GeneDavis

Design with Chief, use eCabinets for the shop. It's what I do.

Michael's method is good but results in adding another riser to the total between-floors run of the staircase. The reason I have had to split a landing is to save space or lower the bottom run for headroom reasons. Do the sequence as Michael shows, but then shorten the upper flight by one tread. Now you'll have the pitch the same for both flights. The split landing can be anywhere along the total stair run. One can go two steps down to landing 1, then maybe 11 steps down from landing 2 to the floor below. Arrange it all to suit your spaces.

This isn't a Chief question. It is about practice and convention, and I am just wondering what others do. Chief lets the user set whatever cabinet depth one wants. The out of box defaults are 24" for base cabinets and tall ones, and 12" for wall cabinets. I work with a builder that outsources cabinets, prefers frameless unless his arm is twisted, and the carcase parts are always done at a shop with a CNC router. Yield is terrible if cabinet depth is 24". Yield is excellent when it is dialed down to 23-3/8". Even a sixteenth more in depth above 23-3/8" blows the yield. It's all about panel size, bit size, something called collar size, but it is what it is. You want a base cabinet side such that you can nest two across a 49 inch sheet. Frameless or faceframed, base cabs with overlay doors come it at a total depth around 24-1/4", the buildup including doors at 13/16" and bumpers, which means a stock countertop with depth of 25" has a nice 3/4" overhang. The inside depth of a 23-3/8" base cab, built the way we do the backs and nailers, is 22-1/4", which permits nice clearance for the two types of Blum slides we use. Sink cutouts work OK, and we've experienced no issues with built-in appliances, which mount to the applied frames out front. Tweaking the depth in a kitchen layout is pretty meaningless unless you are dealing with a U-shaped end, and even then it just affects filler widths. So, what do you do?

You really should take the time to watch some videos that layout work. If you have put in the time and effort needed to build an accurate model of what is to be built in Chief, you should know that nothing comes "automatically." And neither do the construction drawings. But just as Chief can quickly produce a 3D model of a house, it can quickly produce the 2D floor plans and inside and outside elevations that are the core of a set of prints for building. Chief tools will place scale images of plans and elevations on the drawing pages. There is no redrawing needed. Dimensions, notes, callouts, and all the rest of the annotations needed are done by you the user, using Chief's excellent tools.

We engineers call these counterforts.

Thanks, Mark!

I don't do this enough to know the tricks, and this is the first kitchen for me in X10. Will someone please walk me through symbol resizing of the basic 24" dishwasher that is in the library?

Yes on the native resolution. Turns out that the latest Win10 updates are not addressing video card drivers. I had to find and install the driver update myself, and now all is well.

My Asus gaming laptop has a screen 15 inches across and 17.25 inches on the diagonal. Both Chief and Sketchup now look fuzzy when running. I can get by, but it looks like I've stepped back a dozen years in computer technology. In display settings, I am set to 1920 x 1080 resolution. Any hints for a fix?

Museums have this sort of thing, a space you enter inside a room, the space emulating the inside of a submarine, or space shuttle, or airliner. The specialists that do this are display builder contractors and I'll bet their work begins in a built space with vertical planar walls and planar ceilings. It might be worth it for you and your client's builder to have a discussion with a couple display builders to see how they would address this room finish.

Windows 10 was insisting I do an update and so I did. Now when I go to use CA10, I have the Win 10 toolbar across the bottom and cannot see the dialogs I need. Anybody know how to defeat the Windows 10 bar? Ignore this. Sorry. I worked it out.

I've got Skype onboard because it came with Windows 10. Can it be used to give a client a walkthrough? Must one use a webcam? All I want to do is have the client see the screen, not me.

I hope you are getting paid in full for whatever time it takes to do it. Painting the image onto an arched doorway with slab is easy, but your 2D floor plan might look hinky.

Select the wall, look at the string of icons across bottom bar, click on the one for framing.

You seem to want a CAD detail, and I am not sure your trial version can import CAD details or libraries of them. You should be able to, from scratch, create any CAD detail you can imagine. Did you solve your building issue? Are you able to model a structure with the floor structure hung from the wall, rather than platformed onto it? Wood-frame platform construction is Chief's default. To do what you want with ICF construction you are going to have to learn some settings specs that balloon walls and make floor frames that hang to them. I gotta ask this, about Softplan. Do their trial version CAD details have all the ICF ones you need for your whole project?

Pretty nice garage for a couple of golf carts. Move 'em way up for my pair of Porsches. Can we assume you want to recreate the whole thing, with its exposed rafter tails, the corbels, and the barge rafters at the front?

Well, that's a seismic shift, innit?

Something I might do if it were my project, and it's the front entry. I would enlarge the entry slab platform, the one under the stoop, out beyond the stoop walls, and do the stepdowns out under the sky. The platform top step edge would be concentric to the line of the stoop walls, maybe a foot out. Steps would be concentric.

First, I prefer K-Bird’s 3-gable front, but would adorn the large upper one with a false hayloft door and the smaller left one with a false louvered vent. I don’t like doing windows as adornments. The garage looke raised because its floor structure is slab and not a thicker wood frame assembly.

Do yourself a favor and model it in Sketchup, then import as a symbol. What you seem to want is a multi-component assembly that is grouped as the truss, and Chief isn't the right tool for doing that. Not sure if a trial version of X9 will let you import a .skp. You can readily model rafters and ceiling joists and ridge beams in Chief X9, but you'll have to tell us more about the components of the "1950s nail-together truss" for us to advise better.

Make the bottom step a landing?

It's there for the builder to clearly communicate to his concrete sub, what he wants done. Walls are almost always poured by the sub's crew and no one else is there. If not spelled out clearly, the bolts will be plopped in at rough 4' centers, and in wall centers. Done right, mudsill installs are quick and easy. Done sloppy, it's a mess.

I'm anal about the anchor bolt layouts. Done manually by me, I detail locations and also where the mudsill joints go. All done so as not to compromise joist bearings. I see no point of using 3D to place them. The reason I locate and detail sill joints is because I want a bolt somewhere near every end.

We were shown this corner-door feature, plus many mitered-glass no-post corner windows, in homes offered for sale, all around Naples, Florida, just last week. Chief needs to be able to do this, right now, without workarounds.

I'm thinking something smaller and lighter than the big Asus gamer I got from Joe Carrick a few years ago. It's been great, but it's a load. See my specs below for the Asus, and tell me whether a Microsoft Surface Pro might deliver same performance, and of course, which Surface Pro. Thanks.