GeneDavis

I've done DWV for a client that has his carpenters do it, not a plumber, so I show them the parts. The 3D Warehouse has excellent content for Charlotte pipe DWV fittings, with points positioned for accurate and quick joining.

In this badly botched model, you can see the segmented "curved" screened porch wall. There is a door opening at the far end, and six of the seven segments are post-to-beam railings with middle and bottom rails. What the client wants is two tiers of 12" tread-depth steps across here, all joined together. The steps function as both under-porch decor, the floor being about 24 inches above grade, and as seating for overflow guests when there is a large firepit gathering. I draw the steps and Chief wants to make each panel a doorway, when I join the steps to the wall. I need to suppress that action somehow. And how do you get the steps to miter together?

Got it! Thanks to all.

I see no way to toggle patterns when in vector view. The only toggle available is one for edge smoothing when idle.

I'm in X14, and never use this, but need it now. Thanks.

@Alaskan_Son Thanks, Michael! Glad a pro like you stepped in here and took a look at it. Your post lends credibility to this, which is a discussion of a bug report. I mistakenly hit the solution button, so you are credited with a SOLVE. If you are still interested, take a back cut section through so you can view RP-3 on L and RP-1 on R. See the attached snip. What is a real mystery, is how while when opened for spec, these planes report differing fascia heights, RP-3 being lower, a CAD line drawn through the RP-1 fascia top intersects the fascia for RP-3 at precisely the top! No diff! Since having reported a ticket with Chief, I've no response yet, but will report when I get one.

I haven't looked at your plan but a deck is considered an outdoor room with a post-beam-pier structure under it. I think you may have a level roof that needs somehow to drain water if there's no roof over this "deck." Such roofs that are "roof decks" typically have a roof structure of rafters with a minimum slope, then a membrane roof, sleepers, and wood deck atop the sleepers. Here's a pic of a rooftop deck. Build it as a roof, not as a deck.

I've rarely seen a fixture I couldn't model in Sketchup in ten minutes or less. Import as "electrical," check "advanced," do all the material things, add the lights, edit positions, light specs, set origin, check which way it mounts (wall, ceiling) set origin, . . . Make sure the model is done with all its parts in different colors so you can easily ID which is which when setting materials in Chief.

That's an out-of-box setting in the windows defaults. Rob must have changed it.

Heh. My corgi doesn't have that problem. In my example of an irregular roof, all 12 pitch with one plane at 5, roof default calling for "same roof height at exterior walls," the math for the determination of fascia height comes from these variables, all set in the roof defaults: pitch (12), overhang (18 for this plan), structure (9.25 here), surface (here at .625 but the .500 sheathing layer is used in the calcs), and plate height ("ceiling" in floor default = 109.125.) And yes, thicknesses of roof assembly parts come into play in the various math solutions that come into play when Chief parametrically builds. In this instance, we are using the sheathing. Chief does not call it that in its spec dialog. It allows a multi layer buildup. You could have shingles, a membrane, rigid insulation, furring, a radiant barrier, whatever, but down at the bottom the layer is what Chief uses for thickness. I think of it as the sheathing layer. That layer thickness is also used in the determination of where Chief builds the subfascia. But where to place the fascia. It's the extra credit problem in your second semester 9th grade math final. You can solve it graphically with your CAD program, or your construction calculator. Or you can write some code. Whatever. The fascia height is calculated (show us your work), and then . . . . . . it's time to calculate the position of the "wild" overhang of that bastard roof, the one with the 5-pitch. Again, you have all the variables. This is the one Chief gets wrong. Don't know why, but Chief places the fascia a little too far outboard (too much overhang), and this results in a fascia height for this roof plane that is lower than that of adjoining planes. Two plan files attached. One called EDITED, the other called CHIEF. In the CHIEF file, wrong fascia placement, you can see in the section how a little CAD work determines where the fascia should be. A precise measurement is taken using a CAD line. In EDITED, the bastard roof (sorry, that's what I call irregular planes) has its overhang edited using the measurement taken in the other file. This brings its fascia height to the correct level. The hips and valleys are manually moved to join (Chief won't join them for some reason.) So there's a fix, but it should not be required. There's a bug and I await Tech Support's reply. EDITED.plan CHIEF.plan

Thanks, Rob, but my view is from the accuracy-in-3D side, which is what this program should be all about. I can build it to precision in Sketchup. It's simple 3D with intersecting planes. Chief ought to be able to do it right. This model took me 16 minutes to do, and I'm slow with SU. I don't think it's too much to ask of Chief that a perimeter roof line with multiple pitches springing from it be built accurately. The fascia is, in Chieftalk, a molding, a 1x8, dead level all the way around. The planes represent the top surface of sheathing, which is the way Chief builds, and that surface line extends down to intersect the outboard top edge of fascia. It's all just simple trig, if you are writing the code for the 3D build.

Maybe it's been this way since X zero, but I cannot say because all I have right now is 13 and 14. First of all, it's not broken. It just a little hinky when you mix pitches in a plan and want a common fascia height. If you've the time to look and explore open the attached file and follow along. A simple L shaped plan with hipped roof has six walls (by definition as it's an L shaped footprint) and six roof planes. All roof pitches are 12/12 except for one of the inside-the-corner planes, which is specified at the wall as 5/12. Overhang is 18" by default except that because I have "same roof height at exterior walls" checked in roof height section, the irregular roof of 5/12 pitch will run out further in auto roof build. Build the roof, and check roof spec for all six planes. For whatever reason, Chief "reports" in the roof spec dialog that the fascia heights of the two in-the-corner roofs, one at 5/12, the other at 12/12, have a fascia height lower than the other four planes, the distance is 3/16". Here is the strange behavior. One of those two roofs, the 5/12, when you look in section view or 3D, does have its fascia top lower, but the other one, the 12/12, has its fascia RAISED from the others. Fine, you say. I can manually edit to get every single fascia top to match height. But you won't succeed. Fiddle with it and see. I put an image here of the plan view, with the 5/12 plane selected. The others are 12/12. Fascia heights with multi pitch roof.plan

I am starting to see where the inaccuracies are with this. Chief hints at it in the writeup they give in the HELP dialog when you open HELP from the roof plane dialog panel. I'd like them to explain better. They say, "Note: The Fascia Top height will decrease slightly if the fascia edge is aligned with the ridge top of another roof plane." This seems to hint at why you cannot get an exact match to fascia heights going around a roof where there is a plane at a different pitch from others. In the case of 12 pitch to 4 pitch, 12 around perimeter with one 4 in the link, that "slight decrease" is 3/16" as reported in the roof dialog for heights. In a 2D section view and measuring using Chief CAD, in the L-shaped example you posted in your thread in Suggestions, two mating 12-pitch roofs are reporting, in the roof plane dialog, fascia heights of 109 13/16 and 110, a 3/16 height difference. But a 2D back clipped section cut through the building has fascia tops not at either of these two numbers, but close to 110 11/16. Using CAD, one measures 9' 2.7193542495" (110.719" to 3 decimal places), and the other at 9' 2.7071067812" (110.707"). A 3D view of a corner where two roof planes join, the one on L reporting a fascia height of 109 13/16. the one of equal 12-pitch on R reporting fascia at 110, but as can be seen in the vector view with roof surfaces peeled away so just the fascia can be examined, both fascia tops are equal and coplanar. So we have Chief reporting fascia heights that when measured in section are almost 3/4" different from what is reported, and fascias showing in 3D as having equal top elevation, but reporting as 3/16" different in the dialog. I'd say Chief has some 'splainin' to do!

The structure panel is where you specify depth (thickness) of sheathing and framing. The surface panel is where you can do all your buildup of paper, membrane, rooftop insulation, and roofing weather surface (shingles, metal, TPU, etc.). Back in the structure panel, all the elements under Roof Size is where you can access and change subfascia and fascia size to be where you need things so soffit and trim all looks like you want.

Post your plan, please

Try the "hide camera-facing exterior walls" option checkbox in the camera spec dialog. See attached. It is way down at the bottom.

I got into this one with comments about roof generation in Chief and editing, and could almost get the roof I wanted, but something kept happening to one of the planes that I could not understand. I always thought you could raise a single roof plane with the move tool and wanted to hold fascia height and pitch and move in the z axis up or down, to be able to get a matching fascia height all around. The OP's file with my edits to roof planes is attached as Plan Rev 1. The screencap identifies the rogue plane. I tried everything I could think of to get the fascia top at 110" to match all others. At one point I thought I had it but something caused it to move. What could it be? You can delete the plane, take the 12-pitch plane to its immediate R and copy-mirror it, the copy works and has the 110" fascia height, but when you edit it to join the others, the edit causes the fascia height to drop 3/16". This, with the 12 pitch staying same and the two roofs joining at top dead center. Makes no sense. The OP built the example file with weird defaults and settings? I don't know. I made a perimeter polyline of the "house" and copied it and pasted into a new file with my template, and auto-built the roof with appropriate settings, one wall only at 4:12 pitch, creating the irregular hip and valley where it joins the 12-pitch adjacent planes. No problems with that one, attached here as Plan Rev 2. As with roofscapes that have irregular valleys and hips, you need to manually edit fascia and subfascia to get things in perfect alignment, which I did for both plans. But what's up with that Plan Rev 1? Plan Rev 2.plan Plan Rev 1.plan

May we please have a waney edge siding like shown in the pic, here. 2D (pattern) and 3D.

Experiment with the camera field of view, height above floor, how clipped surfaces are hidden, and try backing up and using the hide walls option.

See my edited post, above. What does that macro look like to you? I don't see any kind of code for a lookup.

So, why doesn't the Pella library work? Does any manufacturer offering a library somehow embed into it the macro work needed to produce this? Or is the library really just a collection of symbols none of which have any connection to sizing? Edit: I downloaded and installed the Pella library, and it is a collection of symbols totaling 118 items, a count far less that what you would have if the standard size chart sizings would be there for each possible window model and type. The label macro is shown in the attached pic, and that macro returns the word "custom" for any size input into the sizing panel. So where is the chart of standard w x h combos and where do such charts reside in Chief?

Sounds like some serious work with macros would be needed. Every combination of standard width that matched to a standard height would have to be there to differentiate between standard and custom. The whole table of standard w x h is needed, and the lookup function. Can this be done with macros?

You cannot resize the tile and retain the grout space it has in its "standard" size (smaller) image. Find a 12x24 solid color tile.

Chief is more typically used to model a house in which the exterior walls are built in layers. Examine in detail the specification for the out-of-box exterior walls like "Siding 6" and look at what is going on for every layer. There is a main layer that typically is set to have its outer face be the "building line," the line which is dimensioned in plan views. The layers outside that exterior layer, when we look at Siding-6, are the ones that extend down and cover the floor layers upon which the wall bears. This is why your siding layers do what you want to see. Do you want to model a house that can actually be built? If so, you'll want to seriously rethink how to do those glass walls.

Experiment with beamspread, dropoff, distance from, and lumens. Also shadows on/off. I usually also place a point light about head-high somewhere and maybe a low-lumen spot to light dim areas like corners and knee space under overhanging island tops.