GeneDavis

If we want program-generated pitch labels, someone ought to think it through carefully and describe how it might be used in producing con-doc layout views, and then write it up as a suggestion. Is it a triangle or an ell? There are votes for each way. How high up from the roof plane? Is it text-filled or not? Certainly not wanting to see it on every single plane of a complex roof arrangement, how do we deselect the planes for which we want to turn off the feature? And remember, you are in elevation view when you make that judgement, and you cannot select a plane whose baseline is normal to the viewing plane. You are gonna need to make that selection in a 3D view or a plan view, so you will want to split the screen. Or do we want to activate this new anno tool in 2D section or elevation and have Chief auto annotate any angled line in the view, so we can simply click those few places we want a pitch label. Does it need to work in a live view and a plot lines view? I know this thread is not about whether to use pitch labels in elevations or sections, or when and how much to use them, but I offer here, just for discussion, an example from Chief of a house with a complex multi pitch roof with very spare use of pitch marks in the elevations. Take a look. I have only shown images of the sheets with the exterior elevations, but if you look close at this, a house with about 20 roof planes, only 4 are labeled. But in the full file, which you can go and open and examine, there is a roof plan in which every plane is auto labeled and section views of everything with pitch triangle labels in those structural section views, all to guide the truss builder. There are different pitches. As I asked upthread, who is it that needs this information? Has a client ever asked you to change a pitch to a specific number other than maybe a 12? If a client needs to see the numbers, do they want it on every single plane in those elevation views? I don't bother with them anymore in elevation views, but do put them in the section views that are needed for roof cutters and truss designers. And I am certainly in favor of a tool which can automate that. It's a nice challenge for the Chief coders.

You want to rotate your layout so it can print on roll paper 36" wide? Or do you want a drawing that READS in portrait mode? Please clarify. Because if it is the first, it is done at the printer, not in Chief.

The pics are of what you did? Looks like you have it solved.

I've come around from annotating it on elevations, to doing a roof plan view with every plane labeled for pitch, and enough 3D for the builder to see what is to be done. I leave it off the 2D elevations. I think owner's don't care much about the numbers, but focus instead on the look. Steep. Flat. Flatter. Whatever. The roof cutter or the truss designer needs the pitches, so it's there in the roof plan, and I put it in the whole-building section views.

In PREFERENCES my setting was to grayscale, which I believe is OOB X15, as I cannot remember ever changing it. Same for all previous X Chief updates. I toggle color on an off all the time and expect to see shades of gray for wall fills. Fills go to white when the PREF button for b&w is checked. I printed the .pdf in b&w.

Thanks @DBCooper. In that second video it opens with the camera in what appears to be floor overview, but I see no option in 3D walkthrough camera specification to get that camera, which seems to have all roofs and ceilings turned off.

This place pumps out a model every couple days and posts to YouTube. Walk-through videos done quite nicely. Every room seen from all the angles needed to understand the plan. I'd like to see a Chief tutorial showing how to do the path and cameras for any one room done like what you see here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_INnPmZUjPU&loop=0

The file I sent is a single page excerpt from the full set I had printed at ThePlanPrinter.com, which came back deathly pale.

Could it be that printing it with "color" not checked, results in a .pdf that gives the washed out look? I always sent to .pdf before with color checked, and assumed that clients printed in b&w. This time I did the .pdf owner review set color unchecked. That is what you see. Where is the "greyscale" option when printing to .pdf? I don't see it in any of my .pdf options. I have Chief .pdf and Microsoft .pdf options, plus two desktop letter-sized printers, each at locations four to six states distant. My summer and fall digs has no printer, but I can motor down the mountain to the little local library and print to letter size. Maybe I should be doing that on a test page, printing to 8.5 x 11, before shipping to an online print source.

Thanks @Chrisb222! See how this page prints. The page I have has the anno so light it almost creates eye strain to read, and the Simpson instructions I put on the lower R (an image from a screencap) came out like it's bleached. test page roof framing.pdf

Post the plan, give us your roof load specs for snow and live, and someone, me included, will show you how to truss it. Make sure we get the barn, too. In the mean time, get your supplier's field guy to visit your site and scope out the delivery situation. I just did an i-joist roof frame in snow country with 110 psf ground snow load, but we have no saguaros here, only huge white pines. One lane curvy road going to. Driveway impossible turn.

OOB X15 comes with many already-built SPVs, and plenty of text styles, dimension defaults, and layer sets already built. There is a lot of the use of blue colors for annotation in the OOB setup. The OOB framing for ceilings, floors, and roofs come with the planview lines in colors. So there is a lot of blue, in various shades (I think) in OOB planview objects and annotation. I rarely see my plans on paper, shipping finished work off as PDF files, and the clients and suppliers print. Wanting to see how a new plan I am completing now looks for real, I went online, and chose a guy up north of Detroit, ThePlanPrinter.com, to use for a single set of full sized check prints. They arrived and are almost unreadable in many instances, pages 1 thru 16. I though he was running out of ink, or was using ink that was tending to gray and not full black, and reacted by calling him and complaining. I could tell in the conversation he wasn't going to pay for another print and ship cost, not from the same file, nor did I really want him to do that. So I ended up blaming the blues. And then over-reacted by going through the file and its setup, changing line color and text and all other anno to black. I now think I did not have to do this, or did I? No one's ever said before, hey, all your prints look pale and washed out and it's hard to read the detail. Do you use the OOB blues?

Solved it, Joe. Thanks for looking. I had "set up" the new default set for the new SPV, but I had not saved it, so the default set was not and could not be active.

I'm having trouble understanding the right way to annotate a framing plan view done to a different scale than my standard 1/4" = 1'. There is a lot of detail in one small part of a roof framing plan, so I want a way to have a 1/2" = 1' view I can annotate to send to layout. So I thought I'd need a new SPV, right? Because I already have a SPV for roof framing, and it is for 1/4" scale, and I don't want this view to be showing any existing anno from that 1/4" SPV. The only thing I need to have in this view, anno-wise, is text, dimensions, and the arrows used with text. My anno practice for text with an arrow is to draw the text, then draw a text line with arrow. Maybe I should change that practice and do it in reverse, using the leader line thing which generates an arrow from its arrowhead end and then can have rich text input, but that is a whole different topic. For now, I don't want to change. Text first, then text line with arrow. So I set up a default set, "Framing Default Set, Roof, 1/2" scale." Also set up layers for text, dimensions, and CAD for this 1/2" scale view, all called 1/2" scale framing, roof. With this all set up, I could then do the specs for the new SPV I created for roof framing at 1/2" scale. I did that. But I cannot get the arrows to draw into the layer I want. They want to come in to the layer for Electrical. I am confused about drawing an anno arrow using "text line with arrow." Why is this so hard? Is my strategy wrong? When wanting to generate a view at a new scale, don't we need to do it using a SPV?

Looks like a Houzz pic, with the little white price tags.

The building itself includes the foundation. The drawings provided by the supplier of the preengineered steel building are of little interest to the AHJ, just as is the engineered roof truss supplier drawings for a wood framed roof in a building. You're gonna have to pay a pro with a NY seal.

Who did the construction docs? Do the docs include the foundation, its plan view, sections, notes, details, specs? Sounds like what he is asking for is a set of plans that bear the seal of a NY PE. If you are not that PE or a NY architect, you're gonna have to find one. Your inspector is the AHJ. He sits on a throne. Does the jurisdiction allow unsealed ("unstamped") plan sets for buildings less than some size, like 1000 sf or less? The NY jurisdictions I know permit that exception. If you can find it in writing in the town code, you might be able to wiggle out of this.

Use the right railing. Cable railing is a panel type.

Blocking CAD objects creates a new object, let's call it the "block," and the block can have its layer different from the layer or layers of those elements which were blocked. Think of those layers as now subverted or made moot. You now control visibility of the entire grouped blocked thing, the block, by its layer. You gotta explode it to regain viz control of the elements, which when unblocked, now retain their original layer assignments.

As Eric did, think it through, take your time, maybe use Chief's excellent CAD tools to do a cross section study to determine the mix of pitches and wall (room) heights, then draw the walls and specify their roof-spring details. Then click build all roofs. That image of the front elevation can be used with CAD. Paste it in, scale it, and get to work. Looks to me like that upper center roof mass is a cross-gable, both ridges same height, looks like a cruciform from the drone's eye.

To model a fridge panel, I used a partition, made it my preferred size, it shows nicely in 3D and in plan, but I cannot get it to report to the cabinet schedule. My term fridge panel is for the full height 26.5" depth x 1.5" width panel adjacent a fridge. Pic attached. The base fillers, wall fillers, full height fillers, all will report, but not the partition. I dropped one elsewhere in the plan to see if a newly placed one would report, but no.

Only if you show us the rest of the house

The attic wall end needed a patch done with a solid, but she's good now. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Mick. Off to the neighborhood picnic in the lovely mountain glen. Third generation families property owners here going back over 110 years.

OK, rebuilt the foundation and it fixed the ballooning stoop edge footing wall. The foundation plan I can CAD edit to make it look right, and it has a couple problems in 3D when I look under it, but all is good now for the con docs. Look at the attic portion of the stoop roof support wall, how its end finish ain't there. I had to fix the wall below using a room divider wall for the outboard end of the wall to butt to, so maybe this same hack will fix the attic part. If not, a solid will patch it.

The attic thing seems to take away the ballooning footing wall, but there's no footing under the right edge of the porch foundation slab.