GeneDavis

Chief exports multiple 3D formats, all of which bring in true textured 3D when imported. You may not like the way the textures transport, but your software has a huge library, right? So you can paint fresh?

Thanks. I'll wait until there's a decision about roofing. Owner's builder will present costs after bids are in for asphalt shingles, exposed-screws steel, and standing seam steel. I'll detail it accordingly.

I just did one with 14" series 230 i-joist rafters, and wanted a somewhat less beefy roof edge. Lotsa pieces, but in short, a rimboard subfascia is there, capped with a pad piece and 1x12 Miratec trim board fascia, and a 1x6 Miratec shadowboard to cover the top.

In plan view you do 3D > Lighting > Add lights. Click and place the light outdoors. Circle with rays all around. Then select it, open for spec, and change from point light to spot light, and then you can rotate and aim it in plan view. Before now (X14?) you could do "parallel," but now they term it "spot." Same effect.

Close Chief, zip the file, post it here. Or at least give us screencaps showing structure for both garage room and stairwell.

Ultimate Garages is the name of one new motor condo down in FL where I live. About a dozen ringing a central courtyard, a really handsome gate into the courtyard. Big show space in each on floor one for the Ferraris and McLarens, and a loft above outfitted like a superbox. Is that what I see here?

Cabinetry is hard in real life, when you are tasked with either building a cabinet to house an appliance (best) or fitting an appliance to an existing cabinet (sometimes terrible.) In Chief, it can also be hard, but solutions are easy. First and foremost, you must get the appliance maker's instructions for installation, which will definitely include all the required dimensions of the "opening" in the cab, plus stuff like how to route power and where and how to make openings for it. I just helped build a kitchen for a job I did in both Chief Architect and eCabinets. Chief for the design and layout, eCabs for the specifics of all the lock-tenoned carcase parts, doors, drawerfronts, hardware holes, and more. The sink is to be a specific model from Kohler, a farmhouse apron thing in cast iron, and the sink base was specifically sized and its front panel all CNC cut properly, for the exact sink. The client bought some other sink. I explained the sink was not right, was too big one way, to short another, and the only solution was to get the cabinet remade, and the doors that go below. Six weeks for the cab, fourteen weeks for the doors. And we cannot template for the stone tops until the cabinet gets made right. She decided to return the wrong sink and get the Kohler, fortunately in stock at Amazon, of all places.

Thanks, Ryan! New trick for me. But still, why the annoying behavior? Why does Chief think a text arrow being drawn is on the TEXT layer?

I am detailing the plan of the foundation for a house with a walkout 0 level. A walkout basement. As with any basement with all kinds of framed walls and room finish detail, one needs two SPVs: one for the foundation plan, one for the floor plan. I am in the foundation plan, the SPV established, all the required defaults set. I select TEXT, type in the text, set my attribute for alignment RIGHT, and go ENTER. There's my text. I go ALT+A to get TEXT LINE WITH ARROW (why is it called that?) and click and draw my arrow where I want it coming off the text box, and POP! goes this stupid warning message. I do not want that layer on. I have a layer specifically established for foundation text, and it is on. I can draw the arrow OK despite the message, and the arrow goes to the right layer, bu BUT WHY THE SPEED BUMP? I don't need this message, do I?

Open the oven SYMBOL. Not the object, the SYMBOL for the object. Open it for spec and examine the OPTIONS tabbed page. Your appliance should have the option checked for "inserts into cabinet front" or some words to that effect.

The symbol has to be of a type "inserts into cabinet," and its 3D origin properly set. Some Chief library objects are hinky and have to be fixed, most are not. As David said, if you are bringing in a 3D from Sketchup (or elsewhere), they are not ready for the insertion and need work by you.

I have lines in close proximity and at the display scale wanted for layout, one blanks out part of the other. I want to shift one or both, but there seems no way to select and get a handle.

Thanks!

Rene, your short circuit logo made me thing of something from very long ago, Max Headroom. Bzzzzzt!

I did some fiddling to get a plot plan on my layout at a proper scale. I had to relearn how to display line length and bearings the way I wanted, and made a change to get decimal feet as the length display. I must have made something global or something. What a mess! Now my text dialog is giving me decimal feet for text height whether in layout or plan. Get me back to fractional inches, please!

Framers taught me the term "heelstand" for that. And, point of interest, how heelstand differs one plane to the one meeting at the corner in an irregular ("bastard") hip condition, when you want a common fascia height.

I have clients for which I do their plans, which are doing all their cabinet buys the low cost unbundled virtual way. They use, or I do it for them, Thermwood's eCabinets software to "build" all the cabinets for a job, email the job file to a CNC cut shop for the entire carcase order, buy all the fronts, trim, drawerboxes, etc., from Walzcraft in LaCrosse, WI, and the hardware packages from someone like CabinetParts.com. Always frameless, and top end details like Blumotion Tandem slides, softclose doors, RevAShelf goodies inside plus Hafele, and more. It's KD cabinetry, and most jobs get the carcases built from palletized parts, somewhere near the end of day one on job. From there, hanging and installing is like any purchased cab package. Wherever we have a base run butting to a tall cabinet, we step the tall out 2 inches so the baserun countertop resolves nicely into the tall side. We don't make a 26-deep tall, and instead just "make" the cab with one extended side, an extra 2 inches rearward. That side is a "finished end" so no exposed fasteners (we do all joinery with a setup called "lock tenon" which is m&t plus zipscrews between), with the finished side fixed with pocket screws. The setting in eCabs to extend the side rearward is a whole lot easier thing to do than the Chief operation. Pics attached. Look at the various tabs in the carcase spec dialog that permits addressing each part: left end, right end, top, deck, back, etc. Thought this might be of interest, and I am going to make a suggestion in that subforum for this feature. Where is the toekick, one might ask? We use Blum or Peter Maier or Camar plastic leg levelers under all base cabinets and talls, so the boxes sit on legs, and the toeboards snap with clips onto the front legs.

The missing info was this: that part has to be converted to a symbol of a specific kind. I saved it as a door/drawerfront, and now the build is good.

Here is my cabinet in a plan file all by itself, the symbol for the extended side in front of it. Looks in 3D just like what you did, the symbol sticking through the floor finish by the 4 inches I offset the z origin. What is the trick in getting the cab to build with this backside insertion going up to the top of the cab? Cab won't build.plan

Thanks to all for the contributions! I have my trusty Sketchup Make 2017, the last one free and downloadable to one's hard drive, and won't ever have a need for the Pro version. This makes it so I can not download most all the content on the 3D Warehouse. So thanks to Mick and others, I now have the rock wall symbol. Most of the walls built here use stones about the size of a mini-fridge, all handled by artists with excavators and claws, so I took the symbol and resized it x4 and it gives me the results I need to show the concept to the client.

Please attach pics directly, not as downloads. We want to see your pics, but not have them on our hard drives.

I would not be trying this in 3D Chief unless I had seen cabinet guru Mark do it. But I am unable to reproduce his magic, even after looking carefully at the file he uploaded here with the solution right in it. I want to extend the left side toward the rear by 2 inches. I have a tall 86 inch cabinet, faceframe style with 3/4" stiles, and made a solid with a 3/4 x 2 3/4" rectangular profile and 86 inch height, same as cabinet, then saved it as a symbol, a simple fixture. Seems to be what Mark did in his file. I turn the cab around to see the back in the cab build dialog, manipulating the faces, etc., and go with the horizontal build to do, in this order, L to R, a big wide blank area, a separation of 3/4", and then do the inserted door thing, inserting my symbol, giving it a 3/4" width, and making sure the stiles on this face are set to 0 on the R where I want this ear. Try as I might, I cannot get the part to reach up to the 86 inch height, the top. See the pic attached. In Mark's file, the symbol for his extension is the cabinet height, same as me, but he has changed the origin to be up from bottom 4", and set a single stretch plan maybe 8 inches up at the top. I tried that. Still short by the 4 inches.

I draw for guys building in this rocky mountain terrain and there are always boulder walls. How is this best done? I've been leaving it off plans, but thought it might dress up the cartoons a little if some rocks were shown. Artistry with John Deere and Kubota and the rocks are free, usually.

A roof plane with its baseline NOT on a wall line will not display a plate height in its dialog box. How were your various roof planes generated?

So I copied the island with its top and pasted it into a blank plan. Didn't know about the new waterfall c'top thing, so did that. Tres cool. Also realized to dress it right and make for good door swing at the one end, I added flush-to-front fillers at each end, and base fillers have a toe that is controllable, so it made my toekick thing go away. But without the filler adds, the toekick needs a solution. Island toe issue.plan