GeneDavis

A curved ceiling plane would make the surface, but then you would have to deal with the vertical surface and its bottom shape. So, to do it best and quickly, just model the center and the flanking rectilinear soffits as one polyline solid.

Try making your furred studwall your main layer.

Lemme guess. You're using Vectorworks? A laptop you got off the sidewalk on East 85th, from a guy named Serge?

Shadowboards, or whatever we wish to call them. And yeah, it was Wendy that wanted them, and thanks to Wendy and the wizards of Coeur d'Alene, we got them. As all things in housebuilding and other endeavors, everybody has a different name for something. Ever look at what the British call their car parts? Bonnet, what's that? Just about every single part of an automobile has its own name in Brit English, as compared to USA-talk. And I'll bet once you get 50 miles outside southern New Hampshire, housebuilders have some different term for what we Chiefers, and Wendy, all call shadowboards. But I digress. Here is what I found interesting. Roof edge in plan view, when using shadowboards, is to the exterior extent of the shadowboard molding. But fascia height? Height is to the top outer corner of the fascia, the board behind the shadowboard. Something to keep in mind, if you are getting into the deep weeds of design.

He says it won't load, but that the message spits out as shown above. I'll try giving him the info in .dxf format. Anyone else have this problem with .dwg not opening in ACAD 2007?

He has ACAD 2007 and I exported using the right one from Chief. See the pic. Ignore the layerset shown in pic, as I was exporting a plan view, using my plot plan layerset. Here is the message he gets when trying to load. “file was saved by a software application that was not developed or licensed by Autodesk” So, what to do. .dxf?

Look, it's simple. I did not post the plan because I did not think it was necessary. I thought ceiling framing generated with the FRAMING>FIRST>BUILD CEILING FRAMING command. That command builds the ceiling framing, but as I found out, not for user-built ceiling planes. The user-built ceiling frames frame when the FRAMING>ROOF>BUILD ROOF FRAMING command gets checked. With roofs. Simple. Done.

Glenn, the ceiling frame popped in when I auto-framed roofing. It did not frame when I auto-framed ceilings. And as I said, when trying to manually draw a ceiling joist for the inside vault, the joists laid flat and did not pitch. So, not knowing the ceiling would auto-frame with roof framing, I went ahead and created joists with p'line solids and called them ceiling joists with layer ID. I noticed the auto-built joists in the ceiling, doubled onto the ones I manually built, when I zoomed in on the 3D framing overview. I deleted the auto-built ones, having already sized and placed my p'line solid ones. Two pics attached, one shows the ceiling frame, the the other shows the whole array of framing, roof over ceiling. I'll edit it all down to get close to reality now.

I've a room with no ceiling specified, and have placed 4:12 pitch ceiling planes to make a vaulted ceiling. The 7:12 roof is a few feet above. I want to frame this ceiling. Ceiling joists are not working. They do not pitch at the required 4:12. Roof rafters won't work, as they want to track the roof above. What to do here? I can make p'line solids and call them ceiling joists, layer control, etc. Is that what I have to do?

And be sure, as Joe did, to put your hardware on the door symbol. If you don't, the only way to get hardware is with the standard Chief spec dialog, and you won't like the results.

A common thing in showers everywhere. See attached photo. Door shorter by maybe a foot, in this case, door at 80 inches, opening at 96. No way in the door spec dialog to do this, I believe. What's your favorite method for getting this look?

Ah, double-click. Who'da thunk it? What threw me off what that when selecting the entire polyline, the MAKE PARALLEL was not there to choose. I now just select a line. And double-click. Thanks, Andy.

A common need when drawing details. I draw a roof edge section, then want to add some doodles to the roof, up at that 8:12 or whatever pitch. What works to rotate a newly-drawn polyline, or box, or a blocked group, or whatever, to match the pitch? Not a line or a segment, but the whole thing. Is copy and paste the angle the quickest route? Works, but wonder if there is something else.

I'm a Sketchup user, and would find it easier to model in that. Maybe an hour to get it pretty close. But, yeah, Chief slabs, p'solids, and moldings will do it readily. It seems to me that customers would be better off paying to get an all-new-creation modeled, rather than paying to get their as-built stuff modeled. But that is just me.

I would think anyone designing and building custom cabs would accept Chief for what it can do, and realize its limitations. Then use something that is shop-friendly for the actual building, such as eCabinets. Cutting lists, joinery, CNC interface, buying lists, etc., all that stuff Chief cannot do.

If you construct the stairs as a symbol, you can do what you want. In the attached pic, you can see a stool, which is of course a symbol, in an open doorway.

I've a need to turn off the upper gutters of a roof plane. I do it successfully in 2D, which is the only way one can do it, but then when I take a camera view, the gutters are back. Here is my method. Try it on an X6 new test plan. Draw a set of exterior walls like I show in the pic, and manually draw a two-plane gabled roof arrangement. Go to your 2D plan view, use your ALL OFF layerset and turn on just the roof gutter layer, unlock it, select the high gutter line, specify it as "no molding this edge," then LOCK the layer again. Now do a 3D perspective overview and see if your upper gutter is gone. Mine isn't, no matter what. The generation of objects and surfaces when 3D is done somehow brings the gutter back.

Cannot find this using search. Who knows the number?

Got a roof with three eave lines in one plane. Want gutter only at the low eave. Guess I will need to uncheck, and do the low gutter manually, if I really want the 3D accurate.

I thought there was a way to select a roof edge, an eave edge, the roof plane having GUTTERS checked, and have no gutter on that selected edge. Like any molding polyline. The gutter is a molding done by Chief to a roof edge, an eave edge, when that option is checked. But I cannot remember how. Please advise. Thanks.

Pitch the roof baseline for some eyebrows

I make a door symbol that includes the pull. Do a search about this.

And this is not a complaint, just a notification. If you have upgraded to SU 2014, you will need to save your model to 2013 or earlier, in order to be able to do a clean symbol import. Found this out when trying to bring in these stairs, which I put up on the 3D Warehouse.

I guess I should have asked it this way. For an SIP wall height, do you dimension to the OUTSIDE point, where the wall is shorter, or to the INSIDE point? Forget the other arrow, dimensioning to the roof's "baseline." But then, I suppose the SIP person doing the shop drawings will figure it out no matter how you detail it.

First time dealing with con docs for a job done with SIPs. Structural Insulated Panels. What is the convention, if there is one, for dimensioning to tops of walls? See the attached sketch, which shows a typical wall-roof junction. This particular job will have very minimal eaves, and they will be done with applied sawn timber parts, which will be clad in galvanized steel sheet. But the wall height question. I show two points in the sketch. One at the wall top at its outside face where the roof bears, the other above, at the roof's "baseline" point. I specified walls for this job so that the outside face of the SIP sandwich is the outside of the wall's main layer. There is no framing. No plates. The SIP walls are structural, and the SIP roof panels bear directly atop them. Is this top of wall point where one goes to for the wall height callout or dimension?