Alaskan_Son

Are you talking about a mulled bay window that hangs on the wall or a bay with windows in it (as Chief defines them)?

Right click on User Catalog>New>Material>Texture tab>Texture Source Of course you'll have to name the new material and adjust the other settings accordingly but that's where I would go to start.

Like I said before, I don't think I can convince you otherwise, I'm only responding for the sake of anyone else who might be reading this who may be influenced. You've ignored a few of the most basic and most substantial points. You're referring to the 70's and onward when the problems I'm referring to were already well begun, and you and I both know that building a 600 square foot house can easily cost twice as much per square foot as a 2,400 square foot house of the same basic quality and construction so saying the cost per square foot has stayed around the same is highly deceptive and misleading. And with regard to the mandatory square footage increases I alluded to (and these are just a few off the top of my head most of which I have first hand experience with)... Toilet clearances: We've had at least a couple jobs in recent memory where it was impossible to legally put a toilet where it previously was. The only answer...make the bathroom bigger...increase square footage. Door openings and hallway clearances: Increase a hallway width from say 30" to 36"...extra square footage. Stairwells: Increase width from 30" to 36"...extra square footage. Increase tread depth from 8'' to 10" extra square footage. Landing requirements...extra square footage. Headroom requirements (cut out of floor space above)...extra square footage. Decrease riser height (adds steps)...extra square footage. Egress requirements: Harder to quantify, but if you've ever designed a smaller house you have to understand how every little inch can count. A few inches here or there can require a total layout change (and usually the resulting additional square footage, and the necessity to put every bedroom on an exterior wall and leave room for a door that meets code opening requirements as well as a closet...results in extra square footage. I can't even begin to count how many times I've had to tell a client "We can't put a door there", "That toilet won't fit there", "The shower door would be too small", "We can't make these stairs meet code without a total remodel or adding on to this back wall", "This hallway won't be wide enough", "We can't make a legal set of stairs fit there", "The hearth is required to come out further than that", "A bedroom can't go there"..."We can't put the furnace there"...The list could go on. Code has ABSOLUTELY and without question increased the size of homes. And that's just square footage. If you want to talk about prices aside from square footage and code related cost increases...you're right, we do have cheaper materials now. What do you think that means about the relative square footage prices of yesteryear? I can't see how you even try to argue most of this...I'd bet you can find a way to twist the cost of the code requirement this thread is all about? Adding drywall...added cost. Period. Bigger houses with cheaper material should cost MUCH less per square foot, but relative price has only increased. I'd venture to guess a house of the same usable size and quality of your average 1,000 square foot house from the 20's built to today's codes would cost $600 per square foot to build if you had to use their materials. Conversely, if they had our cheaper materials and retained their lack of code, I'd bet the great depression would have been a moderate depression and people would have had bigger houses to tough it out in.

First off, I'm not talking about 40 years ago which was already well on its way to way we are now, I was talking about 90 years ago before we headed into this downward spiral. Secondly, you're right, houses are bigger, however you should well know that as houses become smaller (which they were 40, 50, 60, 100 years ago) price per square foot goes up dramatically. Thirdly...wider hallways, bigger stairwells, larger rooms, higher and wider door openings, wider toilet clearances, higher ceilings, egress requirements, clearance from combustibles, the list goes on...are all mandatory square footage increases whether someone wants it or not.

This logic can be dangerous...You could say the same about nearly everything we do. Plus, fire codes are essentially planning for something that should never happen. Should we be forced to install bulletproof glass too just in case of a drive by shooting? Left unchecked it will NEVER stop. You can always one-up it, and some will do just that if they have their way. Less than a century ago 30 year mortgages were unheard of, today they are the norm. By my research, on average a house could be purchased for anywhere in the neighborhood of 25%-200% of the average household income. Today, that 200% is closer to a starting point, and 30 year mortgages aren't cutting it, we started resorting to sub-prime mortgages, people regularly take out a second, reverse mortgages, and as if that wasn't enough, the fed had to drop the interest rate to record lows...what can they do next, 50 year mortgages? Fact is, this over regulation is unsustainable, every year it seems they're adding new rules to the books that add thousands to the cost of building and maintaining a home. We can't even go in and fix an existing home without bringing everything we touch up to code. We try to do things right and to code, we're one of the few builders/remodelers around here who design and install makeup air systems in the kitchens we build, who have EPA RRP certification, pull the required permits, etc. and I'm not exaggerating when I say the vast majority of our clients are millionaires. They're about the only ones who can afford to do the job "right" and "safe". Sadly I'm starting to see why there are so many bitter old men who couldn't care less about the rules anymore and just do what they want...no permits, no certifications, no insurance, no license..."Chuck in a truck". That's who the average person is hiring to do their remodel work, and for new homes...Many of those are being built by low balling contractors who don't pay their subs or their suppliers half the time...And guess who ends up footing that bill in the end... I know I can't convince guys like you or guys like Bryce, but if I can help keep a few people from joining your ranks...

I for one couldn't gripe cuz until now I didn't even know the cabinet outlet even existed.

How long have we had this!!? Thanks Richard.

We deal almost entirely in totally custom cabinetry so I can tell you with a fair amount of experience that in my opinion this is doable but is perhaps the single most difficult thing to build with cabinets in Chief. Maybe someone else can chime in but as far as I know it can only be done with primitive solids, polyline solids, moldings, slabs, and maybe very narrow walls and doors? The latter just occurred to me… Maybe I'll try it when I get back to the office. Basically though the only way I know of is building them from scratch one way or another and not using any of the automated cabinet tools.

I for one don't quite follow. Maybe a few screenshots?

Pretty soon? How about...we're there. Nobody can afford a house. We just get indebted to buy one. Became the norm and government regulated under Roosevelt I believe.

Definitely a pain. Especially it it's an unfinished basement slated to be finished later on down the road.

What if a person would prefer to spend those extra time and resources on something else...maybe even where THEY feel (or know) that it could be better spent on some other "safety" related aspect of their own lives. Should Bryce always need to be consulted?I'm not so naive to think all regulation is bad, I think the conflicting opinions from all sides can reach a good balance and that the "push back" is a necessity in the process. There's a reason our founders designed a sloppy form of government and made it hard to get anything done. Overreaching and overbearing regulation is I believe at the top of the list. We can and absolutely SHOULD do what we can within our own sphere of influence to effect change (or lack thereof). I believe we have become overly sedate as a people and gave up trying to effect change and its resulted in government that simply does what it wants regardless of what the majority of people want (OSHA and EPA regulations are prime examples that come immediately to mind). Anyway, I don't want to get into a big political argument. Just wanted to clarify my stance a bit.

Totally agree. I've tried to start "pushing back" wherever I reasonably can myself. It's not that all the ideas are bad, it's that they're forced, and the slow casual loss of our freedoms is sad to see. It's one little thing and a time, easy to lose one, much harder to get one back.

Here is my second attempt at making crappy videos. Sorry I still have no good microphone set up. I'll try to get on board with that soon. A few notes... -Being that there's no sound...I tried not to use any hotkeys or shortcuts so that you could more easily see what I was doing with my mouse pointer. -I used Richards method of creating a CAD detail from view. Its not necessary to do that step, however I found it easier for snapping purposes. -I didn't spend a lot of time getting everything perfect. Just enough time to give the basic idea. http://screencast.com/t/bwuIwUyCv

Pretty much exactly what I would do as well...solids and Boolean operations.

I believe INTERIORS does as well.

If you could attach a plan, or at the very least...a picture of what you're talking about, that would be helpful. You should also post this over in the "General Q&A" section (instead of here in the "Symbols and Content" section).

Not sure what you did Graham, but the walls you have that show as connected don't seem to match the length or angles (relative to each other) as any of the other walls in the plan. Robert, I can't seem to get the walls in the upper section to connect either. I was however easily able to replace that group of walls with a matching curved exterior wall (as you also mentioned you did). The walls across the bottom however are quite strange... If you break one of the wall connections so that the room is no longer enclosed, the walls will connect properly. As soon as you enclose the room again the strange disconnect shows back up. I also notice that the wall connection on the lower right behaves strangely. The wall coming down from above builds through the perpendicular wall instead of connecting to it. I didn't mess with that particular item very much, but the connection only seemed to work properly if the wall type for the vertical wall is changed. Probably an issue to send in to tech support.

It opens, and there's a plan file in it… There's just no information in the plan file.

Looks like maybe you forgot to close your plan before attaching it.

We don't have a tool like that, however you can get similar results using the tools we DO have. I would personally probably start with the spline tool (its probably all you need), however its definitely not as fast as a "freestyle" tool would be. Importing something from another program would probably be easier, however I think creating it within Chief would be far more useful.

I see a huge dark gray "fill" covering your elevation in the PDF you attached. I see it in my PDF reader/editor before even trying to print anything. It looks like perhaps you have something in your layout causing the problem. Maybe something on page zero? Can you attach the plan and layout that you're using?

Stair tools are actually not quite the same (very similar but not the same), and neither are the snaps and edit handle functions. In this instance they were both able to do the same job, but I agree. Chief is easier. For an extra $2,000 it better be :-)

Pretty good progress for only having used the software for 2 or 3 days!!

Here is my very first shot at making a video. Sorry I don't have a microphone on my desktop so there's no sound. I actually used the trial version of Home Designer Architectural 2016 so it should work the same for you. As far as I've figured, the key is to get your landing correct before you try to build the stairs. The stairs seem to only want to make the wraparound connection once (upon initial construction). If they are disconnected or messed with too much, the connection doesn't seem to be possible. Anyway, its pretty crappy, but here it is... http://screencast.com/t/m2rf0zvrS