VisualDandD

Joe Thanks for the tip. It is funny, I have never needed this, and then the other day, I ran into a situation where this detail might be needed in a garage (to elevate the slab enough on a crawl to have only one step). I was not going to fully detail the area, but heck...that is so easy, I think I will. It is a good exercise anyway. Thanks so much for sharing!

Can you send to layout as "plot lines" and then manually delete?

As someone who dabbles in rendering from time to time, I must say your work looks GREAT! Very nice.

I had assumed that you were an individual trying to draw your own home. I know "custom" homes, as that is how I have made my living for the past 20 years. OK....lets just start with basic design. You have bedrooms with almost no bed wall. Unless your clients who want a 5000+ sf home plan on only using twin beds. Or egress requirements....how about that. A 26 50 wont meet basic egress requirements. Your roof looks like you only know how to use an "auto build" function. It is really bad. I dont think you are doing right by someone to accept payment for something like this. I am sorry, but that really looks like something that someone who know almost nothing of design would draw. This may come off as impolite, but I really am blown away. More power to you if that is the "service" you sell. Lots of good trey details though. It looks like you have invested a good bit of time to learn how to model decorative ceilings. That is one compliment I can give you.

WOW....saying that there is a lot of work is an understatement. I am not sure if you are just trying to draw your own home, but I would hate to think of someone putting so much money into this to build where the design is soo.......well, unrefined. You have baths with tubs made all kinds of non standard sizes, wacky crazy dimensions in other rooms. Odd to have a 5000+ sf home with 10' or 11' bedroom dimension. All kinds of windows that dont meet egress Wacky non standard room heights.. Really odd design in many ways....and the roof is, I am sorry, terrible. Really a strange design. Again, tough love. I would hire a designer, or buy a stock plan that is well thought out. You are going to spend quite a bit to build a 5600sf home. I would hate to see anyone build what you have in that file.

You must live in a bubble. LOTS of houses are still stick built. Custom homes are almost all stick built. Most complex roofs are not worth the headache to truss. Sure, they work on paper, but the labor cost to block and infill is not worth it in the long run to have a job that does not come out as nice. Volume ceilings and treys are much more limited in truss homes. Sure, run of the mill boxes that you are going to build the same plan 100 times,...by all means truss. Also done a lot of commercial mixed use (as a framing contractor back in the day). Most plans done by architects (and we are talking big firms and 50,000-80,000 sqft 3story complexes) are very low detail. Just showing a few basic shapes and aprox layout. The actual "detail" is done by the EWP manufacturer. Silly to invest a lot of time into laying out something you cant run the calcs' on anyway, and you are not going to seal.

Andy I tried your method. I was not seeing how you got it to drag across.?.... But, I heard back from tech support.... It was actually importing. The problem was there was some stray text that was making the extents so far back that you could not see the import. It was over 200miles wide with one small text block causing it. I was able to find and open it now. Only question I have now, is does Autocad lock you out of importing some layers. All the borders and title blocks from his layout (which you can see in the viewer) dont import in the file. No big deal in the end as I can get him to send me a PDF for permitting. I really need it to triangulate points for stakes that get taken out during clearing...etc. Just saves me trip charges to restake points at a non critical stage. (eg overdigs...etc)

Yes....should be no problem doing what you are talking about (but it wont make a sloping bottom which will have to be separate. Just create a moulding polyline and add the moldings and adjust horiz and vert offsets and sized.

Here is a thread on pool design I did in chief. I went outside the box a little and created it with roads, terrain and molding poly lines. I attached a plan file so you can see what I did. See if any of this helps you https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/9078-drew-a-pool-in-chief/

Thanks David. Sent into support, but I think I am stuck for the weekend..... I also saw that I could open it with autocad viewer and all info was there, but it did not want to import into chief. None of the versions.....weird.

Hey all. Can anyone see if they can open this file and see in Chief? I have opened tons of survey files from my surveyors but for some reason this wont show anything. I have checked it in Autocad 360 viewer and it shows just fine....but I cant get it to import?... He also sent me a few other exports (a dxf, older versions of autocad....etc) and none of them work. I tried opening old stuff he sent me in the past and it opens just fine. He is gone for the weekend now and I was hoping to do some work over the weekend. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! plot plans.zip

Wow....seems like a lot of work. This is super easy to do with proper roof and wall defs. Took me less than 2 min. Pull back roof, add new roof plane, and lower to create clip. Offset the roof where it cuts wall. Check "Roof cuts wall at bottom" on selected wall. BTW....your roof settings are crazy. -107 or something baseline hts. You are not taking advantage of things that chief will do for you. Master.plan

Very cool! Post is up when you are done. Love to see it. I have a feeling I am going to be doing more and more as well!

I believe we have found someone we are going to begin working with. Was lucky enough to reach out and find another Chief'er not far from us who will be familiar with the way we do things. Cool what a small world it can be sometimes. I wanted to thank all that reached out to respond. Just have to say there are some great guys out there doing terrific work! Thanks again Justin

Hi all. Wanted to thank everyone who has contacted. I have been buried but I do plan on responding to every email. We have not made any decisions as of yet, but I will get back with anyone who responded. Thank you Justin

Hey all. Just a little background. I have been working in Chief since the late 90's. Up until a year ago, I was always self employed. I have built and designed for the last 20 years with extensive field experience. I took a position with a small home builder north of Charlotte NC. Really great people who are honest and have a passion for building the best house they can for their customers. (I dont say that lightly.....as I have never before met and worked with people of this level of character. That is the one thing that interested me in actually working for someone else for the first time in my life). We build aprox 10-12 homes a year all about 4-5 thousand under roof. We are growing, but only will do slowly as we do not want anything to suffer in the interest of just trying to increase volume. (the owner had a 350 home per year operation pre-fallout and wants to focus on staying small and building quality now). I have been handling a lot of things. All design schematics, client guidance, I work with the engineer to appropriately annotate plans...etc. (besides take-offs, and some field supervision...etc). We need someone who is versed in chief to start taking up some of my workload. I know this will be a challenge in some ways, and I plan on setting up good Anno sets to make the process as easy as possible. To start, I would need someone to transpose engineer notes and go through and getting final plans out. I also need some help generating some marketing plans (pretty simple process just not a lot of time for me to do it). This could develop further...as you never really know where things might go. Interested in someone who might be looking for some extra work. It could be a young guy/gal without a lot of experience looking to earn extra money, or a guy with good chief skills who can really pound out some work. We are flexible and open to see what opportunities can fit into our process. We are open to fair hourly rates or just coming up with a negotiated sum per scope. I understand greatly that a power user gets done more in an hour than can a newb in half a day. We are fair minded and open. Since I draw most every day, I know what it takes to get things done and we value peoples time. Must have X8. Open to finding something that works for both parties and open to any future possibilities. As an aside, we live in an area where plans are very simple compared with some areas of the country. Generally 8-10 page sets. Not many sections...mainly floor plans and engineering notes. Engineering notes are easy. Our engineer marks up the plans by hand and we transpose the notes. I'll attach a recent set as an example of the level of detail required. I also attached an example of how our engineer marks up the plans and those need to be transposed to plans. Contact me at Justin@build4g.com Thank you Justin 4G Design Build 16-3-15 4G-TheRiestererRes-Lot643FallsCove(seal3-14-16).pdf 4G-Hill Residence-Lot 243 Pebble Bay (seal12-2-15).pdf 4G-Hill Residence-Engineering Redlines-8-7-15-Fdn.PDF 4G-Hill Residence-Engineering Redlines-8-7-15-first floor.PDF 4G-Hill Residence-Engineering Redlines-8-7-15-roof.PDF

Yep...that water is super nice....AND super easy. No kids at all. Married couple mid 40's both professionals. 4000sf house Very nice people though. As nice as they come.. Been a pleasure to work with. We are just finishing up the foundation right now and hoping to wrap it for Thanksgiving!

At first I was going to export as a symbol....but instead I just did two separate models and exported .DAE and combined in lumion. I detailed a little further....here is what I am going to present to client. I still need to go back and try it in case I wanted to do it all in chief. The idea of pool surface, I have had a lot of good luck with using transparent fills when I do raytraces on window. I put a skyline pick with some trees and it makes for great "reflections". I think you could use a water picture (semi transparent) and find the right bump map. I think you could do some cool things with the right bump, but I dont do a lot of ray trace these days. Takes too much time. I detailed a little further....here is what I am going to present to client. I could go further, but this has accurate summer sun....and will give them all the ideas they need.

I actually thought of you when I did it! Your ability to think outside the box is one I admire. I just sat here for a few minutes thinking....and it was fun when the idea came to me. Thanks for the inspiration to think outside the box. You have made me look at chief in a different manner when it comes to making it do what I want at time. Thanks man!

You are right! Try this 16-4-5 pool (2).zip

I use Lumion Here is the plan file if anyone wants to play around and see what I did. I could get a little more elegant and use solids with subtraction...etc. My only concern is that it look good from the top though. The sloping radius bottom was the challenge. First I tried 3d moulding polyline....but that was too fussy. The road with curb definition worked great! Pool was drawn on 2nd floor by accident FYI Fixed file! 16-4-5 pool (2).zip

I have a client who wanted a simple pool and I decided to see if I could model in chief. At first I scratched my head a little, but then I figured out it could be done without much issue. I created a terrain perimeter just larger than the pool. I drew elevation lines to make it slope from 3'6 to 6' along this path. I then drew the simple kidney shape (but it could be any shape). I found a good reference point at one of the tangent points that I could use when "layering" up objects. I actually just used copy and paste in place of the same shape over and over. Layer 1 pool perimeter (moulding polyline set to 6' deep and width I wanted Layer 2 tile line (same moulding polyline just set smaller) Layer 3 Coping (added moulding and adjusted offset for proper look Layer 4 Convert to road and add "curb" profile which was just a 24" radius. It follows the terrain. I then used the same shapes to create a hole in a larger slab I had made Painted materials and I had a no muss no fuss pool. (I also added in some steps and swim out. Using these techniques, I think I could probably model some pretty complex pools or free form objects. I ran a quick run rendering movie of it. (could stand a lot more detail) but just playing with the possibilities. Moulding poly lines and roads with terrain can indeed model a pool fairly easily.

Yes. Been having issues with shadows sent in line drawings if I resize it in layout (eg...not sent as a specific scale or resized on layout). It looks good on screen but you can see them offset in "preview". I have tried resend in and no luck. Have still not figured out....just quit using shadows in perspective views...

Yep....this went on for sometime...even when I was doing beta testing. I thought it was something in beta, but looking back they found an even log in 7 where it happened too. They concluded I had faulty hardware. I tried many things with the help of Chief support. (dont get me wrong...they tried for sure) They concluded it was hardware which I ruled out with running all kinds of scan utilities. After a BUNCH or research on my own, I tried creating another user account. Worked perfect! Just had to migrate things over which was not too bad. I lived with crashing for about 2 months....glad I did not wipe everything.

I tried for support, they told me it was most likely a hardware malfunction. Possibly bad memory or other hardware related item. Recommended if memory passed test, might have to do a full wipe of system. I am glad I did some more research myself as creating a new user account was MUCH easier......