AvoyeDesign

5 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

Hi Rod , it has been suggested to me that you need to move this thread to the Suggestions Forum otherwise the CA Team will NEVER look at it.....(and Also make a Formal Submission to Tech Support for a feature Update with Plan.)

 

This and the Sloped Slab are two things Chief needs to address for garages specifically......

 

*** I think showing dotted lines , similar to how the footing shows to indicate a wall under the slab would work fine.

 

I had thought i had posted in suggestions...

But I've been sick all week and barely know what day it is, so who knows what I did.

Also, on a related note, when a door opening creates a step down in the foundation wall, the floor slab should continue through the door opening to the outside face of the concrete.  Just a couple of standard details that I have to edit manually for every plan.

I'd like there to be an automatic graphic where a door above creates a cutout in a concrete wall.  More often than not, this is just a step down in the concrete, but the default treatment by Chief is to make it appear that the concrete wall ends on either side of the door.  The attached images will demonstrate how I put a cross box over it to indicate a step down.  

2 minutes ago, rockyshepheard said:

Emphasis on "small". I work so I don't eat through it in a few years paying bills. I'd at least like to get back the 5k I invested in the computer and CA software.

I deleted that comment because I misread your post on the sale of your idea.  Sorry, if I had realized the thread was active right now I'd have edited it.  I missed the part where you were trying to make supplimentary income and my comment reflected that.

7 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

...and some of us don't have the skills to do what we do : )

 

Seriously.  This is one of the reasons I always cringe a little when I hear or read people make broad statements like "you should be charging more" when they have no idea whether or not the person is actually worth that.  You know and I know that there are "professionals" here that could be charging $15.00 an hour and might be way overpriced and there are others who could be charging $100.00 an hour and might be the true bargain. 

I deleted the post you quoted as I hadn't read further and saw more information I needed to consider, just for anyone looking for my post where this is quoted.  I didn't realize this was a hot thread or I would have just edited my post.

To respond to what you say here, a lot of people I've talked to didn't know what they were worth for a very long time.  The ability to put together a quality rendering in chief is no small task.  A lot of times people become competent and don't recognize that they are still charging bottom dollar, and it burns them out and they quit before their time.  People are encouraging others to take a look at what they are worth and considering whether they could charge more.  I don't see a problem with that.

Its all manual work.  I'm not sure if it works this way with the IRC, but we draw a 4m wide band around the perimeter that all brace walls need to be inside.  I have a custom cad block that contains a label with a text macro to call out the bamd length and specify the total length of required panels.  This saves me a lot of manual work, as plans are required to be submitted with calculations for each band.

I would have brought a surveyor in for the site plan, they can do it much faster and cheaper, but otherwise I can see that many hours for a project lime that.

On 12/20/2018 at 7:22 PM, Kbird1 said:

 

You and me both...... but there are those who think they need to down-vote for some supposed infraction even here...

 

M.

I will downvote a post if I think it is counter productive.  One of my pet peeves is when I see a response that demonstrates that the person didn't read and understand the OP.  I usually downvote these, especially if the post expresses frustration towards the OP.

I think it would be best for you to take the time to learn how to properly draw manual roof planes.  For two reasons:

For complex roofs, often times it can take just as much time and even more frustration to tweak all the conditions right for it to build, and then sometimes it needs manual tweaks after.

Also, splitting a room into two for different ceiling heights, or other similar tricks to fool chief into building the right roof, can affect your plan in other ways.  Room schedules and auto room naming are the first to come to mind.  For a program that costs nearly $3000 US, it makes sense to invest your time to really understand how the tools you use actually work.

1 hour ago, rockyshepheard said:

Maye I'm getting it now. Let's see

Changing the baseline height means the same as saying "add height to or subtract height from the original wall", thus heightening or lowering the roof plane.

That seems to be the effect.

So to get the same effect on a wall you can either increase the baseline height OR simply move the plane further from the wall.

 

 

I don't suggest moving the plane further from the wall.  Chief designed the baseline to indicate where the roof is supported by the structure (beam or wall.)  I make very sure on all of my plans that the roof baseline is directly over the exterior face of the wall or beam, and adjust the baseline height as needed.  If you are designing with trusses, the baseline height should be the height of the wall plus the heel height of the truss.  If you are designing with rafters, be sure to have all your settings correct in the build roof DBX and Chief will set the proper height for the birdsmouth cut.

The baseline is where your rafter is seated on the plate.  If that baseline is located away from the wall, the height of the rafter at the wall will be higher or lower.  Chief will adjust your wall height to bring the plates up to create a birdsmouth at the elevation where the rafter passes over the wall.  So for best practice, always draw the baseline over the outside surface of the supporting element of the wall, usually the main layer.

To be honest though, I've never dimensioned stud lengths, I leave it up to the framing crew to figure out.  A wall with a raked top plate like this is usually built very carefully.  I usually see the crew lay out the wall perimeter on the floor deck, lay down plates, and then measure and cut all studs to length.  But this all depends on how much information you are willling to provide and be responsible for.  A designer in his 60's told me the other day "don't draw anything you don't want to control, or that isn't necessary to get your permit."

You may need to add a marker or cad line over top of the stud to give the dimension something to grab.  This needs to be fixed for sure.

2 hours ago, SNestor said:

Can’t you create a unique roof section with no fascia?   I get the point...it would be great to just click and remove the fascia from edge.  But...you can accomplish the task right now if you really need to. You could also just “mask” the fascia in the section view...I think.  

There is a point in which we have to stop settling for workarounds and make it clear to Chief that we need better tools.  Reading this thread, it seemed to be the point behind the OP.

50 minutes ago, dskogg said:

All I did was change that floor to -24”.. so there is no room above.

Please post the plan so we can take a look.

I use this one:

https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/accessories/apd/a7055994?cid=3852&st=&gclid=Cj0KCQiAgMPgBRDDARIsAOh3uyKUnT4GDzoaGhN4cG58IUPocZnaIzSKPS2HcBhoHl_nJefVfl7gAGgaAnW4EALw_wcB&pdv=m&lid=5635587&VEN1=sG7I4ECDP,177449760680,901mtv7630,m,&VEN2=,&dgc=ST&DGSeg=DHS&acd=1230881379347390&VEN3=113104454496667226

However, I am developing RSI in both wrists, and considering switching to this for keyboard and mouse:

https://www.tapwithus.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAgMPgBRDDARIsAOh3uyLuX3xQ8oel0T6_PDzyX0c6QUyINUFzqWFRIz8DtAKyFlNtOOO4O8waAtAVEALw_wcB

I would use one in each hand and tap on something like a large inverted bowl, for a much more natural and relaxed wrist posture.

16 hours ago, justmejerry said:

Is it an attic wall drawing in? Never had same situation yet myself. I agree with Rod, post the plan.

That was my initial thought, bit the OP states it goes away when he moves the stair away from the wall, which is a bit unusual.

2 hours ago, CJSpud said:

Are you using dropped gable end trusses?

As Curt suggests I would set all trusses to dropped, and then the rafters will fit correctly between the trusses and sheathing.

Never seen this before, so I can't even speculate on the cause.  If you post the plan I could look at it for you.

https://m.newegg.ca/products/N82E16824025428

I use this as my primary monitor and it works great.  It isn't 4K but for light gaming you won't notice.  I like the aspect ratio better than a widescreen, as I can fill a plan in the screen and have more detail.

On 11/29/2018 at 10:14 AM, PorkRibs said:

Sorry for wasting your time in my haste and confusion.

Anyone who responds here is offering their time to you, no need to apologize.  It often takes a second set of eyes to clear up a confusing problem.

If you will always be able to access WIFI, I would suggest buying a low end laptop and using an app like AnyDesk to remote access your office workstation.  I do this a couple times a week and it works very well.  You could save up to $1,000 on your laptop that you could spend elsewhere.  However if you need to do significant work in Chief where you don't have internet access this would not be a good option.

If you upload your plan one of us could look at it for you.  It is difficult to determine from a screen shot what is going on here.  Be sure that the file is not open in Chief when you upload or it will be blank when we get it.

I use a fairly low end laptop for my work.  It is an i3 with integrated graphics and a standard HDD, not even a faster SSD.  When I work outisde my home office I am at a coffee shop or co-working space with internet access, and I use an app called AnyDesk to remote access my home office PC.  I run Chief remotely on the home office PC, and it does all the heavy lifting (see specs in my signature.)  I am able to spend half as much on a laptop this way, and it works just fine.  If you are going to be in range of wifi access anywhere you plan to work, this may be an option for you.  However, if you plan to do work out of range of wifi then you might want a powerful laptop.

I use a 1060 card in my PC, but have no experience with a laptop card.  My PC card has 6GB ram and has never been a bottleneck to my system.  I would imagine the laptop might run a little hot with that card, so I'm not sure if thermal throttling will be an issue for you.

You should be able to find the installation of X8 on the old drive that is hooked up to your new PC.  Open Chief from that location and deactivate that license.