Alaskan_Son

Plan?

Right here Mickey...

Is that Chief's automatic label or your own text box? I suspect that it's Chiefs automatic label which limits what you can do with it. I would personally just use my own text box along with a macro for that. Having said that, if those top two items are Chiefs automatic labels, I would consider that a problem that needs to be addressed and would report it to tech-support.

I guess there's 2 directions a person could go. 1. Draw it the way it makes sense to you and work only with people who think the same way. OR 2. Draw for your audience. I'm personally in favor of the latter. I've found it to be a pretty universal truth that people have their strengths and weaknesses. Adapting to compensate for a weakness (ability to mentally combine multiple foundation drawings into one in this case) to take full advantage of a persons strengths can pay off handsomely. I run into it all the time. Subs that are extremely talented at what they do but they may be very poor at math, or very poor at reading plans, or whatever. You could easily be "weeding out" so fine craftsmen just because they don't think like you do. I'm not trying to boast here, just trying to make a point, but I'm a pretty smart guy...typically at or near the top of my class with most things I have ever done, amongst the highest scoring with any tests I take, I'm very good at envisioning things and I have a good eye for detail (we typically get plans through permitting on the first try and I ace most my inspections...both of which are fairly unusual around here). I can understand and work with a foundation plan drawn up on multiple pages but it's not easy for me. It just makes a lot more sense being able to see it as one piece if reasonably possible and I really see now downside to doing it that way. Just my thoughts.

We do the same thing. When I said single pour I really just meant that the foundation was all one single unit as in the footings are all formed up and poured as one piece and same with the walls.

That makes sense. We'll just have to agree to disagree though. IMO having a foundation drawn up on multiple levels (at least in a good handful of situations) is just asking for problems. A lot of guys don't comprehend things that way. And if the foundation is a single pour as it often times would be in those situations, it makes perfect sense to me to have it all on a single sheet...at least one overview anyway.To each his own though. There are MANY other reasons to use reference sets though. Again, just comes down to your drawing style though.

The topic of this thread is one very good example. As Todd said, there are situations where a house on a sloping lot could pretty easily have a single foundation that spans 3 or 4 floors. In that situation it could be very impractical if not impossible to draw it all on one floor but a person would probably want to show the entire foundation in a single plan view.

Joey, How do you display items from other floors without using reference sets? Do you strictly overlap views in layout? If so, for anyone unfamiliar with what we're talking about, one of the major benefits of using ref sets IMO is that you can see exactly what your view in layout will look like while you're working on it in plan view. By overlapping views in layout you can achieve the same end product but you can only see one of the views at a time while you're working on them...unless of course you have the reference display on, but then I don't see why I person wouldn't simply use that then.

Why not just use the actual reference display? I'm starting to think a lot of people simply have never used this feature and don't know how. There's got to be some videos or articles in the Help files on this. Todd, your question is directly tied to that in your other thread. To start with, you have to make sure your layout box is using the same layer set AND reference layer set that you're seeing in your plan view. Unless you change it, your layout will always remember and use the combination of layer set and reference set that you were using when you sent the view to layout. I'll try to make a short video if I can find a little extra time (unless somebody else gets around to it first).

Todd, once you figure out how to manipulate reference sets (and layer sets in general) for this purpose, you'll realize it's a snap. Only takes a few seconds. For the foundation on 3 or 4 levels you can combine reference sets with overlapping views sent to layout. Simply copy/paste in place your layout box and switch the floor being displayed and reference floor. Doing it this way you can essentially show all 4 floors with only 2 overlapping layout boxes.

Structure tab now.

I'm actually on my iPhone screen at the moment so I'll try to keep it brief and to the point. If you have parts and pieces of the foundation on 2 different floors but you want them in the same view, simply set up one layer set to display 1 of the 2 foundation sections exactly as you want it to display. Then do the same thing for the foundation section on the other floor. Now you have both halves of your view but on different floors. Now all you have to do is turn on the reference display, set your reference floor to the appropriate floor level (probably 0 or 1), and use the layersets you set up in the aforementioned steps. Once you send that view to layout, that layout view will remember both layersets and the appropriate floor, and all your items will be visible in the same layout box.

Edit>Default Settings>Plan...check "Ignore Casing for Opening Resize".

Yes. A person could send multiple overlapped views to layout but if I am understanding correctly, I believe that properly using reference sets would probably be a better way to achieve the same thing.

Where do you have your libraries located? I'm suspecting your issue has something to do with your file structure and it's the link you're losing and not the actual library. Just a thought.

You bet. There are a ton of techniques people use for these situations but what I usually do is drag a wall down in elevation, cap it with a custom countertop (usually the thickness of tile) and then build the glass with polyline solid(s).

I personally use polyline solids for my glass panels.

You are very welcome!

Are you sure you are converting those polyline solids to solids? You have to click on "Convert To Solid", and you don't use "delete", you use "Solid Subtraction".

Ya. I partially agree. I've personally adapted my thinking and techniques so that I feel pretty stinkin' comfortable with Chief though. And I actually find it pretty easy to model accurately in Chief. I can very easily see what you're saying though.

Here's a quick video I made a little while back just roughly going over the basics...

You'll need to convert that to a solid first, then draw another solid that's the shape of your hole that goes completely through the first, select your main object, click Solid Subtraction, and then select the second.

Yep...or send the view to layout as an image.

Don't change the actual width or height. Just the "Size Factor"...and once you explode the block you can change it back to whatever you want.

Open the block and change the size factors to 1.0 and 1.0. Note: I'm not at my computer to test, but other size factors might work as well so long as they match each other (.5 and .5, .2 and .2, 2.0 and 2.0, etc.) .