GeneDavis

And if you really want answers and fast, get used to posting the plan here. No need to give away secrets. Save a copy with some generic filename, strip out all the stuff that doesn't relate to the problem at hand. Terrain. Furniture. Fixtures. Cabinets. All the decorations. If it is over the 14 MB limit for direct attachment, zip it. If you'd posted a plan right up front, you'd be sure to have you answer by now, the right answer. Short of that, we are just guessing. And a lot of us don't like to guess. We skip your post. Remember Car Talk? That long-running radio show on NPR with the two brothers Click and Clack? Someone would call in and say something like, and I am paraphrasing, "any idea why my top of plate is locked?" The hook that show had, why you kept it on, listened every Saturday, was this: they made it entertaining, the way they probed and probed, funny comments and questions, while they drilled into the problem, to get to the solution. Well, this is Chief Talk, not Car Talk. It's not a live conversation, in which we can ask for more detail. So give all the details right up front, and you'll get good help, always. And fast.

How did you do that? I go into SHAPE for a fixed window, and the only thing that seems available to get anything is the arch panel, but none of those work for me. Edit: Further exploration into SHAPE got me fiddling with the TOP INSIDE CORNER spec, and I can sort of get where I want. Why doesn't Chief let you get closer to the corner than 1/4" in either x or y?

How can I do something like this so the window perfectly mulls next to one with plumb edge to plumb edge? And has all matching frame and sash and glass detail.

My comment had nothing to do with how to fix what got done. I was pointing out the key thing to do up front to avoid the issue. That little radio button for truss building. Fixing it after is simply a matter of setting the structure depth at 3.5 inches and setting existing roof planes at the right elevation for the truss build. But I think we all know that, and how to determine the elevation. The OP would be better off just deleting the roofs, carefully running all around the plan to edit room heights and walls in prep for an auto roof build, then autoroofing, and trussing.

Nice video for explaining, Eric. What Eric did is to build the roof auto and with that absolutely key step of specifying trusses right in the same box as where pitch is specified. That radio button for trusses, when checked, sets the baseline height (and structure depth) in accordance with the default top chord for trusses, which is set in the framing defaults. The out of box number is 3-1/2 inches for the top chord. It overrides that 9-1/2" depth you have for structure that keeps giving you that ceiling drop. See how in the section cut that the top chord sits precisely on the outer tip of the top plate of the framed wall below. That baseline point is up the vertical distance of the pitched 2x4 top chord. So if Eric had done an music audio track for his video, the big chorus with the drums and backup singers would have been rolling right when he checked that TRUSSES button.

Thank you!

Try breaking that front wall, the one that is the larger gable, but has the valley coming down a few feet from the corner. Put a break there, accuracy not important. Give the short wall a hip wall check in the roof section of spec dialog (the radio buttons that start with hip wall, then gable, etc.) and leave the section where gable as gable. Let Chief roof it auto.

I cannot find the setting for this. I am doing a simple circular "walkthrough" of a house, imagine a slow camera-drone circle up at 25' height above floor 0, big 350 foot diameter, camera tilted down, looking in at the -90 degree angle, the camera holding a constant absolute height. But Chief wants to move the camera up when over the steep uphill side, and down on the downhill side. This lot is a ski slope.

I have your plan open now. Your building is a very long way from the 0,0 origin in Chief space, and that can cause other problems, mostly in 3D viewing. But that is not relating to your truss thing. I don't see any roof trusses in the plan. I did all layers off and only turned on the framing, roof trusses layer (which was already showing me no content) and saw nothing. Here is a tip. Never begin to furnish spaces with cabinets, fixtures, lighting, furniture, plants, trees, anything other than building elements (walls roofs windows doors) until the building is done to the specs you need. And done means the building renders correctly, the way you expect, in plan views, elevations, sections, and 3D overviews. Something is off in the way you specified foundation, and I'll not look at this any longer until you fix it up and repost. I did an edit area thing to copy the plan without all the fixtures, furniture, etc., and pasted it centered on 0,0 in a new plan. Look at what a floor overview looks like for floor 0 and floor 1, attached.

Surface includes roofing and deck. Yours reads 5/8. Open it to edit. But that is not the problem here. I did not open your plan and so cannot comment on your particulars, but Chief considers the 3D space between the ceiling (defined by room spec if flat) and bottom side roof sheathing (i.e. that line drawn between the ridge elevation and the baseline elevation) the envelope for generating truss 3D. So whether your deck thickness is 1/16" or 16", the trusses that get generated in the space are identical. Roof sheathing and roofing thickness (added together are "surface") have no effect on truss generation. They built atop the Chief roof plane.

The OP asked for a room by room schedule, was shown one that was instead floor by floor, said hey that's perfect. Changed horses midstream. Hey, anyone can change their mind. So I'm asking, show us right here how to produce what the OP says is perfect.

PM can also stand for program magician, which in this case is someone that understands how to write macros. So will someone publish right here in this thread what the macros are for producing this?

Have you watched the video of the Chiefer, a professional that only does as-builts, do one. His clients are other Chief users and he is doing them every day, fast and efficient. In the video, he shows his methods, tools, order of work, and results. This, on a typical job. He uses a laser tape but no lidar. Has laptop and Chiefs it out right on site. Great biz, lotsa work, cranking them out every day. Do you have that kind of need, volume-wise?

What's the top surface of the barged gables? What are your con docs going to specify?

Isolated, that walkout lower wall is looking like a 3-story house built on grade, no cellar or crawlspace under. i'd be surprised to find there's only an 8" deep footing under it. A lot of the Pacific NW has houses on piers and beam foundations.

To achieve this, walkout wall is modeled as a pony wall. Framed wall up, poured concrete foundation wall under. Set the junction height at the appropriate elevation. But yours is an as built. Could be anything going on down in the dirt.

He's up to 11 posts and no signature. Does he know what kind of trojans and viruses will enter his computer if he posts a 12th time and still no sig?

Isn't it a "standard" in the real estate biz to count the stairs once? Thus a simple staircase 3 wide x 12 long is 36 sf attributed to the floor on which it lands (starts "up"), and zero on the floor to which it ascends. So what do you have when a finished basement is accessed by a stairs directly under the one going from 1 to 2? Does that basement include the 36 sf or not? I think it does. My logic is that the stairs, the treads upon which one walks, is habitable space and should be counted, but only once for each run of stairs. Stacked stairs in my example are 36 plus 36. But only that. Where you put the footage, which floor, is up to you? Or does the "standard" say? As for Scott's dilemma, one can sort of understand a building jurisdiction wanting to have numbers that are verifiable by field measurements, taken from the outside of the house, thus the inclusion of finish. Hey Scott! Draw up a suggestion that allows one to set this all up in preferences or somewhere.

Your photo shows parallel chord trusses sitting atop walls. Not bearing on top chord. Your can build either way, but for insulation details, I prefer it like the photo. To get the trusses to sit that way, re-spec your roof at the depth of the trusses. Something like 16, not the 5.5 you did. Specify the 5.5 top chord before drawing trusses, and edit the first truss placed to have the required o'hang of just the top 2x6. Chief won't do that for you. In a PM I just sent, I provide more detail.

Sit under? It looks like from where you put the ceiling plane and the roof you have the wall plates where they are specified in the roof structure dialog. You have roof structure at 5.5 inches. Did the truss guy say they can span with top chord bearing as you show?

Do a shadowboard that's invisible.

You can edit trusses two ways. Do you know how to edit the truss envelope in section view? How about editing them member by member in the truss detail? I don't care about those little spits that happen to them, since I am not designing the trusses. I am only interested in an accurate 2D planview layout and a CAD section view to show the truss guy the heels and overhangs.

Wedge-shaped? Looks like you are describing the side walls pitched on two different axes? Wider at top than at bottom? And when we get to the outer wall, there is more wall reveal at top than at bottom? Gotta be unless the walls are warped, in which case we have an even more complex modeling task.

I'm with that on a garage door if present doing terrain autoset at its bottom, but how do you want it when there's no garage door? It sets the elevation 8" below slab top for a simple one-level (by that I mean the main floor is all at zero) plan when mono slab is the foundation. When it is a stemwall foundation, and of course a framed floor structure, it sets the elevation 6" under stemwall top. The concrete stemwall top, not the top elevation of the mudsill.

I get to specify windows sometimes, and do mostly Pella when this happens, because the products are good and the local sales guy is very responsive when we go back and forth about what is possible, specs for special glass, etc. So when I mull-join Pellas, I do what they do when joining, that is to space the windows by 1/8", because that's what their joiner-part does. And because I like to have the windows look more true in 3D, I edit the frame depths to match what the maker has, and then have to edit the "mullion," which is that little 1/8" thick piece Chief puts there. I do the math to make that piece flush up to the sash both inside and outside. So Chief leaves a gap where that mullion used to be before edit. See the images attached. And Chief must consider the mullion part of the inside of the window, because you cannot make its outside face match the outside material spec. This is a tiny thing, with the Pella 1/8" joiner, but must be annoying to some who mull with wider joins. So why bother with that 1/8"? I guess the reason I do it is to have the window parts, before they get blocked, be true factory-width or height. I call out in the comments in the window schedule, for each mull-joined unit, the sizes of the units that make up the ganged biggie. It helps when reviewing quotes. But the gap. Is it something I can make go away? And the color, shouldn't be be able to control interior and exterior materials?