olyconstruction

Hi Chiefs, I have a project where the client wants this kind of window (see pictures) with lites on the top of the window and fixed glass below. I am not really sure how to make it work, the double hung windows of the same variety are easy because you just designate no lites below and I can get exactly what I want. These are fixed though, so how can I get the lites to appear the way they should in the diagram? Am I going to have to download or create a new window?? Thank you for the help! AB

Hi David, I would suggest building a "slab with footing" under the interior walls you want, if I am understanding your issue correctly. You can specify the dimensions of the footing in the slabs object DB, it is one of the options under the slab tool. If that does not work, you may be able to fiddle with your wall types, that is change them to a foundation wall to give it a footing, then change it to a pony wall in the wall types section, giving it a concrete stem wall on the bottom and a regular inteior wall on top, then mess with the room structure to get the slab where you want it. I hope this helps, good luck! AB

Hi Chiefs! I am working on this as built with a lot of angled walls and I am having a lot of trouble dimensioning those walls that are angled. I want the dimensions to pull away from the wall parallel, but they always seem to come off at this weird sort of slant (see screen shots). Is there a good way to dimension this? It seems CA does not very friendly with angled walls. Thanks a bunch! AB

Hi Chiefs, I am making a schedule page, but all my text is super tiny! Is there a way to change the text style displayed in schedules, and if so, what is it? Thank you so much! AB

Ok. I can accept that. At least I am not alone in it. I just need to up my hotkey game I guess.

Hi Chiefs, I have been regular trouble with my toolbar disappearing. I will open Chief, sometimes after I shut everything down and restart, and when I go to open any plan or layout file, the toolbar is gone completely. I check and the tool bars are activated in the view drop down. I have to then "reset toolbars" in preferences, and I loose my hot keys. I realize I can just reload the hot keys but it is pretty annoying. Any reason why this might be happening? Thank you for your help! AB

I am also interested in online tutoring, I was hoping for 4 hours a week. I am familiar with Annotation defaults as well as Layout and reference sets and the efficiency you get when you set them up. I am not quite sure what Sam/Template refers to though, but I would like to know! I think I would be correct to say I know the basics of CA, but I am kind of on my own here trying to learn how to make the most of Chief and I do have a steady stream of questions and problems I can not figure out by myself which I think a tutor could have steady work helping me out with. Mr. Hall please e-mail me too if you would with more information about your tutoring services. Anyone else who can offer tutoring services is strongly encouraged to contact me as well. drafting@olyconstruction.com Thanks so much!

Ok, I will give that a shot!

Thanks Michael, That was the answer I needed!

Hi Chiefs, This may be sort of a softball so I hope someone can help. I have an exterior wall on the second floor that cuts down into the vaulted ceiling in the main room of my house (open the camera view "El Problamo" in the plan file to get a good look). I know there has to be a way for this wall to either be cut off by the roof or something like that so it wont show up past the ceiling planes. Please let me know if you have a solution! Thank you for the help! AB JAMES - AS BUILT - 10-17-16.plan

Hi Chiefs, I have a new as built I am about to start and it has a 5 sided bay window at a corner of the house. You can get an idea of the shape I have to create from the pictures below, and on the left side of the house from the PDF you can see how it is supposed to look in a plan view. It looks like we are just dealing with 45 degree angles and all lengths outside. I am attaching my rough plan with what I have so far. I just made two small walls coming off the walls at 45 degrees then drew a wall straight across and threw a bay window on it to make a 5 sided bay. The trouble is you get this sort of protruding edge from the "hypotenuse wall" as I will call it, and also, it just seems to me it is harder to work with bay windows. Controlling the wall lengths and window sizes has been time consuming and sort of confusing in the past. I was hoping someone else had maybe attempted this before and has any tips on how to accomplish what I need, or if you have any ideas on how to make this look a little better and maybe get rid of the rough edge at the corner of the bay window, any help you could give would be very appreciated. Thanks so much! AB JAMES - AS BUILT - 10-17-16.plan

Hahaha! "started so long ago it should be in a museum". Now that is funny! So anyway, the answer is to set the drawing sheet at 22x34 in the layout of chief and adjust the title block to fit. It helps to put a little border in there too to make sure your title block is not cut off by automatic printer margins. You get a 2" plus your margin border on ARCH D prints, but oh well, I think it is great to have the PDF compatible to ARCH D and 11x17 size and still be in scale. Using this system you will never have to draw another dimension again. Thank you so much everyone! P.S. you should probably still draw in dimensions though.

Lew: I really like the Idea of setting up that border (in the drawing sheet set up) I think that might be my solution, but I am afraid now I will have to go in and resize the title block and move everything around. Is that the case? Shane: I like that idea, but this has worked for us in the past, this way we can print full size or half size and have accurate scaling, I guess something got messed up when we started using the updated layout template. I am worried because if that is the case I am going to have to take some time to go back and re size every project in the new layout! Joey: The project has a lot mere dimensions that are hidden, we are going to show them when it is time to produce the actual construction documents. I was told specifically to omit most of the dimensions so the project would appear "clean and un-crowded" to estimators and contractors who would scale it themselves. I agree with you, I think I should include all the dimensions I have. Perry: Where do you go in the plan file to view the page setup? Thanks a lot everyone!

matty t: When I change it to "to scale" it jumps up way larger than the paper and does this really weird PDF with most of the image on the first page, a sliver of the title block on the next page and part of the image that was clipped off on the next page, on and on. Its horrific. Thats why I think it may have to do with my drawing sheet set up which is at 24x36 Jeff: I have been using the ANSI D in my recent settings which should work but I notice that when I print it, it is slightly out of scale. In my drawing sheet set up in CA the size is set at 24x36 (see ss 3), does this mean I am going to have to go back and change the size in there, and reformat my title block and re arrange everything in my layout for it to be in scale for an ANSI D PDF? Thanks a lot guys!

Here is the PDF I have right now. If you print it to 11x17 it should be in 1/8 scale, but it is inaccurate! Thanks again! KRAWCYZK-APPROVED FOR ESTIMATING- 10-10-16 13.pdf

Hi Chiefs, I used to have my print settings just right but I had to switch to a new PDF writer and now my settings are all messed up and not doing what I want them to. So I am trying to print my sheets to scale on 22x34 sheets, so they can be half scale at 11x17. They appear to be all right up to 8' but then the dimensions start to slip further and further away from the true scale. I attached a screen shot of my printer settings. I am also attaching a zipped folder of the layout and plans. My drawing sheet setup on my layout is set at 24x36, could this be the problem? I am almost positive it was set at 24x36 before and that the PDF writer would just scale it. Please let me know what you think the problem may be. I am dead in the water until I can fix this! Thanks so much! AB KRAWCYZK.zip

Thank you guys! That fixed it up! I lowered my DPI to 300 and deleted my unused pages, and I also used Foxit PDF writer which I also have on my computer. Not sure if it makes a difference which writer you use but I am sure that lowering the DPI and page count helped! Eternal thanks to Alan "Gawdzira" Lehman, and a special eternal thanks to Shane K who has been helping me out a lot lately! Thank you sincerely, AB

Ok great guys that fixed it. I did not realize that the attic rooms had to be there on either side and that the room height needs to be under the ridge height of the roof. Thanks so much, I learned a lot and fixed my problem! Gold stars all around!

Hi Chiefs, So I have been working on this project (many of you will recognize it from previous posts), and I have been sending it to PDF, naturally. I was told today that the files were too big, not good for sending by e-mail or viewing from a tablet, so I tried to shrink it down. I replaced all the jpegs (showing the 3d views on the project) with view ports, because I have heard using photos really beefs up your file. When I exported to PDF the file was even bigger than before! Granted this version had a few more interior elevations than the last one. Could the elevations be my problem? I am attaching a zipped folder with the layout file, plans used in the layout. My first PDF was 10,047 KB and the one I just exported from this Layout was 18,625. If any one can help me find out why the PDF's are so big I would really appreciate it Thank you! AB KRAWCYZK.zip

Thanks Jeff, but when I open that link it is just a list of videos for me. What is the title of the specific video I should watch? Shane, thank you this is awesome. I would really like to put the trusses in but it still does not want to take them.

So I have this project and I am trying to throw some attic trusses above this garage, but I keep getting error messages when I try to make the attic truss. I keep getting told I need a flat ceiling plane and floor system for it to build the truss. So I went ahead and made a new floor to build the flooring up there and now Chief is telling me it can not find any roof planes (which are clearly there). What am I doing wrong or what am I not understanding here? It seems like it should be more simple than this. Thank you! BILEADOU - PROPOSED- 9-23-16.plan

Wow! awesome job Shane K. I like that a lot and that is a lot farther than I have gotten. The only trouble is that there is a vaulted ceiling above the great room that wont let the trusses go all the way across. Mr. Lackore: I definitely think I have to do some more planning on this and take some time to think about how it will be built. I will use your approach in the future, plus ive been meaning to bust out the bumwad as of late, it really is incredible how different things are processed when using pen and paper as opposed to a CAD format. For now I am just going to put in just enough for the cross sections to look ok. I am about to post another truss question right now if you have not had enough truss stuff. Thanks a lot for the help!

Hi Chiefs, I am attaching a plan file of a roof I am working on (and have posted about already a couple of times). I need the whole roof to be trussed, but I am not sure how I am going to do it. I have been getting a lot of weird looking trusses that have automatically generated and I am not sure if they are actually build able. I also want to know how to build a truss over a row of columns, supported my a beam and ledger over the decks, and what kind of truss i should use for the vaulted ceiling in the great room. Basically any truss advice you could give that could make this roof work I would really appreciate. Furthermore, if you notice anything funky in my section views (GARAGE SECTION, CROSS LIVING, and STAIR CROSS) as far as the general framing and the overall construct-ability is concerned please let me know as well, if you know how to fix it, even better!! I really do value the help very much, Thank you, AB KRAWCYZK.plan

Awesome! That did it thank you!

Hi Chiefs, I have been working on my foundation for this project and experiencing some problems. I am trying to generate floor framing with rim boards but it does not want to do it for me. I had it working before but I noticed there were problems with my garage slab and had to start over, and now it wont build the rim boards or sill plates for me it looks like. It is also generating the floor below where the floor should go. The top of the I joists seem to be flush with the top of the stem wall. Also im pretty sure my garage slab is messed up anyway after I fixed it. Does anyone know what is going on here? Thanks so much. AB KRAWCYZK.plan