AvoyeDesign

I don't have any great examples, but it would be things that we just have learned to work around and patch over. Nothing that breaks your ability to put out con-docs in a reasonable amount of time or of reasonable quality. Hang around here long enough though and you will get an idea of some of these items that experienced users commonly gripe over. But this is par for the course for any software package. I know a designer using AC Lite who has similar issues there.

Any software tool is only going to produce what you put into it, so just in case you have the impression that Chief or any other program will just magically generate drawings for you, this is not the case. Some people do expect that, so if that is not the case with you, my apologies. Chief is a very capable program for producing constructin drawings, even with some significant shortcomings. Getting efficient requires a lot of training and the development of your own procedures and workflow, as well as assets like a custom user library and templates. I find it is best to develop these over time as you weed out what works and what doesn't.

To the question of the task of cleaning up cross sections each time the plan is revised, I look at it this way: When I first started I was using an off the shelf version of Turbocad, which is a very basic cad design program. It had 3D tools, but for drawing plans they were not useful, so I simply drew all my plans and elevations in 2D lines. I had libraries of window and door blocks that I would paste over the wall lines which would automatically patch. I had to project lines from a floor plan to create elevation drawings. It was very tedious and dull, but I made it work until I could scratch enough pennies to buy Chief. When I bought Chief, it was like a dream come true. However I did find it frustrating the amount of cleanup I had to do with elevations and cross sections from time to time. I really wanted a slick, fast program that didn't require those edits. I've eventually come to accept that Chief isn't perfect, but that it is much better than manulally drawing out all my plans and elevations from projected lines. I may have to spend a bit of time cleaning things up for every revision, but I've learned how to deal with that. I make sure the client has all the changes into a revision that they want before I change the elevations. My fees are structured to take into account the amount of time to revise the plan. I also use masks and CAD lines where necessary, inside the camera view, to save from repeated work cleaning up elevations and sections. But most of all, while I recognize that Cheif is a powerful tool, I also recognize that the work I do is custom, fairly comprehensive, and time consuming. I don't expect Chief to do all the work for me all the time, or for its tools to be perfect for every situation. A live cross section isn't always an ideal construction drawing, and must be adapted at times to be less busy or cluttered.

Rich text does not follow text styles or default settings in your annotation sets, because this would override all of the size formatting in a rich text object in a plan. Imagine if you had a long legal section on page 1 that had formatting of different sized text in various locations of the body of text, and you wanted to resize that according to the annotation set, default setting or text style, how would chief determine that? Everything would just become one size. I see a number of possible headaches with what you are trying to do, one which you mentioned which is the text box size adjusting or not adjusting correctly. Good luck!

The not so good thing is that they cost a whole lot more around here than 2x10's. I uesd to design homes with TJI's all the time, but that was in northern BC where there was a lot of oil money and big homes. Now on Vancouver Island I'm dealing with much more limited budgets and smaller homes, and 2x10's are just the standard go-to.

Does the manufacturer of the joists you are using have any software tools for this? I use Forte software for checking the spans of Weyerhauser engineered products before I send my plans to the engineer. Your brand might have something similar?

I've found that even when I set the housewrap to 0 manually, it still appears as more than a 0 thickness layer in cross section. In the picture attached, you can actually see that it borrows some of the space from the rainscreen layer, which is supposed to be 1/2" thick. One of those things that enrages my OCD...

With a laser tool, measure each room separately, then the rooms combined through the doorway. Subtract the difference.

Verify in field is the way to go. A competent builder will know the importence of this, and plan ahead for it. Homeowners don't want me tearing out walls to detail existing structure. This is what makes renos costly, the unknown.

Some things that make the "save as" method less appealing to me: I develop a lot of plans in parallel, so which do I use as a template? I might add a new anno set to plan 1 that I don't need on plan 2, but plan 2 I added a new defauly that i didnt really need on plan 1. But both of these developments to my "template" are things I want to have ready for my next new plan. Every few releases of Chief I will start an entire brand new template, using the OOB default template as a starting point. I will build it up by importing defaulsts, layersets and anno sets from my old template after going through and stripping things that have fallen out of use. This ensures that my default plan isn't accumulating waste over the years. During my workflow, I will now and then add something to my plan in terms of a default, anno set, etc. When I decide that I want it on my template I open the template file and add. That is how I've built it out over the years.

"I'm the client, and when I say I want a round room that is square, I expect it!"

Hmm, someone's digging up old threads...

That system looks overkill. For the price paid you may experience diminishing returns on performance, but since it isn't your money, why not? You can see my system in my signature. It runs decently well, but if I had more $ it would be an i7 with a 1080 card or two. But I don't raytrace much fwiw.

If you are building a plan database and selling multiple copies of the plan, develop a system that values a plan based on whatever factors allow you a net profit after the time you put into it. If you are offering your services as a draftsman, find a rate per sqft that covers your expenses, pays you a reasonable salary, and gives you a reasonable profit margin. If you offer your services as a creative designer, there are several ways you could charge; percentage of building budget, hourly, fixed rate, or any combination. But all of these things have in common a need to track time, expenses, overhead costs, and many other metrics that are specific to your business model. This is something you need to develop over time, often through trial and error. You may want to hire a business consultant if you need help getting started on this.

I thought his explanation was pretty clear on that one...

I would suggest in the future that you take the time to more clearly formulate your questions and add sufficient detail about what you are trying and what isn't working. This forum is not a google search bar, and a more thought out and well presented question would see a lot more helpful responses. Also, filling out your signature with some basic details about you, and the version of chief you use would help too.

To make selecting easier: if you don't have one already, make a layer set called "all layers off." Switch to that layer set, open the layer display options, select all layers, and switch them off. Now turn on the layer called wall, normal. You can now marquee select all the walls without grabbing anything else. Next, you can hold shift and click any wall you don't want to change to deselect it. This should be faster than selecting each interior wall individually. Also suggest adding the "all off" layer set to your template, it is a handy little tool. I also have a "all on" layerset to help me find things that get lost on an inactive layer.

Key words in my post are "you might search something like this." IOW, google is your friend. Also, you can get pcie ribbon cables for an external hookup.

For the plotter, you might search something like this... https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/startech-startech-1-port-pci-parallel-adapter-card-pci1plp/10192811.aspx?

Ok, maybe the scale of the building was lost on me, but I was guessing maybe 4' between the roof and that upper feature. I don't see a door going on to it, but maybe a clerestory window or two? Edit: Ok on second look the scale of the building was lost on me. I was under the impression that the roof over the lower level was at the top of what I now think is a railing wall.

It's hard for me to say only seeing one perspective view, and not seeing the actual depth of that roof feature, but it has the appearance to me of being both functionally and visually redundant. Personally I'd modify the wall below to extend right up to this feature, as shown in the attached image. The benefit is that you would have less surface area to make water tight and would require less structural elements to support a water tight surface.

If you need to speak to someone over the phone it is probably best to call tech support. Be aware that if your SSA isn't current there is a fee for that service. Otherwise, folks here will reply with suggestions and tips as they have time. It would be helpful if you would tell us which version of cheif you are using, and you might want to add those details to your signature so that you don't have to include them with everything you post in the future. As for your problem, I remember this happening to me once, but I don't recall the cause or how I fixed it. I'll see if I can offer you some tips when I get back to the ofdice.

I use a backclipped cross section set to 24" depth. This guarantees to pick up a single framing member, and I only get 1 truss instead of a mess of multiple trusses with different webbing patterns. Some tweaking is sometimes required to position the cut plane in an ideal spot. I would argue also that most cut planes in a complex model you create aren't in the most ideal position to create a clear and easy to read section, and some compromise of automation, model accuracy and cad overlays is needed. If I spent time making my models accurate enough that any section I cut was perfect, I'd be wasting a lot of time for nothing. Good practices will get you close, and some extra work with cad overlays will get you to home plate.

This should do it.

Pick the one that gets you the closest to what you want and use cad overlays to get the sections right.