Joe_Carrick

Sherry, FWIW, the area reported for the Exterior Room is only the Living Area even though the PLine surrounds the entire Plan. Garages, Courts, Balconies, Porches and Decks are not included in that area.

Make the Shower Wall "No Room Definition" For the Exterior Room, use the "Exterior Room Label"

So here's a different approach. I made a closed polyline that is about the right size for 1x2 Batts on 1x10 Boards (but I only made the total thickness 1". Then I converted it to a PSolid and set the height to 8' and converted that to a Solid. It can be trimmed with other Solids using "Solid Subtraction. I created an Architectural Block from it and added it to the Library. To trim it you will need to un-Block but since it's 8' tall and about 17'-6" long it can cover a lot of area and be trimmed pretty easily. Batt on Board.calibz

Scott, It's not quite the same. I left the No Room Definition Wall at the Floor. That's kind of a mix between Perry's and Dennis's solution. Changing the Structure doesn't get messed up this way. That wall doesn't have to be trimmed at the top but I just thought it left less vector clean-up for Elevations. It also Frames nicely I think you should at least experiment with it a bit .....

Scott, Check the attached Plan. The Wall with the Window in it is "No Room Definition". It has just a 1/8" Thick Stucco Exterior Layer. I trimmed the top down to the Interior Casing. You could trim the bottom up but then you would need to adjust the Window Height so I just left the bottom. The Pass-Thru in the thicker wall has a Frame (Stucco Material) The Pass thru is 6" wider and taller than the Window and the top is 3" higher. Once the thinner wall is moved into place, That Wall and the Pass-Thru can be selected together and moved or copied any way you want. :D :D B) Buck Framed Windows.zip

1. Use Solid addition to add them all together 2. Add another PSolid along the Line you want to Trim 3. Use Solid Subtraction to Subtract that from the one created in step 1

Yes I tried it - but I set my Frame to 4" top, bottom & side. As I said, if you want a demo, I can do that in a GTM.

Scott, Here is an Exterior Symbol that mounts on the wall. You can size it to match your opening and Window recess dimensions, center it on the window and move in to fit against the window frame. Let me know if you want to do a GTM. Bucked Window Frame.calibz

Greg, I wish I didn't have to deal with all the area analysis - but I live in California. We have to provide a lot of calculations for these things. In addition, we can't use REScheck. So having the ability to calculate, show tabulated areas and even export a file that can be used by our T-24 app is a big savings in time.

Greg, FWIW, The Floor Living Areas are individually available as attributes of the Exterior Rooms. In fact if you haven't deleted that Label it can be seen just by turning on the "Room Labels" Layer. With the proper macro you can get the Total of all Rooms. I do that in a couple of my Packages: A. Living Area Package .......................I'm only charging $30 for this package. 1. Displays all Floor Living Areas 2. Displays the Total Living Area 3. Exposes those Values as variables that can be used in other Macros B. Site and Building Area Analysis 1. Includes the functionality of the Living Area Package 2. Calculates Property and Buildable (inside setbacks) Areas 3. Calculates Totals of each Special Room Type 4. Calculates Totals of Driveways, Sidewalks, etc. 5. Calculates and Displays Site Coverage, FAU 6. Exposes all those values for use in other macros. There are a lot of other things that can be done - as I've demonstrated. Sure, we can ask CA to provide their "Global Macros" for all sorts of things - but you will never get the ultimate flexibility that way. Eventually, with the right "Open Doors" to the Model data we can have "Add-Ons" by 3PP for all sorts of Engineering Apps. IAE, I want CA to concentrate on enhancing the 3D and 2D functionality in Chief - and just provide the access to the data and some of the higher level capabilities of scripting. We could even design our own "Input Screens" to add dynamic data to the Plan - things like Consultants, Contractor, etc. CA doesn't have unlimited programming assets so we have to pick what we want them to do and maybe one of those things is opening the door so others can provide the Add-Ons.

That's fine if all you want is to display the areas with text boxes and arrows. OTOH, if you want to perform automatic calculations that show percentages of site coverage, total areas of: garages, porches, courts, balconies, decks, etc. These simple macros are insufficient. That's where advance macro programming comes in - it opens a whole lot of additional capability. Calculating the total area of Windows, Window Openings, etc and making automatic calculations of those compared to Total Living Area - without having to manually enter anything is all possible. What isn't possible yet is being able to automatically get and display the finishes (annotation of Sections, Elevations, etc). We can't do that because CA doesn't provide attributes for those things that can be used in macros. I have a dream - a macro that I can just add to a "Wall Elevation Label" and get the information directly from the model displayed - just as if I had manually typed it - but 100% accurate, no chance of a mistake.

"Area="+referenced.area.round(2).to_s+" Sq.Ft." Evidently CA only implemented the short form .to_s

Greg, try this: "Area="+referenced.area.round(2).to_str+" Sq.Ft." This is called String Concatenation. There are 3 Strings in the above line and they get added together "Area=" referenced.area.round(2).to_str " Sq.Ft." to form a single output String. The .to_str in the second line converts the numerical value to a String so they can be added together.

So maybe a "batch" system. ie: Update all Section/Elevation Views in the Layout would be nice?

I can't think of a reason why I wouldn't want the Layout updated to match the Plan. Maybe it would be best if it was a "Preference Setting". Of course there is always the problem of what the current Render Technique and Options are in use for the Section or Elevation View. That could be a problem if the same Camera was being used for different views sent to Layout.

Note: Automatic Save to Layout of Elevations and Sections is something that's been asked for - a lot !!! I don't know if CA is working on that or not. We can hope.......

No, that's the way it works. Note that I said CAD (lines, arcs, text, dimensions, etc). IOW, as long as you are just doing labeling, dimensioning, etc in an Elevation or Section View it isn't necessary to "update" the Layout. OTOH, if you make changes to the model such as moving a Door, Window, Cabinet, Wall, etc then you would need to open any effected Views and save/update Layout.

All CAD changes made in Plan are automatically updated in Layout. But you have to have the Layout open. My policy is to open the Layout whenever I open a Plan. That basically insures that almost everything I do in Plan gets updated in the Layout. The only problem I know of is Sections and Elevations if the model is changed. Those have to be opened and saved to update the Layout.

Larry, I'm a bit older than you - but I learned to program about 35 years ago when I was only about half as old. Still, I am learning new tricks every day - keeps me feeling young.

Actually just got in a hurry and forgot to zip.

Larry, I'm proud of you........... See, even HumbleChief can learn new tricks.

Here is an new set of macros. This one will recognized deleted vents as well as update when you open a new Plan - providing the new Plan has any Vents and their Labels are displayed. Foundation Vent Macros.zip

PSolids (actually any solid) can be connected with an arrow pointing inside the area, whereas a simple Polyline will need to be connected to the edge. In Richard's video he is using a "Cross Box" which isn't just a simple Polyline - it has a "Fill" which also allows the arrow to connect to the interior - but it's not as persistent a connection as you get with a Solid. btw, I posted this a month ago - before Richard's video.

The letters after the = are the left square bracket "[" and the right square bracket "]"". These should be just th the right of the "P" on you keyboard.

Yes, but I have it reading specifically named files in my Project Folder. The data I'm loading is various Consultant Names, Addresses, Contact Info, etc. There is no reason that can't be set up to the data you want to retrieve. Basically each named piece of data is just a line in a text file. Edit the Text File, read it from Chief with a macro and the data will have been updated in Chief (I would assign the data to to Ruby Global Variable that various macros would use to perform calculations and display). In order to set this up I will need to know something about your Project and Layout File organization and what data you need to have available for your macros. Then I can give you a cost for whatever level of assistance you need. If it's properly set up it will only take a couple of macros - but one of them would need to be very custom.