Alaskan_Son

Oops. Sorry bout that. I'll see if I can maybe find a chance to fix that a little later.

I think you found a pretty strange little quirk that I've never noticed before. Easiest fix IMO is to convert the p-solid to a solid and then explode that solid. You will then get the reflections. To make things easier on yourself you can block those faces while they are still selected so you have a single object. You can then paint the other faces with whatever material you want and possibly convert to symbol or add to library as is.

This is one of the main reasons I almost never use wall elevations and stick mainly to regular cross section/elevation cameras and CAD masks... Elevation with CAD mask.plan

Honestly, there's nothing really wrong with what you just spelled out but you also correctly left out the checking of the Slab Footing box. That's all I was saying...don't check that box unless you want Chief to treat that wall as a footing for a slab. And again...if you make this mistake you're going to end up having a room with a zero ceiling height as well as a monolithic slab foundation. You'll need to fix those settings. P.S. By "you", I don't mean you Eric, just any yous who might be reading along : )

Exactly what type of foundation/floor structure are you trying to draw?

It does work. I just don't think you're using it in the right way. I would suggest you get in the habit of using the Help files...

Once you enclose your room you can also just open the room up and increase the ceiling heights instead of unchecking Slab Footing. I still say that you shouldn't be using that checkbox in this situation as the foundation belongs on the floor below but I wanted to point out that you CAN have that checked and still get what you're after. There's just no good reason to do it that way IMO and its really not how I think that setting was designed to be used. Again, once you enclose the room, Chief automatically converts the room to a monolithic slab and when it does that it changes the ceiling height to zero.

Uncheck Slab Footing. When you check slab footing you are telling the program that you want the walls to be used to form the footings for a monolithic slab foundation so as soon as you enclose a room that's what you're getting. The slab footings should go on the foundation room below if that's really what you want but should not be spec'd for your main walls. NOTE: You may also have to increase your ceiling heights if you make this change after the fact.

You're welcome.

Yeah, good point. You can change the name like that but not the Callout Label. You can change BOTH in the camera specification dbx.

Simply open the camera specification dbx (NOT the view) and change that label in there.

Hey Brad, I can see the problem you're having and can only offer these 4 notes (and I assume you probably already realize a couple of these)... When the wall is set to invisible, the roof reverts to building to the default ceiling height set for the current floor...not a solution, just an observation. You can get the roof to generate properly by drawing the roof plane before changing the wall to invisible You can obviously manually adjust your baseline height What I would probably recommend as the best solution...Make yourself your own special room divider wall type made up of one or more layers of insulation/air gap material (or other "gap" material type). This way you can get an invisible wall without actually setting the wall to invisible and if you make yourself a single layer wall type like this and set the thickness to something like .01", you can also use it to define a structure with what appears to be a single line and without it changing sizes on you like the OOB Room Divider. This is a super handy wall type to have and I recommend every user add one to their list of wall types.

Are you trying to achieve Mick's suggestion or my alternative? And exactly what are you having trouble understanding?

Edit>Edit Area (All Floors) Draw a polyline around the entire plan and rotate it to the appropriate angle. OR Tools>Rotate Plan View This will actually only rotate the drawing board so to speak (your axes will rotate as well). You can add some additional snap angles though so that it will look and feel like you are working perpendicular and parallel to your axes. This method is good when going back and forth between off angle wings like this.

Justin, I just figured this using your plan file. I ran couple quick tests and it looks like you entered your information pretty accurately so it should be pretty close. It also lines up pretty well with the survey...which by the way looks a little sloppy to me and I agree that it seems to be missing a bit of information. Anyway, if I trace the plot plan that radius looks to be about 200' but if I use the lot area to figure the area it looks to be about 140' or almost the exact same dimension Scott came up with... BTW, a radius of 140'-9" will still result in .723 acres so Scott may be right on the money. Here's that quick macro for figuring the acres for anyone who can make use of it... acres.json

Sorry for derailing your thread. To answer your question... There are quite a few ways to do this. Joe and Ray both gave good solutions and you could take up Tommy on his offer but here are a few more solutions and tips: If you use an invisible wall I think you'll have to place the outlet before changing the wall to invisible and I would probably suggest that you make that wall a No Room Definition wall as well. You can place a small cabinet onto a unique layer, mount the outlet to the cabinet, and simply turn that cabinet layer off You can place an outlet onto a wall, select that outlet, click on the Open Symbol tool (little chair icon), click on the Options tab, and change it to Floor Mounted. You can then place it wherever you want. Might be a good idea to add this to your library for future use as well. NOTE: You may or may not want to adjust origin offsets and/or the CAD block but that's kind of a different subject.

I'm not suggesting anyone change their practices necessarily. I'm sure much of what you guys have to draw up is based on local requirements. I'm just trying to figure out the logic here and perhaps affect the discussion in general. GFCI protection can also be done with a breaker just like AFCI protection can. In those cases would you still label every outlet on the plan that is GFCI protected? If so, why would you not do the same for the AFCI protection? AFCI protection can be done with a device (receptacle) just like GFCI protection can. What about these situations? Do you label the home run, do you label the single device, or do you label every protected device like you do with GFCI receptacles? I guess I still can't understand why the 2 are so commonly treated so differently. For all intents and purposes they both work much in the same way with regard to circuit protection but they are handled completely differently with regard to plan notations.

In my experience we are only required to do this around here when we are using a GFCI device to protect an ungrounded receptacle location that has been replaced with a grounded type receptacle . There may be other situations requiring this as well but as far as I can recall this is the only one that has ever come up for us.

Ya, you are probably right and I think this is a pretty common viewpoint. It just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. If you look at most electrical legends the GFCI nomenclature refers to a GFCI receptacle and not simply GFCI protection. Of course most people dealing with the plans understand this and move on. Then again...there are those times where GFCI receptacles get installed everywhere and I believe some localities actually require this. At any rate, answer me this...do you also include an AFCI notation at all receptacles and fixtures where AFCI protection is required? I assume you don't and I don't blame you, but why don't you? It seems like the same basic logic to me.

Being GFCI protected and being an actual GFCI outlet are 2 different things and IMO should not be labeled the same. I could be wrong for some areas, but I believe the GFCI label should only be placed at the location of the actual GFCI device. If this wasn't the case, we would have all sorts of GFCI labels all over the plan anywhere and everywhere an item was on a GFCI protected circuit with no way of knowing where we actually want the device itself. Plus, the next logical step would be to carry that same thought process through to arc fault protected circuits which around here is essentially every circuit in the house now except the garage. That's a lot of GFCI and AFCI labels cluttering the plan and honestly just confusing matters. This is one of those areas where I feel its the electricians job to make sure circuits are properly protected. All I want to occasionally do is specify where I might want an actual GFCI or AFCI device. At most I think we could label the circuit itself as a GFCI/AFCI protected circuit but not each and every device on that circuit. WR outlets on the other hand are typically a different story. Those COULD all stand to be labeled because its not a circuitry thing, its an object specific thing. Its the device itself that needs to be weather resistant, not the circuit.

Here's one method if you really need this capability and you need the dimensions to update if your wall is moved... Apply a material region to your wall that is the thickness of your sheathing layer and set to cut Finish Layer Of Parent Object. In elevation view drag it down so that the whole thing is below your wall. It will essentially disappear and you will only be able to select it in plan view but you will be able to snap to it and it will move with your wall. This technique can be used for other offset dimensions related to walls as well where you don't have any other usable snaps such as window sills and casings, door casings, etc.

When I said inner sheathing layer I didn't mean the inner surface of sheathing I simply meant that it was a sheathing layer that was not on the exterior surface in the wall definition and therefore its not a layer we can simply snap dimension lines to without adjusting wall definitions or using CAD.

I suspect Dermot may not be realizing that you guys are probably all referring to an inner sheathing layer (as opposed to the outermost surface of the wall).

You can change material definitions to remove or reduce the pattern lines or you can simply temporarily Toggle Patterns to help with many of the lines. Really quick example...

OR you could use an entirely different and more automated approach by utilizing a schedule. There are many forks in the road with this one but here are the basics... As they're set up, the 3D Simpson objects are Hardware symbols which are not reported to any schedules. I'm not sure but I personally kinda think this may have been a mistake to set them up this way. At any rate, the most effective method to get these into a schedule is to just add these symbols one by one to your own user library as the need arises but as Fixture symbols instead of Hardware symbols. To do that... Drop one of them into a blank plan, take a 3D view, click on Tools>Symbol>Convert To Symbol, and add to your library as a Fixture. Give it the appropriate name and then add it to your user library. I'd probably recommend you create a special Simpson folder and place it in there... Now when you drop that symbol into the plan it can be included in a Fixture schedule. The beauty of using a fixture schedule is that it can be used as an actual schedule with quantities, locations, etc. or it can simply be used as a legend that is limited to only hardware that is actually being used in the plan. There are all sorts of ways to control what is included in the schedule and what sort of information is displayed. If all you want is a generic legend you can include the the 2D and 3D columns and its all totally automated whenever you drop one of those objects into your plan...