GeneDavis

I believe that houses with this design feature, meaning a walkout basement with part of the walkout floor walls wood-framed, with frost-wall foundations below, are being built all across the country from I-70 to the Canadian border. Wherever there are basements. Wherever it snows. Wherever there are sloping lots. A lot of wherever. And that is a lot of houses. The Chief software should be able to handle this better. Here are some of the things that ought to be requested in software features to handle this right: 1. "Build stemwall with footing under this wall." These stemwalls, which many of us call frost-walls, should be built on the same level we are using for the rest of that lower walkout level of the house, and it should be Level 0. The spec dialog should allow us to specify a beginning wall depth, and as we can now, we should be able to break and drag up or down the footings and their walls as needed for stepdowns. 2. Separate layer for the stemwalls. Just as we have for footings, we need to be able to turn the stemwalls on and off, depending on what we are sending to layout in construction documents. This is a variant on what Jim suggested above. 3. Main layer or layers only, but show fill. A foundation wall in a walkout basement job or in a non-walkout, may have finish layers on both outside and inside surfaces. The foundation plan drawing should not be showing these finish layers, but it is, for some, a drawing convention that foundation walls shown in the plan drawings have a fill. Now all we have is "main layers only," but that option does not show fills. 4. Extend floor slab atop stem wall. A lot of houses are getting built this way, with the basement slab poured to sit atop the frost wall parts of the foundation, where wood-framed walls sit atop the slab. See the typical detail I attached in an earlier post to this thread. 5. Stop exterior wall sheathing and finish layers at floor level. Chief does this when walls have monoslab foundations under. We ought to get same for the walkout walls that are sitting atop the basement floor slabs. If Chief had these features and options, we would not have to do the workarounds we now do. I am going to copy and paste this post in the Suggestions section, and would appreciate some cheerleading here, so Chief people pick up on the issues.

Here is one problem with the way I did it, in putting the lower walkout floor on Floor 1, and the frostwall foundation under the exposed walls on Floor 0. I am unable to send a "clean" foundation plan to layout. I'll either have to send one like shown and CAD-draw the rest, or come up with another solution. The pic attached is of Floor 1, with a layerset done to shown footings and foundation wall main layer only. This is an ICF job.

Well, I tried Bill Page's technique, and while it got me into a mode in which I can get the 3D model pretty close to reality, I am not happy with the mechanics of things. Here it is in X6, for those that want to look. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17835038/Jack%20Grouse/Chalet%202800%20walkout.plan I have retired the plan for now, awaiting answers to some questions, and did not step the footings accurately. I don't like having the main (upper) floor not at elevation zero. Something I did in inserting the new foundation level under the old, caused my main floor to go from zero to +46-1/8". I don't like having my foundation on two different floors. The full depth ICF walls are on floor 1 and the frostwalls are on floor 0. David Potter can be excused for his deferring all foundation design to engineers. He is in the TX hill country, and from my experience with the way residential building works there, a combination of shoddy building practices and unstable soils have caused enough foundation failures, such that builders all hire engineers to detail the reinforced slab foundations, and they all get overdesigned. The engineers, all with TX professional registration, are carrying insurance. Use Google and do a web search for "Austin foundation repair" or "San Antonio foundation repair" and the number of business feeding off the result of all that shoddy work will make you understand things.

Here are two details that represent how we will build. Taken together, one can see how the floor slab sits within the foundation when the walls above the slab are ICF, and atop the foundation wall when the wall above the slab is wood-framed. I can model the stepping. Thanks to Bill Page for reminding me to do the lower floor not as Floor 0 Foundation, but to make that floor Floor 1 and do the part-foundation below it (the stepped down frostwalls) in Floor 0. But now that it can be modeled in 3D, sort of, there still exists two problems. 1. How to get a foundation drawing to layout, in that part of it is on Floor 0 and part on Floor 1. 2. How to dismember the floor slab so it places both inside foundation wall and atop foundation wall, where needed.

It ain't Texas, David. Us mere mortals do foundation design in vast parts of the north country.

A walkout basement design in a winter climate is a hybrid affair, isn't it? The front of the house, the uphill side, has a foundation under, while the rear, the walkout side, has its lower exterior walls built atop the basement slab, which is brought to bear upon the frost-wall foundation below. So that basement slab is part inside the walls and part outside. I built a model for a friend that wants to build such a house, and floor 1 is the main or upper floor. The foundation floor under has the out-of-ground exposed walls as wood framed, while the buried walls, in this case, are 11" ICF. What is my best route to getting the frost walls built in Chief, and getting that basement slab modeled accurately?

Two words. Material and region. This has been discussed before. Those reveals should be easy to do.

We get them now, but by "get" I mean we can specify them and when doing so, the material list includes them. No build in 3D, though. If Chief were to build them in 3D for us, what would be the best and most comprehensive way to have all the options? Height for sure. Width as a plus-one-side dimension regarding casing build. IOW, if the total casing build width is 4-1/4", and we specify 1/8" plus for the plinth, the plinth width will be 4.25+0.125+0.125 = 4.5 Chamfered edges and top edges. Round-over edges and top edges. What else?

Or you choose a stone that has a pattern.

Thanks, Glenn. If there was an option one could check for the millwork feature that would put it IN the casing at top center, one could use this. I think I will post this in the Suggestions area.

Looking at that earlier thread about Chief vs Softplan and the test-bed house with its stucco trims, I got to wondering. There is no semi-hidden feature I've missed in windows spec dialog, is there, that yields top-centered keystones? Would such a feature be useful, or are p'solids just as easy for doing these?

You need to make a mental leap and accept what Chief can do for cabinet work, or else move on. Chief Architect has some excellent samples of kitchen work, and here is one. http://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/plan-sets/Fire-Ice-Kitchen.pdf Look at that, and tell us what you need that it does not have.

Tech support got the same results as I did, after I submitted a ticket. I'll wait to hear further.

This plan has a wall type used both in a single-type (non-pony) wall, and in pony walls. Stone-6 is the name of the wall type. When I do a material region in it drawn single-type, the material region will embed. Not so if it is part of a pony wall. If I start a brand new plan and do the same, the material regions embed. Try it in my plan and see, and tell me what you think is going on. Thanks. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17835038/Westfall%201250%207_pitch%20roof.plan

All I wanted was the ability to specify rims separately from joists, and we've got that. Show us your plan. Heh.

Crickets are also used for the situation shown here. I x-scrubbed away the roof above and some soffit so you can see it. Any little roof doodle that is done, usually atop a roof already sheathed, to get the water away and not cause problems, is a cricket. Wonder where the term originated.

Not automatically. You will need to learn how to manually draw roofs. It is a very worthwhile exercise. Chief gives you total control. This one has the pitch at 4:12, except for the ones that make the level ridge.

I'm outta answers.

See my edited post above.

If that is a level ridge coming out from the house, centered on the bay feature bump within the porch, there must be a cricket in there that we cannot see. There is snow and shadow in the way. Your Chief model only shows us what you tried to do to duplicate it. We need better photos of the as-built. Are you able to better examine all those elements of the porch roof, and measure pitch of each? Is there something like this going on?

Material region tool works, whether joints are recessed or proud. Very useful tool. Multiple copy makes doing an array easy. Things like this, board and batten, and more, all now possible for good looking 3D.

V10 seems so long ago. It may have shown floor structure and ceiling structure in simple diaphragm format, when doing a section. Lines of the outer envelope. We got to add more detail to structure as releases came out, thus your issue. We now don't get the diaphragm bounds, instead, we get all the details of frame and finish. So why not just settle for some CAD boxes and call it a wrap, if you want that old look? I am kind of surprised a cabinet specialist like you would not want the wall elevation instead.

In that case, draw the wall and move it under the stairs.

Sure is a pretty staircase. Looks like mahogany. I like the way the first few steps flare with their curves. To reproduce, get a good stairbuilder, and get out your wallet. Looking for advice on how to model this using all-Chief, with precision, to match the real thing? Your attempt shows your stairs curving at the bottom, which is not what is happening in the photo. Your stairs take a flare on one side, with treads and risers going from rectangular (tread #6 from bottom, it appears) to being arc segments as you go down 5-4-3-2 to the first tread at 1. Your wall-under-stair follows that nicely-done flare. Consider modeling a sequence of landings for numbers 1 through 5, with appropriate curved shapes in 2D plan, then springing your straight run up from #5. Chief's stair tools are a little lacking when it comes to doing a stair with this geometry. Getting that railing with its curve, rollout, and bottom newel will take some work. Your skirt is going to take some work, and may need to be modeled outside Chief, then imported as a symbol. Good luck. Here are a couple pics of stairs like yours, but not as nice. Whoever did yours had a great eye.

I am going blind looking for this in the window spec dialog. Used to be able to get a cottage style look. How, in X6? Edit. Got it. Sorry.