GeneDavis

Display in 2D or 3D? In 2D plan view, you can control how pony walls display.

Try Sketchfab for 3D Framing Overviews. Very easy interface.

'Twould be nice if you could select an exterior wall and have it expand OUT, but no, not the way Chief works. This ain't no four-wall plan. Lotta turns and more. Suggest something that will make this trouble-free, please.

Done in Sketchup, symbol is a fixture

Just get busy with wall definition and floor finish specs. And ceiling, roof. Framing layers on for the 3D.

Why not cloud storage? Dropbox is pretty seamless?

Late for me to get back but I want to give a big thanks to Michael, for the excellent tutorial, which taught me not just some truss stuff, but some editing moves I did not know. When the vid was first posted I was at my seasonal camp in the north woods, with a slow satellite connection, and it prevented me from going back to the video rapidly after pausing it to go and make the moves in my plan. Well, I winterized the place two mornings ago, locked up for the season, drove back to civilization, and am now where I've got high speed, and was able to watch it in full. The model is now done.

Define "glass size." Every window manufacturer has charts for the glazing area of their windows, but a double hung with unit size W x H from Andersen can have a different glazing area from Marvin for the same double hung type of same size W x H. I think you are using glass to say what most would call unit.

Yes, Michael, I watched the video, which showed how to do a big rectangular notch in a truss where a window is desired, but as you explain in the exercise, you cannot work the under-window part to get the truss to have a hole in it. My truss is a hybrid with a hole. Hybrid in that its upper half is an endwall drop-gable type, with a window hole, and its lower half is a workhorse of a girder, picking up a 3-foot wide tributary area of roof load, and carrying along its one side the load of all the monotruss jacks hanging onto it. Chief would have to give us "pony-truss" modeling plus framing for windows. See the CAD sketch attached. The truss guy has all the specs and will produce his drawings when this one comes up in the queue.

I just uploaded this one done in SU to the 3D Warehouse. Search "Bilco Door." If you want a closed version of same search for "bulkhead bilco" and you'll find one. Just like mine, but closed. I built it exactly to Bilco specs.

OK, model me the truss. 2x4 webbing and 2x6 top and bottom and overhangs for the bottom girder part, reduced gable endwall at top, and with a 27x27 window opening where it belongs. I am not interested in seeing just the truss envelope, but the details, the heavier parts for the structural part, and the 2x3 verts on 24 centers for the gable end upper part, plus all fours side members of the window opening. Here is the file. Wonky Truss.plan

The reason I wanted to do a CAD detail from view of the truss was this truss. See the pics. For a dutch gable feature with a window in the gable (lighting storage space in an attic over a garage), the truss engineer says they can make the truss with its full girder features (100 psf ground snow load, 30 foot span) where highlighted, and above in the gable area, same truss, a dropped-top end wall gable truss, with the window opening in it. Chief cannot meet the challenge of modeling this truss, with the as-is code. What I wanted to do was to simply draw a reasonable representation of this quite special truss in 2D, and show it with a note on the roof framing page of the con docs, really just to show my client, the builder, where this is going. The CAD detail was to be a start. It turns out that the CAD detail Chief creates (Truss Detail), if you unlock the layer, is showing us SOLIDS. Doing a CAD detail from the view, gives you CAD lines, on the same layer as the solids. Select and edit anything in the detail from view, and the truss is unaffected in the 3D model. But now this little exercise has led me to something new that is really cool. You can go to the Chief-generated Truss Detail page in CAD Details, unlock the layer Framing, Roof Trusses, and have your way, your own very way, with trusses. Chief creates, for the purpose of a semi-realistic 3D rendering for framing, a truss as a group of solids, think polyline solids, one for every chord and web of the truss. When you unlock the layer, you can manipulate and sort of edit those chord and web elements. You can definitely take an endwall gable truss and edit it to create a framed window opening. But I don't really need to do this, as I have had the back and forth with the truss guy, and copied the builder in on the emails from both sides. I'm attaching an image of that truss after I tried a little editing.

Interesting, Glenn, but why would it lock what I believe to be just a 2D CAD copy of the trusses. Now I am afraid to touch the one of concern, thinking that this CAD detail is somehow linked to the 3D truss in the model. I did not know that creating a CAD detail from view created its own layerset, which it seems it has. Straight to ALDO.

Open up the CAD detail, if you have a truss or trusses in your plan, and you get non-editable images of the truss or trusses. Now make a CAD detail from view of that detail. See if in that new detail, you can work with the CAD. 'Cause I cannot, and wonder why. And I just tried it in brand new unspoiled little plan and same.

Whenever I do an Open Below room I say to myself, Look Out Below! Having worked as a framer, I can say things are a little spooky until you get those temporary guard rails built.

I did not try it with a truss. BRB Back. Does not work. I pulled the lower return roof away so the truss has the full-height envelope, specified it as dropped gable, end, and it did not work. Specified it as dropped gable, end, and attic, and still not working. Forced rebuild both times.

You are looking at the attic wall framing in 2x4 with header. What the truss guy says is he can do a hybrid truss with parallel chords and webbing to handle what the 30 foot span and 100 psf ground snow load dictates, but the upper half of these girders will be dropped-chord gable-end trusses and they will have the required window opening.

Line wt 200 arrow 15

Just came across this and wonder. Can it be done in Chief? The truss plant will build what we need. I drew it with a parallel chord girder underneath, and framed a 2x4 attic wall over and of course the attic wall has the window opening.

Measure in 2D section, adjust stemwall height in the basement room dialog.

Deck test.plan

Here is a little plan I did to examine the situation. I set the deck plank thickness in the specs at 1". The 3D model complies with the spec, but the material list is still calling the deck planks 1 1/4 x 5 1/2, even though I placed 1 x 5 1/2 PT lengths in the structural reporting matrix. Oh, and the annoying rim thing. Find me a way to specify in defaults, deck rims separately from floor frame rims. Here's a tidbit for you. When I began working for ThermaTru Doors, way long ago, I did their purchasing. Lotta ponderosa pine parts bought each month, sometimes as much as 25 full truckloads. All made from "5/4 plump." It's a term in the pine remanufacturing biz, the biz that makes everybody's door and window parts. How about that? Plump! And I know what it means.

From where does Chief pull the description for deck planking, and from where does it determine size (width not depth) of rim joists? And once planking is generated, how does one edit its thickness so it gets called out correctly in the material list? I've got decks built and needed to edit the framing, because while it correctly placed 2x8 P.T. joists, it somehow picked up 1-1/8 x 7-1/4 as rims and called them out as P.T. Editing is tedious because the resize is concentric so all the perimeter parts have to get edited for length and placement. Now I want to edit the planks to be 1" thickness, not the 1-1/8 Chief built (and calls 1-1/4" in the material list. I can edit the planks for thickness, but not their description. And what setting does one do to have decks built with perimeter joists (rims) done in the same size as joists, and not at 1-1/8" thickness.

Yeah, that's it. Duh. Thanks. I renamed them manually and in the other panel, took them out of the SUBFLOOR category and assigned them to FRAMING.

I used room spec NO FLAT CEILING and manually drawn ceiling planes to do a job, and of course the planes do the expected job when doing trusses, but a small part of the ceiling is stick framed and I used GENERAL framing to place ceiling joists. The material list identifies them in the SUBFLOOR category. I put them on the ceiling joists level, but see no way to modify any sort of category for getting them better placed in the material list.