a visible wall with no room definition but can't get it to just draw in the top part between the two different ceiling heights. The only place I can find a "cut" is in that now visible wall's specification roof tab, there is a "roof cuts wall at bottom", but that didn't help. I treid various options on the structure tab platform intersections, but no matter what I do, so far, I end up with a solid wall there and the molding doesn't stop and follow that wall.

I have a 3 floor home I am designing. I'm having an issue with ceiling heights on the 2nd floor. All floors have 10' ceilings. I have 16" floor trusses between the 2nd and 3rd floor. I am now trying to model my MEP. I had designed my 2nd floor with various closets, etc lined up with the plan to have those with only an 8.5 or 9' ceiling so that I could have a transverse chase under my floor trusses for running hvac. I had entered those as 8.5' but now somewhere along the way they became 10'. Now whenever I try to change the ceiling height of a 'room' on my 2nd floor, every room's ceiling height is changing and the entire 3rd floor moves down. 1) I tried a custom ceiling plane but I don't get the desired effect. While it does draw the ceiling lower, the molding is still at the original height in the space and no automatic walls or anything is being framed in for the sides of the lower ceiling. Do custom ceiling planes work with a floor above? 2) I tried another trick I had read in another thread to set all my 3rd floor walls to "no room definition". Then I was able to change all the ceiling heights of the needed spaces on my 2nd floor and it looked awesome. In 3d view, below and just above the ceiling it looked great. From below, I was able to get the molding all set. From above, I could see the ceiling plane lower along my transverse chase. Of course, since my 3rd floor walls had no room definition, my entire 3rd floor was mashed down ontop of the 2nd floor. So then I went back to my 3rd floor and set all the walls back to having a room definition, and.... all my rooms on the 2nd floor went back to a 10' ceiling height essentially blowing away my changes. Any other ideas on how to have different ceiling heights when there is a floor above?

Ok, sorry. From my point of view, this is the same problem as what's happening in the OP's 1st comment is exactly what's happening to me. I will reply to your 2nd option of ceiling planes in a new post.

Could you elaborate on the few ways around this? I have my 3 story house designed and now trying to model mep. All floors have 10' ceilings. I have 16" floor joists for the 3rd floor floor. I had designed my 2nd floor with various closets, etc lined up that I was going to model them as 8.5 or 9' ceilings so that I could have a transverse chase under the main 3rd floor trusses to run hvac. Problem now is when I try to change the ceiling height of those various small spaces, doesn't matter what I change, the entire 3rd floor moves down. Really hoping there is an easy way to resolve this.

I've tried that. Being selective doesn't do anything since it won't find a match between the two lists once something is on multiple floors.

I selected all in my material list and sent to master list. I tried doing it one by one between the two list, but others wouldn't update. Believe me, I've started with an empty master list, pushed ONE of those 2x4s to the master list, that's my only item in the master list, but it won't update any other of the exact same 2x4s in the same category in my material list when I try to update those rows in the material. It's like behind the scenes, maybe they're also using floor as a part of the match. I have too much stuff in my official master list. I will try to create a sample file tomorrow.

There's a manufacturer column so if they really wanted 2x4s from different vendors then that's how I would do it, but... manufacturer is not one of the columns help says it uses to match on, so who knows. Most my columns are empty. For your other examples I would then use completely different master list files. I don't think it's that easy to support your other scenarios in the same master list file even now. I'm looking at this category in my materials list and it has 30 rows. I have the same 30 rows in my master list, they're just sorted differently. For example, all those various 2xs, they are sorted by floor in the material list, but then in the master, they're all still there, just now grouped together.

Whatever the system, it doesn't make any sense. I just don't understand what is the purpose of having duplicate items in the Master List.

LOL, I was searching for master. I see it now. I thought you had copied pasted and was looking for bold but you're right it is there. They do say if "ID" matches which it won't every time it finds that item on a new floor for example. So they've created a way for an item to go into the master list multiple times when pushing INTO the master list but there's only one that counts on the way out. Seems like a bug to me. If they ignored the ID (FO1, M1, etc) on the way in, maybe it would work better. You'd still have duplicate entries across the different ID Categories, but there shouldn't be within any one category. Even better would be that if one disables the ID column for the master list, then just ignore ID and ID category complete and now only one row would get pushed into the master list.

Where are you finding your #3 and 4 in help? I'm trying search but not seeing it. Your #2 and #3 seem to conflict. In 2, you say chief isn't testing ID. In 3, you're saying the help tries to match on it, which it's not doing, and would never work given how the ids most times don't match. Also, I'm not seeing what you're saying in 4. I have exact duplicate rows, and the last duplicate is having the default column set on. However, when I ask the material list to update from the master, it's actually taking the first exact match of all the duplicates, and is ignoring the default column. Editing components is something I've started to do but it's still very tedious.

I am using the Materials List as my final and the Master to store prices. I'm just confused why I have to enter the same price over and over into so many rows. Then when I need to change a price, I need to make sure I find and select all the same rows. There doesn't seem to really be anything about master that makes it "Master". I mean, if they got rid of that ID column and condensed it down so there was only one single concrete, 2x4x8, etc, then that would seem better, I went into preferences and turned off the Id column, but yet, even after creating a new empty master list, when I update my material list back into the master list, all the duplicate rows still show up and it's just confusing why. I'll see a bunch of duplicates, only one of those duplicates will have the default checked, but then I can't delete the non default ones. But wait, there's more. So I edit the one row that is checked default, I close master list, I reopen, I verify my new price is set for that one row out of all the duplicates that is marked default, I then go to my material list, update from master, and ..... nothing. The new price did not come over. So I edited all the duplicate row prices and modified by .01 and figured out which rows are going where. That's when I realized I do need to keep that id column on so that I can tell which group since it uses that somehow as part of primary key when going back and forth even though the IDs end up being broken and don't match, maybe they use just the group (Foundation,Masonry, etc). So I play some more, looks like they don't use that default column either. I have many duplicate rows in Master, looks like the last of the duplicates is marked as Default, yet when pulling prices from Master into the Material, it looks like they only take the 1st match from that group. Is this really the way they are intending for this to work or is there an issue? I just want to make sure there isn't some feature I've missed that lets me set the price for a cu yd of concrete, 2x4, sheet of drywall etc in one place. It's tedious having to constantly find and update many rows. Today, I edit my plan, then I generate a new material list, then I select all, then I update from master list, then I patiently wait while X14 goes through what seems to be convulsions for 10-15 seconds and the screen is weird and I can't do anything until the convulsions have stopped. Then I have to deal with finding and updating various prices.

I get all that and that's what I do, but it's a bit tedious when I want to change a price. Today, I have 15 concrete rows I need to update in my master list. Just scrolling through the list, it's broken out 2x6, knobs, hinges, etc into a ton of different rows and this is the master list. Is there really no central place to set a price for concrete (per cuyd), 2x6 (per foot), a hinge, etc? Or am I missing something? Long term, where does CA want this data or what is their vision for this? They give us a place to put it into a component with add'l fields for markup, labor, etc. If I put it there, in the component, the material list pulls that in by default without any extra steps. But then we can edit the material list, save it, and push that back to a master list, but now it's just a single number which requires extra steps the next time we generate a new material list. Would be nice if there was a Master Components Pricing List feature or something where it would display all the unique components and let use set the price, labor, markup for concrete, framing, drywall, etc in one place and then when we generate a new material list, it's that much closer to be correct right away.

I am struggling to grasp these two concepts. I get the material list. But the master list..... When 1st learning CA, after generating my 1st material list, I was expecting to be able to enter the price for concrete, rebar, framing, etc. I then updated to the master list. But, I still have lots of different concrete, horiz rebar, fir stud, etc. I don't see a single place that I can enter a price for concrete. I also don't see a way when generating a material list to have it auto pull from master list. The master list looks almost like the material list, just without the floor column. Is there a way to set a price for unique components and have them auto populate when I generate my master list? Right now, only way I see is to edit the components of every single object and set a price there.

Yeah, thank you. Just figured that out from help. Need to start backing that file up. I'm always scared when I right click and use the Update To and Update From options. I had accidentally blown away a lot of work.

So am I stuck with all these wrong entries in my master list?

I've been experimenting with a sample file and ICF walls and there is no link between the foam layers and thermal envelope calculation so I'm still stuck trying to figure out why all the walls on some of my floors have that one component no longer end up in the material list. Probably just a coincidence that I had just cleaned up the foam layers when I noticed my wall area disappeared. I was able to delete all the components of my walls except for the component with the thermal envelope calculation and it properly showed up in the material list. Thank you Robert, yes I'm aware I can export the thermal envelope area separately but I need some extra values in my material list to calculate costs. The only way I see so far to manipulate what goes into the material list is to edit the components of the objects in the plan. For walls, the only way I know how to manipulate the components is to either edit in default settings (for any new walls I place) or edit the layers in the wall definition.