GeneDavis

"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.

Select a CAD line or polyline, open it, and change its color to whatever you want. Whole bunch of lines, all on same layer. Each a different color.

Like from a camera drone making a slow lazy circle over the house, its roof off? Sorry if this has been asked before but I searched.

Start building a file called CAD Details. That is all the file will contain. You only need the CAD details when producing con docs, so your file is only open when needing to send a detail to layout. The progress photo raises a q with me. Was this started years ago as maybe a one bed tiny house with the intent of later adding on to make it a 4000-footer with all the other spaces? Because why would there be construction progress with you still working on the plans?

And save the framing for dead last. Model everything to perfection, solve all issues with surfacing, intersects, etc., get all roof, soffit, fascia, all the rest to model right so you are ready for the 3D, do lighting, then populate each room one at a time for your inside renders, do the shots and save, then delete the furnishings. This way you only have one room at a time with the hi poly furniture. It's like staging a house for photos. The furnishings are there for the photo shoot, and then go back in the truck. When finished with interior renders, go outside and do your terrain and features and plants, then do your outside renderings and save shots. Then delete all the landscape stuff like plants and trees. Only when all this is done, do you get into framing, which includes all the items like steel, hangers, etc. You'll need all this done for your structural plans and section views. If you want furniture elements in the 2D plan views used in the con docs, use 2D CAD so the spaces are all understood by those viewing plans, or just leave that all out like most of us do. I won't repeat what others have said about SPVs and CAD details and default sets and live views, all of which make your Chief life easier and faster. Your model is tres cool, but there are some waterslides in the roofscape where I would consider cricketing at bottoms to avoid Ian-type surges (I'm in SW FL) against those walls.

Should work the way we trim on site. I'll detail out a suggestion and post in that part of the forum.

What is the layer or setting to do this?

I should have been more clear. This is not a mulled window, in Chief parlance. They are windows spaced for two framing studs between, so separate openings for the windows. In my plan, not the little sample I posted, but the plan I need to finish, the windows have wood frames thus my spec setting for the casing overlap (I wish we could specify reveal instead because it is how I think when designing or building trim), and that between-window casing is wider than the surround casing.

Here is a plan that exhibits the behavior. I think a suggestion for program change is in order. I attached an image from a plan in which I drew 3D solids to correct the view. The error is in both the inside and outside casing arrangements. mull casing bust.plan

I've windows 3" apart, 3/4" frames, 3.5" exterior casing specified, 5/8" frame overlap. Perimeter casing looks good but not the "mull" casing, which does not overlap. Why?

Why can't you use Chief for cabinets? Are you going straight to CNC and cutting lists and hardware buying using Cabinet Vision? Are you aware of all Chief's cabinet capabilities?

Here is a pretty good guide as to what the parts are called. What has not been addressed here is the dentil molding seen in the OP's opening post #1, and how to do it in Chief. Alan linked to a great book above. If we are in this biz, we ought to learn the names of things.

I need make a 3D solid that represents a curved (the curve in plan view) framing member. A curved rim joist. I cannot figure out a way to get the arcs smooth and not segmented. Or rather, I cannot see a way to make the segments smaller. I drew two concentric circles to get the 1.875 inch thickness I need, and the circles had nice smooth arcs when trimmed with CAD and still were smooth when I closed things to make the polyline needed, but when converting to a solid, BOOM, segmented so it does note even look curved the segments are so large. Where in the dialog can I set segmentation so it lasts through the process of conversion to a solid?

Maybe think of it as two walls sandwiched. The outer one has no-trim passthroughs, the holes being the outers, the inner wall has no-trim-on-outside windows, and each of the steeply sloped "sills" is a 3D solid. That, to model it in 3D. Showing plan views with the 2x8 framing layer requires another model, identical to the first but with one wall, and one framing layer at 7.25 thickness. The ROs are the size of the "outers." You can use CAD details to show how the openings are framed, sheathed, and finished. I'd only want that look, if I were the client, with the top and side surfaces of those outer openings tilted, maybe only 10 degrees, but sloped. Hope your client has deep pockets.