madcowscarnival

FYI, in your camera view the "CAD, ARCH FLOOR PLAN" and "Casings, Interior" are turned off. Turn these on and doors display appropriately. Alternately, move doors to "Door" layer and they display in Camera, but not in "CD - Floor Plan Layer Set). I found out what layer the door was on by bringing up "active layer display options", highlighting all layers and set to display, then selecting the door which brings up only the layers associated with that object (5 in this case). I then whittled it down to the specific layer.

Took me about 3 seconds from any position for full camera to create the view*. Noticeably longer than my typical plan (small file, few textures). * I did have to tell it to ignore about a dozen textures at first. Those textures may be causing some delay in rendering. The door issue I have no idea but suspect it must have something to do with display settings. However, I have no idea which or what.

Looks like your second floor is in the attic space. Select those walls/fixtures, cut them (ctrl-X). Go to main floor, set your heights as you want. Build a second floor. Paste then hold in place. I did this and items appear to place normally on the new 2nd floor (room definitions etc). I did delete the windows (maybe they were manually set), then placed new windows which did position according to my default settings.

Whoa Steve, thank you. That is some remarkable production quality for a short help video. Not only did it help me understand the specific issue, there were a number of other tricks I picked up just watching your interaction with the program. Excellent. Glenn, thanks for the insight on the bathroom, I could not figure out that funky shape it kept giving me. The front porch roof is supposed to have the high soffit line above the porch, without the separate high gable / high hip. I find it hard to adequately describe, and I'm likely not using the proper terminology. SNestors first post right below yours, has a good ortho view of what I manually created. Probably my inability to describe it translates into my inability to tell the program what I want.

Thank you dshall. Is it a glitch that I should send to Chief or just an order of operations error from the janky way I made the wall?

I did just build the walls and cut at above ceiling (which Chief apparently recognized the roof as). However, at the front face of the intersection between the auto wall (on the inside of the porch) and my manual wall, it cuts off the siding at that corner. Joe, or anyone else watching this, any ideas?

Thanks Joe, that actually makes me feel pretty good coming from one of the high-end users here.

If anyone can offer some insight/advice. I was unable to set up this roof to draw automatically. I manually edited to how the client wants it to look, however, I have no walls in the area above the lower roof plane and the higher plane soffit. I can go to attic level, draw a wall (which then sticks above the main roof) then manually pull it down below the roof surface. However, this seems like the improper way to do things. Is there a correct way to create these wall portions, or have Chief do it automatically? Bonus: is there a way to create this roof automatically? It was originally set up as a high gable over the porch, which was building properly. With high-soffit hip it tries to build only over the porch. This is also a bastard-hip roof. The little hip over the master bath has never been happy with autobuilding over that higher ceiling. If you auto-build it will demonstrate the issue? Thank you for any help. 19-070 alt roof.plan

Change it in Roof Plane specifications. I just went in and tried to find the default for roof planes specifically but was unable to. However, selecting and editing the individual roof plane -> Structure ->Roof -> Rafter Spacing takes care of it.

That looks great Joey, what filter is used on that picture in particular? Or is that an outside post-rendering?

EDIT: I figured out you can place trees etc without requiring a terrain. Thanks all.

I've completed a builders house sketch into a plan. I generally only produce the structural/permitting requirements (no site plan, terrain, etc.). He has asked for a front elevation with stucco, stone, and trees. The materials I can handle easily enough. Is it possible to insert trees in elevation only? I selected one that is showing up, however its layer order is in front of roof, behind walls (odd looking). It doesn't appear I can manually change it to front or back layers. Is it possible to produce *only* a dressed up front elevation (no ortho) without properly setting up some manner of terrain on which to set plants/trees etc?

OP, just an FYI. There are print-to-image programs that will generate PNG, jpg or a number of other image files natively without needing to PDF print->screenshot->PNG/jpg->import. This should significantly cut down on CA file size and probably make operation more smooth depending on how many / how large PDF details you have in the program. I too find the dwg import feature squirrelly likely due to my various AutoCad settings in those drawings. I specifically use ImagePrinterPro.

The original post is old news now but... I've never not used CA over a server for file storage. At the office its unnoticeable, plenty of high-speed transfer. At home office I now connect via VPN to that server (rather than a mapped cloud drive). Its a little slower opening, and saving, but other than that no problem. I have had situations where I forget to close out a file one evening, VPN logs out automatically the next day, get back to the program that evening, log in again, and no issues with corruption etc.

They seem like a quality product. They were a supplier on a house project I worked on, but the Owner ultimately went with traditional suspended slab. I see a major advantage in built-in runs for infrastructure, insulation, dead loads. I also believe the mfg. has a lot (if not all) of their various details uploaded to www.caddetails.com. However, like many manufactured products a lot of people skip them in the end due to somewhat higher costs regardless of superiority over traditional construction.

Thank you all for the suggestions and thoughts.

SNestor, the plan, for what it's worth, is attached. I took your suggestion and placed the double wall at the laundry wall. The house orientation is such that the front of the house, with entry is into the dining room. The rear of the house will look out over the Owner's property and lake. 19-052 Ben Layout REV A.plan

I'm laying out a slab on grade house for a guy; something I rarely get in to. His idea is an entry to a laundry off the Living Room. I don't particularly like that, but only other option is through a utility (with their deep freeze, kind of like a large general utility) with an extra entrance through master bath. Any thoughts on what would be more preferred? Bottom line, I'll make it work for him, but I want him to not have regrets.

Is it possible to place an editable text box on sheet 0 of the layout? Currently I just copy and paste in place the text sheet by sheet (for instance a descriptor of that sheet, foundation, floor, second, etc.). My plan sets are small, and its not a big deal, but it would make things more convenient. Something like an attribute block in AutoCad. Also, is there a method to align the plan file placement between sheets. When I send a sheet to layout, the width around the actual drawing is usually much larger, and I don't need the detail/section arrows for elevations. So I manually trim the frame, then shift the drawing to about the center of the sheet. I can't think of any really good way to align between foundation, main, and second floor. Also, not important but searching these generic terms doesn't return good results.

A couple points for this for future searches. I don't think it looks like a PS model especially with them having purchased the CAD file. I work with two designers that set up their plans in that same method in MS. Title block and everything nothing in PS. I'm actually a fan of that method for structural analysis. That said, there are some cheaper options than AutoCAD for modification of DWG files, DesignCad (by TurboCad) is one. I think their full program is only $100 or so. One of the designers mentioned above uses this program. It is not for longtime AutoCad users, it is counter-intuitive to everything I've learned for the past 20 years. But for a new user or someone making a few minor changes is does import, modify, and output .dwg files for far less than the AutoDesk yearly subscription.

A client has a full house model drawn up in a paid version of Sketchup. They sent the (huge >133MB) file link and I successfully imported the object into CA. I can view exterior and somehow even set and manipulate a camera on the interior. However, is there any easier way to break up the object into floors or view by floor level in plan? I don't want to willy nilly start messing around because the size of the file (also nearly 1M surface count). Its not critical, I do have their PDF output that I can markup for structural, it would be nice to know if possible or not. Thanks all.

To add to Gawdzira above, AutoDesk TrueView is a freeware viewer that comes with a conversion program that can save backward through all ACad versions. I find it much more helpful than going back to someone to save back instead. It uses the current engine and produces the same output that Autocad would use to save backward.

@Renerabbitt, having grown up in a 3 story Queen Anne Victorian with a loft area 4th, I would hate to pay your utility bills.

Solver, thank you. Transform-Replicate is not a command I make much use of. That appears to be the ticket.

Is there a rotate function similar to point to point move? I have CAD lines from a site plan imported in and blocked together, I need to rotate the site plan block to align with the house, basically horizontal rather than the line's actual bearing. I can get close with the edit handles but would like to be more precise. Such as, if I place the corner of the setbacks at the corner of roof, can I rotate the block around that specific point? Or can I rotate the block from some bearing line and snap it to 0 degrees? In CAD this would be a reference then snap to ortho. I can't figure out how to phrase a question for this search.