Joe_Carrick

I just discovered a very handy trick. Place a Material Region on a Wall - edit it to the materials you want, etc - add it to the Library & name it and put it in a folder for "Material Regions - Wall". Now, to apply that material to any wall you just select it from the Library and click on the wall you want to add it to. It will cover the entire wall and skip any Doors & Windows. You can then select the Material Region and edit the extent as needed. This is - for me at least - a much better method than using "Paint" or needing to define a new "Wall Type". The Material Definition can be anything from a thin layer of paint to a composite of (backer board, thinset mortar & tile) or anything else you want to use. It can be recessed into the wall layer or not. The same thing can be done for Floor Material Regions.

Super!!!!

Graeme, It's similar but much easier in X7. I don't think you have to "Slam" the windows into the corner in X7 - but I could be wrong. I don't have X7 on the system I'm on right now so I'll have to wait until I get home in about 3 hours to test it.

It's a lot better than before. But for the Exterior maybe we could use a "Pass Thru" and fake the Frame & Glass with a Molding PLine and a couple of PSolids. Messing with Casings and Window Frames is just too difficult still.

Larry, There's some logic to the "Top Down" approach, but the implementation is flawed. Basically, if you start with 1 floor (10' ceiling height), arrange the rooms, etc and then add a second floor with a 12" floor structure everything stacks fine and the second floor is at +11'. Then you start laying out walls on the second floor - everything is still fine. Then you decide that one room on the second floor should be at +8' This is where the room pushes the room(s) below it down to only 8' ceiling height. If this second floor room doesn't directly stack above a single room below then all of the rooms below that it overlaps will be totally lowered to an 8' ceiling height. Ideally (IMO) only the area directly below the second floor room should be effected. That would require Chief to add some "Room Divider" walls on the 1st Floor. It's not something that couldn't be done - Chief already adds "Attic Walls" when it thinks they are needed. Currently we have to add those "Room Divider Wall" ourselves in order to have more than one ceiling height in a Room. I think that Chief's current Top-Down concept makes sense but it needs to be smarter - or at least provide a message about what is going to happen (ie: The following rooms on the 1st Floor will be changed to a ceiling height of 96" as a result of the Floor Elevation in this Room: Living Room, Hall & Powder Room.)

Scott, Was this a lot easier than in prior versions? What does the wall framing look like? What happens if you include casings, sills, lintels?

Doug, There are pros and cons about Chief's Room/Floor approach: 1. We normally think of building from the bottom up. Chief violates this thought pattern by making the room/floor elevations work from the top down (floor elevations below are governed by the rooms above. 2. When dealing with split levels Chief's approach can mean that overlapping rooms can sometimes result in confusing ceiling heights, etc. 3. The Foundation Level continues Chief's "Room" concept which is weird, especially for Slab Foundations. I also don't like the "Platform" approach that some other software Apps use because it tends to fix the platforms somewhat independently of the rooms. IMO, the ideal would be a "Bottom-Up" approach controlled by individual Rooms (beginning of course with the 1st Floor) and forcing rooms above to be high enough so that they are above any lower floor room that they overlap plus of course the floor structure (as defined in the Room dbx). This approach allows for the design of spaces (rooms) in 3D as a volumetric method. This would be a very drastic revision to Chief's spacial concept but if properly implemented would work much better for most users. The details of this concept would require a lot of careful study - but basically it would be like placing 3D Rooms (including Floor, Wall & Ceiling enclosures) in 3D Space where they normally could not intrude upon each other. Forcing one to intrude on another would require an adjustment to one space or the other. It's really a totally different way of thinking but it's what most designers do.

Johnny, Your explanation is pretty vague, so it's almost impossible to know what problems you encountered and what you couldn't get modeled adequately. Perhaps if you could be specific we could help. I know that I use some techniques for details that make it possible for me to create a lot of a detail in a CAD window that is dimensionally accurate without actually drawing any lines at all. Of course, I did at one time use Chief's CAD tools to create some CAD Blocks which I have in my Detail Template. Those things make all the difference since my details are put together in 2D almost exactly as the 3D model is put together in 3D. Using Chief, there's almost nothing that I need to do in CAD for Plan, Elevation & Section Views.

I would never have all those dimensions.in my plan. Even if I had done those interior dimensions (auto I assume) I would have deleted any that were extraneous. Most of the time there are only a few interior dims needed where an exterior dimension can't identify a wall location. Less is More (better) - especially when it can reduce clutter.

Curt, What Perry said plus: 1. Walk out Basements 2. Slabs vs Framed Crawl Space on sloping sites - often occurs with partial 'Walk out Basements. 3. Window Wells (Doors and/or Windows in Walls below grade) Complicated if it's the Foundation vs a Floor above the Foundation.

Floor 0 should only be used for the "Foundation". If there's a Basement it should be Floor 1.

Christina, Currently it's not possible with the dbx. I posted a suggestion for that and for different door and drawer faces. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/3848-cabinet-hardware-options/ https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/3849-cabinet-front-face-item-options/ Reinforcing those suggestions to CA would be a good idea. In the meantime, your only option is to specify "none" in the dbx and manually place the desired pulls.

I'm with Scott & Perry. I use very little CAD, even for details. I do/did use it for Layout Templates and of course for Text Objects. For me, Chief's CAD Tools work fine. In fact I don't even remember how the older stuff worked and I don't care. I can accomplish anything I want with Chief's CAD Tools and the only thing I really need is for CA to get Multi-line Labels & Ruby attributes for everything, Stairs, Railings, 3D editing improvements, and the 5000 other things on their list fixed by XX.

For horizontal elements I use Molding Polylines. You can either Transform/Replicate vertically or put multiple moldings on a single polyline and specify different vertical and/or horizontal offsets. For Vertical Elements I use primitive solids and either Transform Replicate or a Distribution Path.

Mark, Instead of using walls, just use a pSolid. Deleting the pSolid will not cause the molding polyline to move.

Better yet, why not use one of the glass materials in the Library?

Mike,try this: case when is_double_door == "true" result = "2-D"+(width/2).round.to_s else result = "D"+width.round.to_s end result "if" doesn't work within a "case". The proper syntax is "when" Of course for a 36" single door the above results in D36, not D30. Likewise a pair of doors totalling 36" would result in 2-D18 not 2-D16. To get the exact result you indicate would require using divmod(12) as per a previous exercise. like this: case when is_double_door == "true" w = (width/2).round.divmod(12) result = "2-D"+"#{w[0]}#{w[1].round}" else w = width.round.divmod(12) result = "D"+"#{w[0]}#{w[1].round}" end result

case If is_double_door == "true" result = "2-D"+(width/2).to_s else result = "D"+width.to_s end result

David, I agree - but I am not sure that they have the time and I am also not sure the people writing the help are fully aware of all the nuances. There is a lot of subtle (and in some cases irrelevant/non functional detail) in this Tool. Doing this is a learning experience for me as I find what is available in the various dialogs and where those things effect the symbol and where they don't. It will in the long run be the basis for suggesting improvements.

In looking at Chief's Help for the Symbol Creation Dialog I find that it has a lot of information but many things are skipped over with little or no detail. The Symbol Category [Cabinet Door/Drawer, Door, Electrical, Fixture(Exterior), Fixture(Interior), etc....] effects the Layer(s) of the Symbol but also what Options and Special Behaviors are available for the Symbol. In addition - while most Chief Symbols have the origin at x/y/z of Center/Back/Bottom - some Categories have a different origin location. I am putting together a comprehensive document explaining all the differences (sort of a Super Help) which I think will be of use to many. I will post that document when I've got it finished but I think maybe it would be a good subject for another workshop. I also have a couple of tricks with the Primitive Solids that I forgot to demo at the last workshop which might be useful.

I posted a suggestion some time ago to provide the ability to "explode" a symbol to it's constituent faces. That would allow unwanted faces to be deleted as well as allowing faces to be moved, modified or extruded into new shapes. The more people post this in the suggestions forum the more likely it would get done.

The key is the length of the arc segments vs the width of the pattern/texture.

After looking more closely I seem to find it on all Wall Types. Evidently it's the Last line of the Wall Assembly - the Interior Surface. Sometimes it's not obvious in the Wall Type dbx because you might have to scroll down to see it it there are more layers than will fit in the window.

Set the angle of the North arrow to the proper direction from the Plan. I'm not sure about what DJP said relative to rotating Site Items. I would assume that you have your Property Lines, and Terrain Features correctly drawn relative to the building already.

Maybe that only occurs in metric plans.....