Alaskan_Son

For question #2, it totally varies based on WHY I'm showing them a rendering. Do I want them to see and understand some construction detail? Is it a surface detail or the inner workings of something? Is it for general massing purposes? Do I want them to see the focus on the form or the finishes? For me it just totally depends. Don't have time to exapand on it, but here's something I posted elsewhere a while back to give you an idea of how I operate... I use all of them with the exception of Duotone and Painting. I'm not super good at describing artistic rational but I'll give it a go... Vector Views result in very sharp, clean lines, and can be used in color when you want to accent the details about the basic form and include a very general sense of color schemes but still remain a bit disconnected from reality. The "cartoon" like qualities help keep the model from feeling like the real thing and therefore allow a person to focus on whats important during the initial design phase. Glass House is good for seeing how the various design elements interact and correlate with each other. Technical Illustration is one of my favorites for accenting form without bringing color into the mix. A person could use vector views with colors turned off for this as well, but I find technical illustration much more realistic, much warmer, it brings better depth and just has a better overall feel in my opinion. Watercolor to me is like the opposite of technical illustration. I use it (usually with line drawing) to accent color while only giving a very general sense as to the details of the overall form. Used along with line drawing it seems to help a person more freely envision the deign without getting tied up in the details. Line Drawing is much like watercolor in that you can use it (especially early in the process) to make the design feel more like a rough idea...a sketch...which again, keeps people from getting too tied up in the little details yet it still allows for a relatively good way to accent the form. EDIT: PBR and Ray Trace I use just to either highlight actual material and lighting decisions, or (more commonly) just to give clients something kinda fun and exciting to look at. Which one I use just depends on the scene and on how much time I have. I prefer Ray Traces for a number of reasons, but for some scenes and projects PBR does well enough.

-File Size -Layout speed -Sortability -File Size -Sortability -Inability to preset the layout box cropping, scaling, positioning, etc.

No, I still mean CAD Details...the ones that live in the Project Browser.

Sorry, opened the plan up and had a quick look. Definitely not going to have enough time to delve into that this morning. Suffice it to say that there's A LOT going on in that little area and definitely nothing like what I had originally guessed. I will leave you with 2 little tips/ideas though... 1. When I run into a scenario that seems like it just won't work (a Chief limitation), I will commonly just stop fighting the program, pick an element that I want to leave automated, and then manually model/patch the other. I'm sure that's something you already know. 2. The roof plane below the floor will only screw the floor up if it's topmost point is higher than the bottom of the floor. So, one possible solution is to break that roof plane into 2 separate planes...one that is lower than the floor and a separate plane for the portion of roof that is not under the floor.

Yup. mos def. Been suggested quite a few times too.

I think this is really the main (and perhaps only) benefit of placing all into a single view whether that be: -Individual CAD Details with subsets of Details (Eave Details, Foundation Details, Wall Details, Trim Details, etc.) -Grouped by floor in a warehouse plan -Grouped by layer sets in a warehouse plan -Organized by page in a warehouse layout (should be much easier in X12) -Etc. Otherwise, I think the individual CAD Detail Method has only advantages.

Looks like what they sent you was Blocked PDF references. They need to send you the referenced PDF files too.

This is correct. We can however use custom macros to suppress labels in any given layer set AND we can also use the reference display in sneaky ways to change label display on an object by object basis.

Basically the same for me... I only use the North = Up on plot plans. For CD's its simply Front, Left, Back, and Right. I do however still include a North Arrow on the floor plans though sometimes to help keep a reminder of where the sun is going to be.

Into CAD Details You can create new using CAD>CAD Detail Management or by simply right clicking on the CAD Details folder in the Project Browser

Is your reference floor draw order set correctly? But yes, post the plan.

If you post the plan we can stop guessing. There a crap ton of variables. For example, I don't know if that circled area is a room ceiling, a cantilever underside, a manual ceiling, or something else. In addition, we can't see what your structure settings are, how the roof is snapped, what the roof settings are, etc. etc. My original guess was assuming that the area in question was being produced by the room below. It was just a quick guess based on the screenshot.

Another setting that can occasionally be helpful in similar situations is Use Soffit Surface For Ceiling. Depends on the specifics though.

For starters, uncheck Use Room Ceiling Finish. Think of it this way. There is only one ceiling finish layer. It grabs onto the first thing it finds and then anything above that won’t get a ceiling unless it provides its own ceiling finish.

David, the settings you're looking for are here...

Looks to me like you have color toggled off.

I didn’t even bother to inspect the geometry that closely. Did you actually model it? And was that muddle roof pitch direction actually the exact same as the other? If so, ya, that step wouldn’t be necessary. The pitch doesn’t have to match the direction of the material though for the extra step to be necessary, it just has to be different than the adjacent pitches. I guess doing roof plane “B” might have been the better example.

There are a lot of possible methods depending on the structural details of the room. Don’t forget about the Hole In Floor Platform tool though.

It’s just the fastest method that I’ve found to find that neutral pitch plane. There are other methods but they all require some extra steps. Just don’t think any of them are faster. That whole process can really be done inside a minute. For whatever it’s worth though, here’s one method that doesn’t require any primitives... 1. Drag out a roof plane whose baseline starts at a mid point along one of the 2 existing roof edges. 2. Lock Baseline and set the pitch to zero. 3. Drag the roof plane out so that it extends through the other existing roof plane on the opposite side. 4. Take an Orthographic Full Overview and change the View Direction>Top View. 5. Take a CAD Detail From View. 6. Steal the intersection point. 7. Paste hold position back into the plan view. 8. Adjust roof baseline to suit, etc, etc. There are a few other methods as well. Just not sure any of them are faster. If they are, it’s not by much.

Just back to the office and decided to go ahead and make a quick video...

You definitely can use the baseline angle and there certainly can be reasons to do so, however... I’ve modeled roof planes like that quite a few times now, and the fastest, easiest, most accurate, and most dependable method I’ve found is to find the neutral pitch plane and use that to set your baseline. My workflow is as follows. 1. Create a 3D overview. 2. Make sure your various roof trim layers (especially Ridge Caps) are turned off. 3. IN THAT 3D VIEW, click on the Face tool... 4. Draw a Face that snaps to 3 known reference points on the adjacent roof planes, thereby creating a plane EXACTLY where you want your new roof plane to be. 4. Paint that face with a material that has perfectly horizontal lines (any material will do really). 5. Return to your plan view. You should see (as long as the appropriate layer is turned on) that the material pattern on your face is now visible in plan view. You will use this pattern to set your initial baseline which will place it perfectly at that neutral pitch plane I mentioned. 6. Create a CAD Detail From View. 7. Cut one of the pattern lines and Paste Hold Position into your plan view. 8. Delete the Face. 9. Move that pattern line (WITHOUT changing the angle) so that it intersect a mid way point along one of the 2 existing sloped roof edges. 10. Drag out a new roof plane baseline starting at that intersection point and ending anywhere along that pattern line. 11. Drag the roof plane either up or down in the direction of the slope (perpendicular to the baseline). 12. Stop the roof plane before you get to it’s ultimate high or low point. 13. Grab JUST ONE CORNER of that new roof plane and snap it to one of the existing sloped roof plane edges. This should trigger the Change Height/Pitch dialog. 14. Choose Pivot About Baseline. 15. Reshape and properly join the roof plane. 16. Delete the temporary pattern line.

A little further reading in the Help files makes it pretty clear that its just hard coded behavior that can only be changed "later" (i.e. once you turn auto foundations off). This is probably why most of us never have an issue with it. If most people are like me, auto foundations have a very short lived life with most projects. In fact, I pretty much never leave them toggled on expect for in the simplest of scenarios.

From The Help files... Basement Rooms When a foundation’s type is Walls with Footings or Grade Beams on Piers, and it is assigned a Minimum Wall Height of 76” (1900 mm) or greater, the resulting basement is automatically created with a 4” (100 mm) concrete slab floor. and a default Floor Finish like that on Floor 1. Similarly, if a foundation is set up to have a Basement Ceiling Height of 72” (1800 mm) or greater when built, it is automatically given a painted drywall Ceiling Finish. See Foundation Panel. Regardless of its ceiling height, however, you can specify a floor or ceiling finish for any room in the Room Specification dialog. See Structure Panel.

Don’t have an actual solution for you, but just FYI, that behaviour seems to arise only when the stem wall height and slab thickness result in a ceiling height of 72” or greater. Seems to be hardcoded too.

Room ceiling being applied to the bottom side of the specified deeper roof framing over the front porch area. Multiple possible fixes, but that room might be a good candidate for Use Soffit Surface For Ceiling (Structure panel).