GeneDavis

Mark, I have opened your file, looked at the cab specs in the dialogue boxes, and I guess I am untrained, because I have no idea what is going on, and in particular, what the function of the turned-around doorless cabinet box on the floor is.

Well, Rene, I searched in Chief's cabinet tutorials for box replacement applied rear doors, and struck out. How about a quick vid?

That's the door margin. Are you applying this raised deck thing to a cabinet with inset doors?

I am doing a layout for the roofing buy list for a standing seam roof, and before I go and draw them all manually in a CAD detail, wonder if there is a way Chief produces this. The plan view roofs we do in 2D are of course 2D projections.

I was just lazy and painted knotty pine everywhere in this one. I'm gonna go with Eric's suggestion next time and do exploded solids. In Sketchup, you can apply a different texture to every face in a model, and it is a cool feature, you can edit the texture on each face, rotating it as needed, moving it to center a knot, and more. What you need in Chief is a bunch of imported textures, good photos of wide long boards.

I didn't download the plan, but looked at the .pdf of the layout. All the lineals, meaning the posts and beams, can be drawn with Chief's framing tools. I'd do the trusses with solids in elevation view. You can build it by creating wall types that are SIP-like, if that's you goal, but I think maybe the sample is of a hybrid structure, timber frame as load-bearing. I've done two of these, one an SIP wrap over a loadbearing timber frame inside, tight to the panels. The other was a hybrid, with wood framed walls and timber trusses up under the rafter-framed roof, trusses load-bearing to support purlins and a big ridge beam.

Here is the file. https://www.dropbox.com/s/fvp1lver272br2n/Farmhouse w loft.plan?dl=0 The staircase has one long segment going to a landing, and a short two tread segment rising from the landing to the second floor. That second floor, a loft, has a 24" deep floor structure, and the overlook and stair pulpit walls are railing walls, the railing done as 2" fir framing main layer, 1/2" sheetrock one face. It is that wall that the short upper segment abuts at its R side, the side showing no skirt board trim. The long lower stair segment abuts and interior floor drawn on floor 1 and Chief generated the specified skirt trim. The staircase is drawn on floor 1 which is the only way I know to do a stairs going from floor 1 to floor 2. Is the skirt trim not generating because the wall the second segment abuts is a floor 2 wall? Whatever. I'd like a solution before I go and do the p'solid workaround.

There have been 45 views of this so far, and no comments. I'm going to copy this over to the Suggestions section. Maybe as soon as I do that, someone will unlock the problem for me!

It's a toggle, and you might want to add the three buttons to your toolbar, as most need to swap and change depending on situation, and it's too tedious to make the change going to Edit>Preferences>Marquee Selection . . . See the attached for all three added to the toolbar: Contained, Intersected, and Centers.

I am doing CAD details, relating to callouts in plan views, and sending to layout at preferred scale, then in layout, choosing the label for the box as callout. See the attached screencaps. I did the link in the callout dialog in the plan view to tie the callout to the CAD detail. Using the link apparently brings in the label text for over the line (it's the title of the CAD detail) and the scale in layout. The scale is picked up by the program code. Must be. I want to be able to control the text size and left-center-right alignment, and cannot figure how. I made the label text size, which is controlled in layout, not plan, to be 1/8" high, larger than the detail text and dimensions, which comes in at 3/32" height. I'd like that scale note below the label line to be this, the 3/32" height. If this is not possible with present programming, I will file a suggestion.

Thanks, Scott. That helps. In your video you do what I want to do, which is to link the callout to the CAD detail, and populate the label for the detail with its number and page. I looked at the plan file for Nashville which was done in X13 (at least that is where it is in my archives) and see that for the CAD details in that plan, you created one (just one) CAD detail for all the CAD details used in the layout, so there was no linking. Your video is showing the linking which I guess is a new feature in X14. Might be nice for a future release (and I will repeat this in Suggestions) to be able to auto number CAD details within a "type letter." Plot details begin with P, foundation details begin with F, architectural details (maybe just called plan details) start with A, electrical with E, cabinets C, etc.

What's the diff?

I'm not good at finding the training vids for this. Please help me out. I want to do callouts for details, exactly as Chief is showing in the Batchelor View sample file. See the clips attached. I know I could download the plan file and examine things, but this one was done in an earlier version of Chief, and since I am in 14 with enhanced stuff for linkages, etc., I want to use all the new tools.

That's a workaround, Eric, and I'd thought about it but had not done it. Thought there might be something I am missing. I set it to 1/64, but the DBX reads zero. There's a circle there, though. Very tiny and no one will see it when reading prints. I guess the callout concept is not really applicable to plan views.

I like the auto features of this callout for giving labels to plan views, but how does one lose the callout (in this case the blank circle) in the label?

I recall doing a change suggestion about this. Not the mull joint issue, but that of mulled windows not matching the reality of window products when mulled. In the northern climes, where brands like Andersen, Marvin, Kolbe and Kolbe, and others ship product, the window frames are two or more inches less in depth than the 2x6 wallframes in which they mount. Jamb extensions at 2" and more reach are done, but for a mulled window, the jamb extensions wrap the mulled unit, not each individual window. Chief gives us the wrong look. You can sort of get close to real world details by setting the jamb width to something like 3.5 inches, then mull the units, but there is a hole all around where the jamb extensions go. If you want, you can fill it with your own jamb extension, done using a 3D molding. See the attached.

I am stumped in X14 Premium. Working on first set of con docs with this new release, and cannot seem to control the layout box label text size. Admittedly, this is my first time using layout box labels. I'd been in the habit of supressing labels and writing labels with layout text. It seems to be set to generate 1/8" high text in the settings (see attached) but the text measures 1/4" high. I cannot find the setting to change it.

Solved! Deleted the window in layout and ran it again, and it's OK and with cornerboards.

I tried to find what that page is all about, and clicking "help" produces nothing.

Two pics attached. One, no corner boards, is from the layout page. What was sent was plot lines. The other, is the view that opens when the layout window is opened. Why would the edge lines of corner boards not get sent to layout?

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?