Alaskan_Son

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...

Here are a few tips... When you drop a 3D symbol into the plan you will be viewing that object from above. Here's a couple hangers for example... If you would like to re-position those hangers you will have to select the object, click on the Open Symbol tool (little chair) and then adjust the Rotation settings... ...just select the axis around which you would like to rotate, the desired rotational increment, and then click on the + and/or - buttons until its positioned right where you want it. You'll probably have to fool around with it for a bit to get a hang of which axis to use and which direction to rotate but this will rotate your symbol in 3D. To get that information to update to your plan view though you will need to click on the 2D Block tab and then click Generate Block. This will generate a new CAD block... You can then simply use those 3D object or you can use the actual blocks that were created by opening up CAD Block Management, selecting the appropriate block and then clicking Insert to drop that block into your plan.

What kind of Simpson item are you referring to? Are you trying to use an actual 3D symbol or a 2D block?

You can do as Mick suggested but if you would like to maintain clarity and still show the cabinets in the background you could also do something like this... There are a couple ways to do this but what I did in the example is place the island and dimensions onto unique layers and then change all other layers to a gray color and very light line weight.

Basically the same thing I already spelled out in the posts above but here's a quick video on the subject... As always, if you find this or any of my tools, tips, or videos helpful enough please consider sending a small donation my way by clicking on the PayPal link in my signature below. It will go a long way in ensuring I continue to make and share them. Thanks : )

^^^^This. Absolutely. Totally depends on the purpose of your rendering.

If you're talking about true timber framing the purlins may very well be dovetailed into the rafters or otherwise dropped in and aligned on the top side. In these cases I've found using just plain old lookouts is the best method....unless of course you actually need to show the joinery in which case a series of solids may be the best method.

I could be misunderstanding but Chief has a built in Truss tool. You can just build the truss and then add, delete, or modify individual members in elevation or in the truss detail.

Larry, haven't had a chance to look at your plan but see if this thread and video help you out at all. Looked like a similar situation to me...

Let's think that through. What you essentially have is a roof with 2 framing layers right? One perpendicular to the other. The problem is that Chief doesn't allow for 2 framing layers to be defined so we must frame one of them manually. There are probably other methods but here's where I would start... Define your roof structure to have 2 layers, one layer for the rafters and one layer for the purlins. Set the purlin layer to a framing material and and the rafter layer to a non-framing material for the time being. Make sure to check Lookouts in the roof Structure tab and then auto build the roof framing. Select one of the lookouts, block it, and add it to your library. Name it purlin or something you'll otherwise remember. Hit Undo a couple times to get rid of the roof framing. Go back into your roof structure tab and change the structure layers so that the rafter is a framing material and so that the purlin layer is an air gap. You can now frame your roof as usual. Drop your Purlin block into the plan and explode it. You can now multiple copy that around, resize it as necessary, and use various CAD tools (extend, trim, etc.) to create your purlins. Because it was originally framed in the second layer of the roof structure it should always automatically return to that second layer when you drop it into the plan. NOTE: The top of your purlin will always automatically align itself with the top of your upper structure layer and will resize about that point if you change the depth. Maybe Chopsaw will chime in. I know he's spent a bit more time than I have working with this method and may be a little more familiar with some of the nuances.

I feel like I must be missing something here as you basically just described the truss tools.

Various wall intersection usually cause those lines. There are probably 20 different ways to deal with those. Every situation is a little different. You'd be much better off posting the plan.

That's because its a pony wall with the main (upper) wall type set to be a room divider but with the lower set to be displayed in plan views... ...Its just doing as it was told. I think you're probably making that spot a lot more complicated than it needs to be. There are other ways as well but maybe try something like this instead. It's probably the quickest and easiest... Railing Fix.plan

Actually, just came up with that one about 5 minutes before I posted it. And thanks

Here's another random idea...

You betcha