VisualDandD

The truth (that the op should be aware of) is I could copy any of his designs on his site and have a working model of his house in less than an hour. (and mine would probably not have the strange wall break he is experiencing)...sorry...could not resist the last part How hard it is to snap a jpg, resize with transform/ replicate and trace over it?.... The roofs....well since I came up from old V 6 or 7, I draw most of mine manually anyway. I could probably get one to the point of being recognizable in 30 min since the design examples I saw are pretty straight forward and not very complex. (not putting down the designs in any way....they just dont appear to be complex. Heck, I have many many simple plans I have drawn too...so dont take that as a dig). In the end, I may have been a little harsh...but the idea that someone is going to "steal" his design is just silly.

Hey all. I have played with chiefs materials function and more or less.....it has seemed more a pain than it was worth. Recently I posted a thread where we made a macro that calculated rafter length and rounded to next 24" incriment and gave that value (much like you would do a manual t/o but even more accurate). Well I have decided to use chiefs functions to try to help me do even better framing take-offs. I think I have rafters and ceiling joists figured out. Part of my plan is to only do small sections of framing at a time so I can tell if I am getting "garbage" back. I also double check it with my label macros...etc. Next I am concuring wall framing. I have experimented with setting "structural material reporting" but am confused at why on "mixed reporting" I get the line "fir stud STOCK" which does not seem right and almost like a redundant value. I get this same thing with "cut list" but in that case "fir stud stock" seems to be cripples and possibly jack material. I wish there were better ways to track where chief it putting certain materials so you could make sense of a take off. BOY...in an ideal world, you could click on a line of the material take-off and it would highlight those materials in the plan (either floor plan or even better 3d framing views). It is just hard to put too much confidence in the numbers you are getting, especially as the project grows in size. Anyone have any good tips they use.... Here are a few recent take-off sheets I have done with a mix of manual and auto calcs.

Well, I have been using Chief for 15-16 years, and there are times I cant figure out what is happening in a plan from a picture. It takes opening the DBX's, sorting out floor definitions, looking for anomalies like missed wall connections, or automatic wall that somehow get connected to a manual one and you have odd room definitions with 'no locate' walls mixing in. Or you can have default floor values different than ones in plan and they are mixing on floor below.....or you can have 2 rooms with 2 differeing ceiling heights below.....or... Well.....yea you are right....you can tell all that just from a picture. Srs dude....no one wants your designs. And no one wants to spend the better part of their day speculating at what might be wrong with your plan from a picture. However there are a lot of GREAT people on here who will take time out of their busy days to try to help out others if you make it easy on them by posting the plan. Otherwise you are asking them to waste even more time and start a q&a session of all the possible things it could be. No thank you. And funny.....you think people want your plans. You insult the people who are actually trying to help you. THAT is my frustration coming out.

This was quick and dirty.... I just grabbed the plan where I did it and did a quick render. I did not try to tweek the controls much as I did not do the final render in Chief the 1st time. This is how the raytrace came, but I am sure you could improve the effect with some tweaking.

I did most of my rendering in limion buying created it in chief. (Used same trick in limion) Have to see If I can dig it up

I created a triangular moulding that's set mostly transparent. It is about 12" wide Leg only 1" tall. Sits on clg above crown. I make plae yellow/gold and set high emmssive. The taper simulates the light fade enough to fake it for the most. Used a few times.

I had this happen recently on a plan. (Never before experienced it like this in any other versions). I spent a few minutes tracking it down and did not want to spend more time, so I deleted the wall and re-drew it. Problem went away.

Quick and dirty example of how I do it. Like I say in the vid. I get all my roofs right first, and this is the last part I do.

Those type roof are often done with just simple 'kickouts' rather than full radius. In fact, I have never seen them done radius-ed at the end, except for an asian inspired design. Something to think about, but I use similar details often and it is just a lower pitch by scabbing 2x6 on the rafters at the end. Even from the pic you posted, I cant see that that are a true radius. I would put dollars to donuts that it is just kicked out tails especially given the style of the home. From a field standpoint.....it is MUCH MUCH easier to construct as well. Just a thought.

Happens all the time to me. I have found that opening the DBX in layout and then closing it by hitting OK works to force update as well.

Great! At least I know I am not crazy when I thought this would be a good idea. At first, no one seemed to respond to the idea so I was wondering if I was the only one that saw value in it. To me, it really does a good job of presenting information in a way we actually use it in the "real world" As for the pic you posted, would you mind sharing how you did that? Is that an automatic macro or did you manually create it? It would be awesome if you could have a table like that which was automatically populated from the roof plan in plan view.

Thanks Joe. Your help got me pushed in the right direction. I have never used them, but now will be searching for other ways to use them for productivity as well as expanding the information I can make available to clients. As a framer, it would be nice to see if I can create macros to either give me the plate bearing heights (factoring certain birds mouth cuts knowing different size rafters have different 'stand heights'.) Another one that would probably be easy is ridge heights...etc.

I have not used it, but you can time track in chief....or use any number of apps from the chrome web store that will run nicely and track jobs and use a button on your desk. Then you can use "wave" accounting (which also has a chrome app). It is free and does everything quick books pro will do and also integrates with credit card payments. Generating invoices is very easy and you set up to bill hourly at certain rate. You would have to enter the hours and it will create even email and allow customers to pay via cc or even paypal (just looked it up and they have a Paypal 'direct connect' https://www.waveapps.com/blog/PayPal-integration/

Go to the create text macro and copy and paste in the formula as I show. Then what I do is turn off everything except the rafters and group select them. Under the DBX I select "label" and pick the "user defined" macro I created. It is that easy. Let me know if you cant figure it out, I can make a quick screen cap vid. Frankly I am surprised more dont see the use in this. I have almost 20 years of field experience and over 10 framing. I have also done a good amount of general contracting...etc besides desgin. Tools like this really translate across a lot of areas / trades and the use for potential customers is great. I know the people that I do work for will be VERY happy with this addition to their plans.

WOW!!! Got it figured out. I had PM's Joe Carrick for some Ruby help and he pushed me in the right direction, but it was not exactly what I needed. His solution of script went like this: x = ((length/24).round(0) + 1)*24 if x == length+24 x = length end x This worked about 75% for my cases. The problem was rafters that were say 111" would get div/24 and yeild 4.6 then rounded to 5 then adding "1" and multiplying back by 24 gives you a 12' rafter rather than a 10'. I searched for a different ruby function other than "round" and found "ceil" which takes any number and rounds to next positive integer regardless. My formula for the framing labels now is: inches = (((length/24).ceil)*24)/12 This takes the length of any member, divides it by 24 inches. It then rounds up to the next 24" increment and converts back into feet. This give you the ability to take-off and order material based upon nearest 2' increment....and never too short! I am now going to produce 'cut sheets' for our framers and include beam labels...etc and this will not only help with take-offs but proper material usage. I thought this was pretty cool. Here is a screen cap of a complicated roof I tried it on and it worked like a charm! I can add to my text macros to label member type (if I feel like modeling it that accurate). May just be easier to transpose engineers notes and manually label LVL ridges and valleys as he has spec'd them. I dont know about you guys....but I have 15+ years of framing experience too and I think this is VERY valuable. I showed it to some builders I now design for and they flipped out at how much easier it will be to verify their take-off's AND know if their framers are using lumber properly. Here is a quick screen cap

Here you go....not sure exactly what you are looking for, but this should give you something to start with. I tried to keep a standard header height on bonus room and put a 48" window there (which can meet egress if you use a casement). To go up to a 5-0 for a DH vinyl egress would have to pull the dormer further forward or make the header a lot taller and possibly be taller than a 8' 1 1/2 clg ht. You also had some funky roof planes in the front I cleaned up for you. I moved some stuff around but think I put is all back. (I like to bring my roof planes up to another level to work on them). Hollar at me in the AM. Be nice to have another local guy who is a chief user. Nice to meet you in the google earth workshop we did. Justin Kevin Amaro added dormer.zip

Doing it right now for you. If you want hollar at me in the AM. I'll PM you. Justin

That is what devices like this are for: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055MBQOW/ref=gb1h_tit_c-2_0842_e789aaa4?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_s=center-new-2&pf_rd_r=0R0PTGWM8EV4XBGWWYS5&pf_rd_i=20&pf_rd_p=2072380842 Usually used by professional graphic designers, photogs. You cant just set your monitor once.....they calibrate them and then monitor ambient light and adjust depending on viewing conditions at the monitor throughout the day.

This can be a big issue on houses with angled wings or walls. You can try all you want but you get lots of 1/16" dimensions. What I do is get them as close as I can to cleaner dimensions. I will do the foundation plan with 1/16 ths and then on the floor plan I clean them up a little. Most times setting min dimension to 1/4. (and I really dont like having 1/4" in plans...but it is a compromise) As a habit, most of the surveyors will take a direct export of a DWG so I know the foundation points will get to them with good accuracy to be entered into their site plans and following footings. The 1/16ths.....will work their way out from there.

Looks great! I played with exporting from chief to the unreal engine, and did not have much luck. My model export came in all wacky. Looks like you really have some good techniques down. Care to share any tips? The animations are great btw. Really nice work.

Never played with that function. Just looked it up and it looks neat....but I am not sure I like "blindly" trusting the take-off list. I framed for many years so doing take-offs from plans is pretty natural for me. I like being able to reference where the material is going and I am not sure I trust chief enough to just read a list. Plus, I dont have to be as accurate entering framing values in. My engineer may spec different ridge sizes...lvl's etc. I can just reference my roof framing plan to and note the length on the plan and add it to my 'list'. To be honest, I am not 100% sure of the easy way to do all this . I never really used chiefs material take-offs for much, but looking to see if I can use it to save me some time. To really see how it works, I made a simple plan and am playing with it to see how the list is generated. If anyone would like to share any techniques on how to use the list (or portions of it) feel free! Thanks for the push in a new direction of the software I never really used!

OK....I used one of the other macros to get a fractional output. Now I have to see if I can get ft-in

Hey guys. I have a pretty complex roof of a house I drew that I am helping with the take-off on. I have noticed that I can select rafters and set label value to %length% and it nicely gives me the length in inches. I cant seem to find a way to assign this globally unless I turn off all layer and only show roof framing and then group select. (which I guess works) Second question. It gives value in decimal inches. Any way to change format. I tried inserting things like "nearest inch"...etc and other commands from other labels, but it did not work. Any ideas? Thanks!

I draw basements on level "0" as well FWIW..... Lots of different ways to skin cats.

Example of a topo import I did out of google earth for a lake house. I will then do the house and use different things to bring the topo into 3d including pl solids...etc. Works really nice. topo example.zip