GeneDavis

I'd enjoy doing big-footage houses where there are zero fractions in the structural parts of the plans: foundations, floor frames, wall framing, window placement, etc. How are you dealing with wall heights when the yards are selling precut studs for nominal 8 and 9 ceiling heights, you know, those pesky wall heights like 97-1/8"? And then there is the centerline stuff when the spread is a odd inch like say 47, and you gotta go with 23 and a dreaded half. So what's up when odd numbers like 1 and 3 and more are your post makeups for framing, which is 1-1/2"? Do you round up the dimension of the 3-stud pack from 4-1/2" to 5"? And remodels mean as-builts, so you are rounding everything measured on site to the nearest whole inch?

The pictures show the issue but you don't give us the roof parameters for the two connecting planes, one OK one not. You've got to do that for us or upload the plan for inspection.

I did builds like that in the field, jigsawing and bandsawing curved rafters, sheeting them with wacky wood bending ply, and subbing the metal to the steel seam or copper guys. Using 2D CAD to make drawings at first, from which came paper and pencil layouts for patterns, I moved up to getting full size patterns printed on a continuous feed plotter. Paste it onto 2x12s with spray adhesive, and cut. Today I'd get the cutting done at a CNC shop.

When you calculate the area of wall cavity in a wall run with windows and a door, the factor for insulation area relating to the total wall area is around 0.8, and this, after taking away the openings. The studs, plates, and headers add up. R23 Roxul wool batts, the ones I mentioned, cost over $3 a square foot. When you order, you want it right, and if we get Chief producing material counts, we should expect accuracy, and user control via spec input that yields usable results. Reporting in square feet is preferred. Every package of rolls or batts displays its quantity in s.f. The data is all there in Chief. Plates, studs, spacing, and headers. What's missing, until framing actually is built, is the timber content for the wall junctions, the corners and tees, and the posts at load points, all of which further reduce insulation cavity area. With framing built, though, the data is there for those adjustments to the count.

So the batt insulation is somehow hard-coded and one cannot change it?

Thanks. I was really looking at it as an exercise in Chief, after seeing the post from the guy who seems to want it reported on his material list. I provide material lists for one of my builder clients, but it's only for lumber and structural hardware, plus sheathing and if he wants it, sheetrock. Never insulation.

I saw that, Rob, which is why I went to a plan and did the material list and saw it had the batt size different from my preference. We frame at 24" centers an use batts 5.5 x 23 x 47. It is reporting 6 x 16 x 97. I know area is what to do, but was exploring because of that other thread about piece counts. I know nothing about macros. How could I get a bag count to report knowing sf/bag?

I have searched in help and find nothing. I go to the material list line and click the column in which the OOB default batt size is shown (6" x 16" x 97" batts) and it opens up a set of options I do not understand, some of it macro of which I have no knowledge, so please help. Is there a training video that deals with this? I want the count for the Rockwool R23 5.5 x 23 x 47 batts we use in all the jobs.

Bob's plan file used but with lights set to 3 lumens not 100. And then at 1 lumen.

In the wayback past, Chief's website had some nice examples of plan sets done by users, some of them like Joey, regular Forum contributors. I got plenty of style tips for layout arrangements and CAD details from those. There are none at the site now. It is all Chief content, and there is not much in the CAD detail category. I went looking after the recent thread by the guy with his X12 version (how'd he get that?) trying to figure whether it could auto-gen CAD details like the setup the boss's son-in-law did on some old software. I wanted to see how the Chief details in the galleries compared to what he was after. Why did Chief stop using user submissions? Any ideas?

I don't like a hipped return to have the same pitch as the main roof, and so lower the pitch of the two small roof planes that make the return, to maybe half what the big roof has. Which means I gotta build them manually. Maybe I ought to find out how to edit the auto-generated ones.

Any footprint can be roofed hip-style

Let's start with you reading the pinned thread at the top of this section, "How to get good answers when you ask questions." And then you continue by completing a signature in your profile, kind of like what you see in mine. What Chief software and version you are using, and what you run it on. And then, no, we're not done, you attach an image, a screencap is best, of what you have on your screen that shows us the issue, and you attach a plan file (you gotta close it to be able to attach it) to your post. Finally, if you are using Home Designer, and not Chief Premier, you're in the wrong room. HD has its own forum.

"In a few years" unless you take on Chief with the new subscription arrangement, you will be stuck with your one seat of X12, no support from Chief, and no way to get more X12 seats for all those everyone elses. So if you are really going to transform HomeDesign into a Chief house, you're gonna have to talk Mr Boss into you getting X14 and a proper machine on which to run it. And funding to keep X14 under full support. Otherwise this is just a lark. Up thread, in your post in which you show a collection of CAD details and a full-house cross section, including your dialog boxes which seem to work like a rules-based-configurator to search and deliver CAD details from an indexed library, how do your CAD details differ from the example attached here of one cut and pasted from Chief's stock box of CAD details? And could you not just take that and edit it to your needs, then copy paste to your hearts content, editing each new one to achieve one for every roof pitch, every wall thickness, and every insulation callout scheme you seem to have in your present system? Then work to build the huge library of CAD details necessary to support the business, since you want everything pre-drawn. You would pull them from the library, which would all be indexed in such a way as to make pulling CAD details as easy as today's op of filling out a dialog box for the pull. And also upthread and from that same post in which you have the building cross section, does your present system give you a live section like that from anywhere you cut one, as Chief does? 'Cause it looks kind of generic to me. I looked at your dialog box for cross section. How do you generate a building section, for example, for a house with high-side shed roof and a walkout finished basement level with 5 foot stemwall under the walkout?

Don't use the 3D camera. Use the elevation/section camera, or the wall elevation camera.

I've looked at the OP's website and it seems the firm has a long history of selling stock plans with a library (they say) of thousands, and customization available for any of them. Everything looks absolutely whitebread traditional, and the website says they have been in biz for a long long time. I looked at the website for the software they use and it's vintage stuff from back when Chief was beginning, but doesn't look current. No modern stuff, no midcentury modern stuff, no flat roofed contemporary, nothing about site-specific full service architectural services, it looks like they are grinding out a lot of work using their libraries, and those must have all been coded to work with this detail configurator that is in use. Someone worked long and hard to build the whole setup the way it works. To change the operation to be Chief-based, someone would need to make a commitment to the change, and that would be the boss, the owner. It would take as much effort to change the op so that Chief is the tool, as it did to build and deploy the existing setup. Did the boss look at Chief and say, hey, that's what we want to do to make a whole lot more money? I don't think so. I don't see it happening.

I drew a 24x24 building, added a second floor, out of box default ceiling heights for floors 1 and 2, manually drew a gabled roof at 11/12 pitch from end to end, then took the front plane, dragged it to 1/3 its width, copied it in place, dragged the copy to the center, then copy-reflect the end plane to the other. The center plane was edited to hold its ridge height but changed its pitch to 8/12. Look about right. Then lowered all the roof planes down to get a knee wall height inside of about 5 feet. The window is 64 high and has enough overhead to get a header over it. You'll need cheek walls which can be manually placed. Specify them as "roof cuts wall at bottom." I don't think of this as a dormer.

That upper roof in the inspiration image is three separate roof planes, all having a common ridge height. The wall-rise where the windows are under the jump is what Chief will do for you without any technique or coaxing. Have you tried this?

Take 8 minutes and about thirty seconds and watch this, and then try it and tell us if you can replicate it. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1944/creating-kitchen-island-elevations.html?playlist=87 And then another 12 minutes to watch this. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/6105/kitchen-wall-elevation-and-island-elevation-dimensions-to-the-nkba-standard-automatically-and-manually.html

Take 8 minutes and watch this, and then try it and tell us if you can replicate it. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1595/dimensioning-cabinet-face-items-and-openings.html?playlist=87

But what generates the annotation?

There were no dialogue boxes shown addressing anno. I am curious as well, as to how the text is generated.

Every one of those details could be drawn in Chief (and look better using Rene Rabbit's style) and placed in a plan available to all on your system. Show your boss what Rene does. Maybe he or she will decide to come into the 21st century.

I just did what Scott described for an entry door, and the two enhancements I gave it in the CAD detail from view are: 1. Added the little diagonal groups on the glass top R and lower L, for a visual flourish, as he did. 2. Changed the line weights for the outer perimeter and the door perimeter from 2 to 18, to punch it up a little. My CAD detail from view brought all lines in at 2.

For next time, don't make us download your attachments. Just directly post the .pdfs. I just looked at the plan online and for the windows and door images, I'd just take a CAD detail from view, edit away all but the unit plus its frame, add in those little doodles they did to represent glass, and save each with a name. Bring them into layout at maybe 1/2-inch scale for your presentation. Edit: Eric has the easier method, and the doodles can be added in layout. Draw once, cut and paste away on the units where you want.