GeneDavis

In the pic I snapped of what the auto story pole thing did, the elevation of the top of foundation, basement floor, and top of foundation are shown in inches, not feet-inches. Above elevation are shown as feet-inches. Why the diff? My manually dimensioned section shows the second floor rough elevation. It also shows the bearing wall plate height the center bay trusses stand on.

I've a front elevation and did the auto story pole thing. There are some things I don't understand. Why do elevations above the zero (equals floor 1 rough floor) display in feet inches fractions, but below in inches fractions. My plan has only two plate heights. The side wings have everything at 10'-0". The center bay scissors trusses stand on walls for which the framing plate height was manually set at 16'-6 3/4". There seems to be no way to pick up that elevation with the auto story pole command. Why? As seen in the dimensioned building section, there's a loft floor (floor 2) for which the rough floor elevation is 12'-0". I have the percentage reach set to get to that floor, but the story pole result does not include that elevation. Why? The auto story pole results picked up a plate height of 21' something, but there is no plate there at all. Where does it get its plate heights?

Porches are easy with Chief railing tools. I do them mostly using post to beam as shown in the attached. But Chief does not treat the members as structure for doing structural material reporting. I can readily change the railing to invisible, and then manually frame it with framing tools, but is this best practice?

It was a combination of things. The main floor framing directly below has the pair of LVLs as a drop beam. I copied them then went to floor 1 where I have the roof, pasted and held position, then edited height, member height, and role (roof beam). Not enough to get into material list as wanted, so I deleted and manually placed and all OK now.

I manually placed a pair of LVLs which make a beam into which trusses and rafters head. In the spec, I selected ROOF BEAM as role. They report into the subfloor section. Why?

I have not changed OOB X14 and exterior framed walls and interior framed walls are 1/2" layer, texture "drywall 48 x 96" which produces what I want for the material list, which is the wallboard sheet count. I messed myself up by painting. I say painting, but what I did was to change my wall definitions for the sheetrock 1/2" layer to a color, then stupidly used the eyedropper and spray can to paint all around. I want to repaint now. I have a mess of rooms which got the paint treatment and so do not report drywall. I went into defaults and set my default exterior wall as 1/2 drywall 48 x 144 and then a zero thickness color layer of a green paint color. Same for interior walls, same drywall and color layer. But the spraypainted surfaces are still all white. I need some training.

It may have something to do with the data points we have for roofs not being colinear. The baseline elevation point and ridge elevation points are colinear, in that they sit on the rafter line, but fascia height does not.

Thanks, Larry. I was overthinking it.

Here, see if this will open. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vrc1ujzh36w2yze/Farmhouse w loft.plan?dl=0

The file is way too big to upload, but I am trying to reestablish Dropbox. For now, maybe a hint might come forth. The problem wall is the rear gable, sort of a mirror of the front gable, which frames, except that there is an abutting lower roof. That abutment is fine, with the roof plane stopping at the exterior siding outer layer. The wall is visible in all 3D. I set it to frame same as the front gable, which is to balloon through ceiling above and floor below. You can see in the pic of the front frame, all went well. I need to edit the wall frame bottom to raise it up onto the steel beam there. But what is up with the rear? The short segments that wing out from the interior wall frame, but not the main tall center.

The actual build requires steel to support the loft, landing, and staircase. You can see in these images, taken from my Sketchup workout, how it's done. A W12x16 beam has two smaller WF beams hung and cantilevering to support the loft's "pulpit" top stairs landing, and the stairs are enabled with some 5" channels. The thin landing is framed with 1.5" square tubing to which is bolted 2x2 lumber parts, so as to have nailing for the wood buildup. The reason I did the two-tread upper run of stairs as stairs and not landings, is because with stairs, I could do the panel railing, the panel type being cable.

No. The landing must be thin. I have a workaround. Just thought of it and tried it in the test file. Make the material for the upper stair section's risers as "opening - no material" and it's gone. No projection down through. Then take a section, do CAD detail from view, and make the closed p'line for the 3D solid that gets placed correctly so the surfaces are all there where wanted. See the attached. I left the solid as concrete material so it can be distinguished from the stair parts.

I've a staircase rising to a landing then making a 90 turn and a short section with two treads going to the target second floor. The surface that is the bottom tread riser of the short section is poking through the thin landing, and I would like to lose it. See the images. My house model is in excess of 50MB and way to big to attach, so I did a simple workout plan with the same stairs geometry to show the issue, and it is attached. It is the "ghost riser" surface I have going through. It is a single surface and so does not render in 3D, but is evident in vector and 3D vector views. How can it get its bottom edge dragged up into the landing? Stairs workout.plan

Works great. See result.

What I might try is to draw an appropriately sized roof and ceiling below, generate the needed truss, and convert it to a symbol. I can rotate the symbol.

We've a skylight with a plumb and "square" (I'd say "normal") sides to the shaft. I am unable to rotate a truss to do the normal side of the shaft, between the "girders" at the ends. Suggestions welcome.

Here you go. I did a smaller sconce and included it. Barn lights.calibz

From the barn light catalog, which is extensive, I married one of their 24" shades to a right-sized gooseneck they offer. Did it in SU and exported it to a .dae, which of course you can import into Chief. There are materials drawn differently, so you can do the lamp in an emissive white or whatever. As with any light symbol, import it as "electrical," specify it with the "light" option, then place the origin where it belongs, and in the object's dbx, add appropriate light or lights. Barn light gooseneck 24 inch shade.dae

Chief can export 3D in many formats, and SU Pro can import everything Chief can do. Export your model every 3D way you can. You need to be in a 3D view to do so. Send your colleague all the files, so they can find the one which works best for their need. I'm a cheapster and use free SU Make 2017. It'll only import a Collada .dae file, but it suits my needs. Edit: there is a 2-year-old video on YouTube showing a Chief file exported and then imported into SU.

That's a good point you make about the slab boundary. You should write up a suggestion and post it in that subforum. Slabs bearing into notched walls with insulation board edges is a real thing out there. You can find writeups, videos, and see CAD details at lots of sites. Chief can certainly program for this build option, but you need to be specific and give them examples.

It does not work for me in either RTRT or PBR. Am I setting up wrong?

Equal pitch, the short side gets the taller wall. Done per my description above, from an auto generated hipped roof, in 55 seconds. My mouse moves ain't what they used to be.

To get the saltbox roof you will need to understand manual roof editing ops. Turn off auto roof generation Select the ridge top edge of on side, drag it "up" about a foot, open its dbx and copy its ridge height. In plan view, select the lower roof's ridge, move it to snap-join the other. Now open the dbx of the smaller roof you just edited, lock its pitch, and past in that ridge height.

The tool is the S with the x. Look for it when you have a 3d view up.

I tried this in the General Q and A and got no bites, so I will try it here where it belongs, where we discuss and present symbol stuff. My file is attached. The fixture is one I got from the 3D Warehouse long ago, and it is not there now, but I had it in my archives. It is a better model than the one I placed in the thread in Q and A. It this one, the skin of the lamp is nicely done to emulate the stretching over the ribs and the belly-ing between, as exists in the real fixture. I love midcentury modern, and these Nelson bubbles are perfect fixtures for classically-done MCM interiors. The lamp has materials assigned to each element so it is all controllable. What has to be studied and worked on some more, I think, is the skin, with its properties of sheen, translucency, and emissivity to light it up the way the for-real lamps do when the big white globe lamp inside is lit. As can be seen when you examine my model, I tried to do this with lights assigned both to the fixture, and lights placed around outside the fixture. If you are a lighting tinkerer, I would like to see what you can do with this. Thanks. Attached is the file, plus two screencaps of renders, one done with RTRT, the other (better) with CPU RT. I also attached a photo of one in a room. Note how the fixture's skin has translucency to exibit the ribs showing through. I'd like to get there. Nelson saucer.zip