Joe_Carrick

No, there is an exterior room (just outside the exterior walls) the Chief automatically recognizes. Just click about 6-12" outside the building and then click on the "Room Molding Polyline" icon.

Try again, but set the height of the molding polyline so that it will be within the windows ( in the US I use 48" as the height )

Exterior Room Molding Polyline at the desired height. You have to define it at that height as it's being created, but that will automatically break at all openings that it passes thru and the moldings will skip the openings.

FWIW, I use Floor 0 for Foundations & Floor 1 for Basements (if there's a Full or even a Partial Basement).

Exactly! "Ceiling Height" makes absolutely no sense in the Foundation. IAE, an expanded Dialog with multiple floors (maybe vertical scroll would be appropriate) showing the entire structure in section with heights that could be edited. Let's start thinking of a better way to portray this info and edit it.

Doug, For the Foundation Level, the Room Structure Dialog needs to have different names for the fields.

Make Folders & Sub-Folders in your User Library. Then put things in those Folders for navigation purposes.

AFAIK, "Snap to Midpoint" of a wall is only relative to the length of the wall, not the thickness. You can draw a line and then "Center" it on the wall thickness using the "Center" Tool on the Edit Toolbar.

One of the things about Schedules in X6 & beyond is that the lines of the Schedules can be rearranged, thus changing the numbers.

After a little further testing, the Materials do show in the "Total" Material List. The place they don't show is in the "Room" Material List.

Usually that would be because there isn't a Pattern set for the Material Definition. Open each of those materials and check both the Texture and the Pattern settings. I think you'll then understand.

The problem is probably just that you don't have "Line Weights" turned on. There's an icon on the toolbar (on my screen that toolbar is on the right side. You can also access it in the "View" drop down menu. When Line Weights are "ON" the Door and Jamb and the arc will be displayed in the color and weight specified for "Doors" in your Layer Set.

RC, You need to post your Plan and probably your Layout as well. We can't help without being able to see what you've done.

Larry, Check your Foundation Defaults. How thick is the Footing? Also, make sure you have a defined terrain.

One problem with this. It doesn't show in the Material List for the Room or in the Room Finish Schedule. That's IMO a serious bug.

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.