GeneDavis

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.

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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.

I did and searched and see no way to get the circle behind. I want a circle in dayglo yellow.

And I have searched Chief Help, explored everything I can find in Defaults and Preferences, and done a search at Chieftalk.

Mark, I missed that and thank you for the clarification. It is faceframed with zero width to the stiles, thus the 1/16" pulls the door edge IN away from the zero edge line. Clever indeed.

Thanks, Mark. Gave you another upvote. A lot easier and it makes it so one can use any door from the "descriptions" class (i.e. without going into libraries) and any door from a library. But you gotta admit, the step taken using the faceframed setting and needing to set the side overlap to MINUS 1/16" is as counter-intuitive as it gets. I attached a snip from Chief help for the cabinet spec panel to show how that is absolutely NOT clear in their description. One would think setting the faceframe width at sides to 3/4 and wanting a 1/16 reveal, one would set that at 11/16, but try that and see what you get. No reveal. And the other mystery, at least for me, is how Chief treats moldings in the cabinet dialog. Crowns end up referenced from top of cab, but anything else goes at the bottom. Nowhere in the Help Manual is this spelled out.

There ought to be a video detailing this out. Thanks. But to sum this up in words, the first thing you do is build a door symbol at EXACTLY the height you want. In my case I want a door for a 36-high cabinet, flush at bottom, i.e. no reveal, and with a 1/8" reveal at top. So I build a door at 35 7/8" height and convert my model to a symbol. Chief's cab-build wants to place doors relative to the bottom-most "separation" and so it is necessary in the first panel of symbol dialog to lower the door by the desired bottom overhang (1.25" in my case), so I go z = -1.25" and the visual confirms by the door dropping down. Can you see axes in the symbol image? Then it is onto the sizing panel of the symbol spec dialog, where we want to say yes, stretch in the x axis as the default does it, right at center. But for y, well, we want that door never to get stretched, this is a thing ONLY for 36-tall wallcabs, so we set the stretch plane up above the top. I used 36" which is just 1/8" off the top, safely away. And NOW one is ready to use this door in a wall cab. Spec is FRAMED. Separation is 3/4". Choose TRADITIONAL OVERLAY and set to 1/16". Now go to the FRONTS dialog, where to make this work for my desired outcome, goes like this: 1. Blank area = 1/16" (because I need another 1/16" atop the 1/16" the REVEAL spec gave. 2. Separation = 3/4" (this is essentially the top panel of the frameless cabinet. 3. Door = whatever the programming is delivering 4. Separation =3/4" (and at this "bottom" of cabinet, the door is being placed at its zero z, and its bottom edge is sticking down that 1.25 we created in the symbol dialog. 5. Finally, Blank Area = 1.25" And it's sort of a wrap, except that Chief does not auto-build the light rail that is below the cab deck and right behind that door overhang of 1.25" It is the bottom BLANK AREA that is "raising" the cab's deck. The gables (I love that use of the word, it's from cabinetmaking) overhang the deck by the 1.25". If one wants the gables, one or both, whacked back so one can get continuous lineals like light rails, light strips, plugmold outlets, one will do surgery on the inside gable of each end cab, and on both gables of the in-betweens. And that is done with the FRONT-SIDES-BACK dialog, choosing the side, going: 1. Separation = 3/4" (establishes the top) 2. Blank area = whatever (skip and get to the next, let Chief do the math) 3. Opening = 1.25" (the door overhang number) There! Wasn't that easy? Not for me, but for Mark the cab wizard, just another day at work. THANKS, Mark!

But the rope lights are on the electrical level, have light data, thus can be turned on and off and the lights brightened, dimmed, and colored. What makes them unique amongst electrical thingies is the ability to shorten or lengthen them, and the number of bulbs thus decreases or increases. Click on one to see about making it a symbol and you see that it is in the cabinet doors and drawers family. I'll bet once you make one a symbol and then place it, having made it a "light," you can connect it to a switch. But, and here is the big loss, you no longer can lengthen it or shorten it and have the bulb count go up or down accordingly. So we may be stuck with drawing arcs and making them dashed lines.

I am unable to get a connection. I go from switch to ceiling light and bingo! Connection. I go from switch to rope light and nada.

Why not refer to the window schedule, which can be formatted to show both unit size WxH and R.O. size WxH. You can draw your plans to dimension to R.O. Where I am, the suppliers send a guy to your jobsite when you have built most or preferably all your R.O.s, and he carefully checks them against his quote and your window schedule he quoted from. Only then does the release to to the factory to build the windows.

HELP! I am unable to get the expected result when I try to place my doors in the cabinet. File attached, plus my doors. I believe the doors are identical in Chief, one having been created in Chief with p'line solids and the other imported from Sketchup. By identical I mean I edited the symbols to have same origins and stretch planes. Red door.calibz White door.calibz 1812463411_overlaplightrail2.plan