Joe_Carrick

Todd, There are relatively easy ways of solving this. One of the first things I would do would be to create a dummy floor about 1" high directly above and set it as open below. That will eliminate the wall intersections at the cathedral ceiling. The Shower can be done with specific wall types and aspecial opening (doorway) with a "No Room Definition" Wall inserted into the opening. I'm sure Scott is perfectly capable of making these changes very quickly. It's really a matter of knowing the tricks.

Johnny, I guess it's my woodworking and building experience that tends to make using Chief for this so easy. I tend to think in terms of the small components being put together into larger constructs. I just build my symbols the same way I would in real life. I've also grown quite comfortable with adding and subtracting 3D shapes using the boolean operations [add, subtract, union] in order to create more complex forms.

If you make one board (vertical) and convert that to a symbol, you can then place that Symbol and rotate it in any direction using the symbol dbx. Put 2 of those together to form the "A-Frame" and convert that to a Symbol. Note. If you carefully create the first board (including a face) you can assign a material to the face so that you have an advertisement. Building symbols this way out of primitives and other symbols is important because you have much more control of materials and orientation.

It will be much better if you learn how to create a Symbol. Basically, chief allow you to put together any combination of 3D objects in a blank plan - then display it in a 3D View and "Convert to Symbol". There are a lot of options in that tool so that the resulting symbol will function as an intelligent object (door, window, cabinet door, furniture, appliance, etc.) These symbols can be named in your user library so that you can easily retrieve them for future use. Some of the 3D tools you can use to assemble a complex symbol are: 1. Primitive Solids (Box, Cylinder, Sphere, Cone, Pyramid, Truncated Pyramid, Face) 2. Polyline Solids 3. Soffits 4. Slabs 5. Molding Polylines Really, anything in Chief that can be displayed in 3D can be used to build a complex 3D Symbol. The Symbol will automatically have a 2D Block that will be shown in the Plan View. Materials can be assigned to any part of such symbols and they will be a part of the symbol in the Library. Doing everything in CAD as you've been attempting is way to much work. Learn to use the Library and Symbol Creation and you will quickly be miles ahead of where you are now.

The basic problem is that your walls cross between the 2 stair sections. If you can make them stay totally below the entire stair (section 1, landing, section 2) the problem should go away. This may require editing some of the walls (make specific parts invisible for example) so that your plan looks right.

Bob, This is tricky and without the Plan I don't think anyone can be much help. The issues are room heights and wall heights among other things. Chief's video tutorials don't cover all the permutations and your situation involves walls that cross the boundary between 2 stair runs. Post the Plan as Eric and Scott suggest so we can help.

Select the Room. Then change the molding materials in the Room dbx.

I don't know the specs on your CPU. How many cores does it have? This is critical for RT. If it has 4 cores then it may be a setting to allow Chief to use more than one that needs to be adjusted.

I use the same method as Alan. Any CAD done in the Plan is automatically in the Layout. If you set up your Layout very early in the project, you can just open the Plan and Layout and work in the Plan. Your Layout pages are continuously being updated except for Elevation and Section Views.

If you search the old forum you will find some solutions. My method is to use an angle front cabinet with a matching back. Then I simply turn the cabinet around 180 degrees so the front is facing the angled wall and add a handle manually to the back. It's really best to use a "Wall Cabinet" even for the Base Cabinet and use a PSolid for the ToeKick.

Mark, I did a bit of experimenting and here's what I found: 1. I created a box 3" wide, 1" deep & 24" tall. 2. I assigned a wood grain material (vertical) 3. I converted this to a symbol called "Stick" 4. I placed several of these in my plan and manipulated the width and height. Now here's the interesting part - the grain automatically aligns with the long axis. When I changed one of the symbols to 3" tall and 10" wide the grain became horizontal. This only works with the "Stick Symbol", not with the original primitive box. So the key is to use a piece that's been converted to a symbol to build your doors. Of course, if you need a special profile it takes a bit more work but the above rule still applies.

Mark, I suspect that CA created their door symbols by creating a rail and then copying that and rotating 90 degrees about the "y" axis to use as a stile. That way, the material is transformed 90 degrees the same as the stile rotation. It allows you to use a single material but get the grain to follow the length of the frame member.

In order for the grain on rails to by horizontal and the stiles to be vertical you would need to make your door with separate pieces and use a copy of the material rotated 90 degrees for the rails. When making any symbol, it's important to consider exactly how you want the symbol to perform. Materials can be different for individual elements of a symbol or the entire symbol can be just a single material. If the symbol is made up of just a single shape then it can have only one material. Some shapes - depending on how they are made - can be exploded into individual surfaces. In that case a separate material can be assigned to each face. It that set of faces is then converted to a symbol the symbol will have those materials. Try this: Using the Primitive Solids, create 2 or 3 solids and use the boolean operations to add or subtract the solids so that you have something unique. Then explode that shape and select some of the faces and assign different materials. You can get some very nice results. One way this can be used is with a single box shape to represent a piece of lumber. By exploding the shape you can apply an end grain material to 2 faces, a flat grain material to 2 other faces and an edge grain material to the last 2 faces. Now you have a very realistic piece of wood. This can be converted into a symbol and subsequently be used to build a piece of furniture, a cabinet door, etc.

Set a Stretch Plane at x=0 and one at z=6. That will limit the stretching to the center width and 6" above the bottom of the door. That way the rails and stiles will not be modified. BTW, you can make this modification to the symbol in the library by right clicking on the library item and opening the symbol dbx.

Mark, You can make a raise panel by using a Box with a molding polyline around it. Together they can be turned into a raised panel.

The short version is that you are better off creating exactly the door that you want in a separate Plan. You can use any of Chief's Tools to create the 3D shapes that will make up your door. I would suggest first creating a Molding Profile for the Frame, then use that as the Molding on a Molding Polyline drawn in Elevation View. Add a Panel to the center (maybe use a Primitive Solid Box) of the appropriate size and move it into place. Display this 3D set of objects in a perspective view and assign whatever materials you want to the frame and the panel (unique names for the materials is best - MyDoorFrame and MyPanelFrame would work) Now select the "Create Symbol" Tool and specify that the symbol is to be a Cabinet Door. This will create the Door Symbol which you can then use on any Cabinet. It will also create the appropriate Plan View of the Door (2D Block). Note: Any Cabinet, Door, Window, etc that you customize in Chief can be saved to your user Library and recalled for use in the future.

The 3D Symbol is in fact a 3D Model/Object. If you want something different then you build it up from solids in a blank plan and display it in a 3D View. Then use the Convert to Symbol Tool to add it to the Library as a new Cabinet Door. Changing an existing 3D Symbol is possible to a certain extent, but it takes some knowledge of the tools available and it's not something that is really easy to explain. If you could explain exactly what door in the core catalog you want to modify and what modifications you want to make then I could give you the steps to accomplish it. IAE, nothing in the core catalog can actually be modified and stored in the core catalog. A copy that you place in the user library can be modified.

You can use the Trim Tool and then change one of the lines to either a different layer, color or line weight. When then joined they will not become one.

Graeme's answer is exactly what I said - but he explained it better.

All you really need to do is change the "Current CAD Layer" to a Layer that has the linestyle and color you want. Basically that's what Ray and Bill are doing.

Todd, I use just one Layout Template but multiple sheet sizes. It takes a bit to set it up to work but it can be done. I'm not the only one that does this. Essentially, I have one Layout Template that has several different Borders, Each Border has it's own set of Layers and it's simply a matter of switching Layer Sets and Page Print Sizes.

Perry, Do you really thing that Slabs (Especially Mono-Slabs) are OK? I absolutely can not get them to work the way I need them to be. The cross section is not correct for the way they are actually built.

Sorry about that. I uploaded the correct library now

Note: The 2D Block may be suppressed by selecting "None" in the 2D Block Tab of the symbol dbx.

Here's a simple wall niche symbol. It inserts automatically into a wall and can be resized, moved up,down,sideways and otherwise edited. If it's in the wrong side of the wall it can be rotated 180 degrees using the symbol dbx and likewise can be moved relative to the face of the wall by adjusting the "y" origin. You might need to use a PSolid to fill the opening in the back of the wall, depending on your needs. Similar symbols can be created with different geometry such as arched, etc. Enjoy. Wall Niche - Rectangular.calibz