GeneDavis

Here is another video. Your framing details are going to be done by you using Chief tools. Chief does not autoframe this, but it will model it in 3D for you with you using the available roof tools. As for con docs, the little bit of shipbuilding needed for these two small segments and their valley is going to be done by you using CAD. What software produced the 3D model you show in your opening post? Does that software autoframe this?

The second I saw the photo in post 1, I knew the cabinet whiz kids would start a race to see who could cross the finish line first. In a photo finish it was Mark by a whisker.

Why not that 3D detail for beaded faceframes? For one, getting the woodgrain right at the stile/rail joints would be a pain. But who ever does beaded faceframed inset work that is NOT painted? For 2D representation it would be sufficient if they would give the option for a fuzzy line at a 1/4" or 5/16" offset away from the opening to represent the quirk groove adjacent the bead. Chief is on to other 3D things and not this. I wish they'd give us better window sash and frames, and doors with stops, the kind for interior doors, and the kind for exterior doors. From the tease, it looks as if we will get simple boxlike things on roofing and siding to emulate standing seam ribs and battens. Maybe they'll even do 3D clapboards.

You specify scale when sending a view to layout. A layout page can contain a number of views, and each has its own scale. Select any view on a page, and there's a tool for editing its scale. Have you worked with this tool?

The door is a 7/16" countertop, its three piece molding first a 2-1/4 stile/rail with eased edges at face side, next a 1/8" rectangular profile done in insulation air gap (i.e. no material), last a 1/4" bead alongside is a 1/16" quirk detail. The door is inset into the 1.5" width faceframe with margins of zero. The door symbol is readily resizable and is dependent on cabinet face specs. I did not do a slab d'front for this exercise. See the problem when you do the elevation camera? Chief's line weights give it away, also the door operation lines. Here is a catalog cut from Walzcraft, from whom we source fronts and trim and d'boxes for most jobs, this page is in their Signature Series catalog. You can see the d'fronts are inset into frames, the frames not beaded, but the doors, stiles and rail mitered, have beads both sides of the perimeter members. I'd find it rather exhausting to have to model jobs with elements like this, just to satisfy the wants of interior designers.

Here is what I think is considered a pretty standard look in inset-fronts cabinetry, and the term "beaded" applies to the frame and not the door or drawerfronts. This very common style almost always has no beads around door perimeter. I don't know of a Chief hack that can do the frames like this in 3D. Here is a Chiefer showing how he does the "look" of a frame bead in 2D. He ends up with bead-on-bead, the bead along door and d'front edges hugging the frame beads. I've never seen that in a showroom or catalog. I don't do any inset stuff, but here is what popped into my head. Specify your offsets so as to have a 3/8" margin between faceframe openings and the door or d'front, and make and place a 3D bead molding tight to the openings, sized to leave the 3mm margins. Tedious, but if you gotta have it, you gotta do it. Consider doing your work in Cabinetvision or Mosaik, both of which have what you want.

Regardless of how you make the door symbol, show us, just as Mark and I showed you, how you have it stretch-zoned.

Here is a 5-piece door I made with solids for the perimeter and a countertop with perimeter molding for the center. The molding emulates a 30 degree cope/stick detail. The kitchen in the pic also has this detail for all the lower drawerfronts, with a separate symbol used for those. See the stretch zones? I included a catalog cut from Walzcraft to show what I used as a reference, the cut showing one of their many many door profiles.

Pretty basic stuff. Look at my spec and show us yours with screenshots.

Hey @Renerabbitt thanks for weighing in on this weighty topic. To get the photorealism the OP wants for the soffit material, wouldn't one need to find a texture that was 1) seamless, 2) exhibited the desired wood grain, 3) exhibited the rounded-edges deep and wide groove between "planks," and 4) has a normal map included? How does one find such a texture one can download and use in Chief? And if this instead needs one to have the skills to use photoshop or Blender or gimp or some other 3rd party package, how does one acquire such skills? There are plenty of perspective-view photos of this kind of vinyl soffit product but no straight-on seamless images, at least from my measly searches. The only Chief training videos I can find that deal with normal mapping use textures that are in-library that come with normal maps.

AI is the best way to go. You picked a single element of your building's collection of exterior finishes, and it is one that can only be realistically rendered if done in 3D. Other elements such as stone, clapboard siding, tile roofing, standing seam roofing, all these are beyond Chief's capability to deliver true realism when rendering in Chief 3D. Here is what I asked Google and read the response. https://gemini.google.com/share/6517c9d94277 After that, take the time to watch this video. Pay particular attention to the part of the discussion that deals with your concern about architecture changes and hallucinations.

Get AI to do it. If you are set up to chat using your mic, your workflow can be a quick conversation.

My drawings get used by the panelizer who uses them and submits shop drawings, which I review and correct, if needed. It's up to the fabricator to size all the members based on the info I provide.

Editing Chief's wall framing can be done in 2D and 3D. Chief walls are autoframed either singly (click a wall, click "build framing . . . ") or with a "build all" click. For your purpose, you will open the CAD space detail for each wall either from the project browser where you can see each wall detail "page," or by selecting a framed wall and clicking the "open wall detail" button. With a wall detail page open, you are looking at the 2D representation of the 3D framing members generated by Chief when you framed the wall, and all are per the specs you either accepted from the out of box settings that come with Chief, or per your edited enhanced specs. Plate count, stud spacing, header size and orientation, etc. You will be using basic Chief CAD, but are working on 3D objects. You cannot "draw" a framing member in this space, but you can copy, then move, rotate, edit size, edit placement (flat to inside, flat to outside), and end cuts (using CAD cut and extend). Work with it. Explore all the things you can do. I usually let the panelizer decide where wall joints go and I insist on getting submittals to review and approve, so I can see joints don't compromise some aspect of the build. This means for a wall length longer than the assembly table size (which dictates max panel length), I'll show them the wall at it's full length, say 28 feet, and let them join however it makes sense to them. If I need them to change joint placement for whatever reason, I show them how with a CAD detail. This is rare. Screencap of a wall detail shown attached. Note label. Chief number-labels wall detail pages, and you can edit them in a way that makes sense to your erection sequence so your Con Docs give good directions. As for Chief CAD and editing, I recommend taking the time to watch every single training video on CAD and CAD editing. Copy, paste, point to point moves, rotations, cut, extend, fence, dimension, arrows, notes, labels, and more.

You can edit and annotate your wall framing elevations to your hearts content for a panelized job. Here is a gable end. See the joints?

Just spoke with tech support and it's a known issue and they "hope" it'll be gone by the time X18 comes around. What is particularly annoying is that deleting them isn't permanent. They come back right exactly where they were before. I was hoping for an update, say, tomorrow.

When in CAD detail 2D mode, I am always getting unwated points. Happens in wall framing detail and truss detail views, plus any CAD detail I have created. Sometimes they are stacked on top of each other, as if copied and pasted in place, and deleting them takes multiple clicks or window select to delete. What could be the cause? I gotta solve this.

Look for the threads that discuss making screened porch walls and you'll see how you can do walls, but the roofs with the aluminum bents and purlins, those are gonna be tough.

Import it in .skp format.

From AI: To create a lowered or sunken shower in a slab foundation using Chief Architect, you will need to define the shower area as a separate, distinct "Room" using the Room Divider tool, and then adjust its floor height on the structure settings.

It's done with frames that are inset each side and kerfed, and a bead like that seen here in this TrimTex video. https://www.trim-tex.com/products/¾-bullnose-kerfed-bead Try making your doors with 1-1/2" thick frames and control the jamb depth to match framing layer thickness, then dress each side of the openings with molding p-lines to get the quarter rounds you need. A 3/4" R quarter round will cover the outer 3/4" part of the jamb edges, and you should get the look you want. The moldings are made for one opening, and copied around and placed in all the others. Your walls get 5/8 rock and 1/8 plaster so the build is 3/4" I've seen that look in expensive homes in the Phoenix locale, and doors in the homes were all 1 3/4" thickness. This, from Google AI: 2. Plaster Finishes & Bullnosed Returns Aesthetic Detail: In the Southwest, luxury homes often feature smooth or textured Venetian plaster or traditional gypsum plaster. Bullnosed Returns: A hallmark of custom Phoenix design is the bullnosed (rounded) plaster return. Instead of using wood casing (trim) around doors, the plaster wraps around the corner of the 2x6 framing to meet the door jamb directly. Wall Depth: The extra depth of a 2x6 wall creates a more pronounced and luxurious bullnosed edge, enhancing the "old world" or "modern organic" appearance. 3. Door Requirements (1-3/4" Thick) Standard Luxury Grade: 1-3/4" is the standard thickness for high-end solid-core interior doors in the region, offering better weight and sound resistance than standard 1-3/8" retail doors. Integration: These doors require heavy-duty jambs. When paired with 2x6 framing and bullnosed plaster, the result is a deep-set door opening that emphasizes the home's substantial build quality.

My MSI got sick last month and needed a new hard drive, and after recovery, was still giving me fits when in 3D, doing dangerous lockups for sure when making the tiniest camera orbital move in PBR, and even in standard view mode. So I'm shopping, and came across this. Acer Predator Helios Neo 18 AI - 18.0" Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX - GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU - 2.10 GHz - 16GB Memory - 1 TB PCIe SSD - Windows 11 Home Gaming Laptop - 240 Hz IPS (PHN18-72-92Y3 ) Was watching @Renerabbittdoing his Template Tuesday live thing, and he's having no problems orbiting around in PBR, and his sig says he's running with either an RTX 4090, or an RX 7900 XTX. I believe the Nvidea 4090 is faster than the 7900 XTX, so it well may be that a 5070 Ti will be able to cruise well with the next couple Chief releases. Whaddya think? I know it's only got 1 TB storage but I've been ok with far less with the few projects per year I'm doing.

@MN_JohnH, you said, "I still don't know why Chief wants to use it's own trusses after I have put mine in but I can work around that too." Please, for our info, tell us how you "put mine in" and how Chief "wants to use its own." Chief lets you autoframe with trusses, and you can manually draw trusses the same way you can draw rafters and floor joists. It's "own trusses" are graphic representation of engineered wood trusses with top and bottom chords done per your spec inputs, but the webbing members are all from Chief's hallucinations. Actually, not. It places webbing based on how you have set the specs for max distance between for top and bottom chords. Play with the defaults for trusses and you'll learn how it all works. But never every think that Chief can or will do what your truss plant's engineer does with her roof build software. It is all just a reasonable "look" that you get from Chief. The only truss details (the elevations that call out all members, spacings, bearings, reactions, webbings) that count are the ones from the component supplier. I'm pretty anal about framing, having framed houses myself, trusses and stick, and being a structural engineer. I want my con docs to have the framing all detailed exactly how I expect it to be built. For a trussed job, I want my roof framing plan to have the exact layout the truss engineer will produce, so I always go back and forth as needed with someone from that desk at a components plant. Girders, hip sets, mono jacks, lay-ons, tray ceilings, overframes, everything goes in the right places, all dimensioned. But as for how any of the trusses are webbed or plated, I don't care, and nobody cares how my drawings look regarding that part of a job.

Would you be satisfied if your section looked like mine, upthread? No CAD detail needed. Your wallframe elevations will be exactly how they should be built, and your trusses will have the bearing pockets exactly to your specs. I did it in Chief. You should too if that is what you're after and needing. Lots of us do workarounds due to the software's limits.

Short answer: you don't. Chief has no settings you can do in dialogs that raises plates above ceiling heights. Chief generates wall framing based on room def specs, so clicking on a wall and framing it places the top plate at the ceiling height specified. As I said upthread, you need to edit the framing to raise the plates where wanted, and extend the framing up to the raised plates. Those edits don't "stick" if you doodle openings in the wall. I threw out the test file and can't play with it, but I just thought you might succeed this way. It'll do it for a simple shed building with roof shape like you showed in your upthread image of the truss with bearing pockets. Use CAD to figure the plate heights you want, both low and high sides, and do room division so that all rooms on the low side have ceiling heights for that low side, and likewise across the building for the high side. Fram those walls and you might find they are poked up into the truss envelope where you want them. Now all you have to do is edit the truss. Show us your results.