GeneDavis

A successful guy in my locale always does this, using hand-drawns for all conceptual work. I know he doesn't do CAD. He has always employed a "draftsman," and I am pretty sure the work gets done using ACAD. My guess is that this one, shown below, got done by doing the asbuilt measure, likely by the draftsman with maybe his boss the archy taking photos and writing notes, then the draftsman produces an ACAD layout, and the boss traces it by hand on a light table.

So what is the technique, Eric? I believe that is precisely what Jen needs. That, plus a good hand-drawn font for some skimpy notations. We want to be able to .pdf it. I am hoping it is something quick and easy.

The plant is "half" 3d. The leaves are 3d, but the flowers are images, and the images are rectangular, specified as always facing the camera. The rectangles are treated as opaque surfaces when Chief renders the shadows. Dig into the SU model, going component withing group within group, until you get to where you can select the flower images. When you do the select, you can clearly see the rectangle. I attached a screencap. Think about the effort it would take in SU to model the flowers in 3D, and you'll understand why the modeler chose to use images. The SU model is very cool, but won't work in Chief for rendering. Show us how it looks in standard render view, and in vector, and in PBR. Edit: I attached a render of an image no Hill Country interior should be without.

That was it, Joey. I apparently had too much overhang in CAD. Thanks!

Something is not working. I drew the CAD lines, blocked the whole set, but the window won't generate the custom muntin arrangement. File attached. Ted Volz.plan

Is there a way to recover this if it has been deleted?

Just redraw it with lower floor first as Floor 1. The crawlspace under it is Floor 0. Other might say your Floor 1 is done on slab with frostwalls, but you must need to do what you do because of soil conditions. Houses along the front range in Colorado, Ft Collins to Colorado Springs, suffer bentonite clays in soils that require an approach like yours. They call the bottom floor, if framed, a "structural" floor. Typically (in better construction) the foundation walls are supported on piers that go to bedrock.

That was interesting, Michael. And it made me come around to the thought I had when confronted with this task. What if we could select a ceiling plane, use a (new) command to view it orthographically from below (i.e., "looking up at it") and then use material regions to create a flat board "coffered look" array of elements. Here is my room, ceiling doodled with the look I want. I used soffits for the "boards" that run up from wall to ridge, and p'line solids for the boards running parallel to ridge. If doing it again, I will use the solids throughout. It is easier because all the basic CAD work is done in one section view, then it is plan view and some editing, replication, mirroring, and DONE!

You need to analyze carefully to compare: The time spent to make an accurate model, with the clock started where you typically stop and call a project finished enough for permitting and construction. The time spent to do a detailed and accurate material takeoff, from those construction documents. The editing I do to "finish" a model in order to produce a usable material list always begins with editing every single elevation of exterior wall framing. The structural plans for floors and roofs are part of the con docs, and for my projects, have been edited to portray the build, so the material list for those elements is already accurate. If you are building with trusses, your material lists, no matter how accurate your model, will not have all the bracing elements, so you'll need to do something about that. The workaround I use is to draw a 2x4x16' once into a roofing plan, copy/replicate it by the number you think the truss system will need (including temporary bracing) and put these on a layer that is then turned off. I do the same for wall bracing materials. Once you have done a couple of models this way, it goes quickly.

A room addition moves the living space to its larger environs, and the client wants the same flat-board molding panel scheme done to the 5:12 ceilings, as is elsewhere in the as-built house. How is this efficiently done?

Thanks to all. I lowered the sun intensity to 1500 and also changed the sun angle. The job is sited for lat and lon and time, so I set the sun for May 1 at 10 a.m. Anybody have a tasteful 3D female, nude, to use in shower renders? I used to have one, but lost her. The 3D Warehouse only has models clothed in gym wear or swimsuits. And no, I've tried, you cannot remove the clothing.

The cabinet with the dark door (dark both frames and panels) has the same material specs as the others in the row, including one that is a copy of the one with the render error. What in PBR is causing this? The rainbow "adjust material" tool picks up both frame and panel, when selected, as Knotty Alder, which is what you see elsewhere on all the cabinets.

That worked for both base and wall adjacent a tall. I cannot seem to succeed doing a filler between the wallcab and the fridge box, which is built with a tall partition each side and an 18" deep wallcab on top, the wallcab moved out to the face of the 25" deep partitions. https://www.dropbox.com/s/653dfr744uu7dii/Fawn Ridge Downsized.plan?dl=0

Shouldn't I be getting one here? The space is 1.5"

We can do it for walls by putting them on a layer and unchecking the M. Chief looks at the wall as an assembly of layers, and when then running the material list, does not include the materials for siding, sheathing, drywall, or insulation. But we've no similar way to do this for roof planes. How do you make it such that a roof plane's materials are not tallied in the material list? One can put the roof's polyline (what you get when selecting a roof plane) on a layer and specify that layer without the M checked, but that does not do it as it works for walls.

This is helpful, Glenn. I will edit my model so as to try this out. How do room finishes and structure come into play in this? My model, attached here, has a simple house part, which is entirely as-built, and a room addition which is to build atop existing deck framing, plus an all-new screened porch under roof, to replace the as-built smaller one there now. It is all (the new room and porch) at level 1, and I have not built a level 0 (which there is, as this is a walkout lower hillside house) because the log columns are all to be re-used in the new. My purpose in all this is not so much to produce any construction docs, but to do a framing workout and produce a material list. One of the mysteries is the deck under the porch roof. It is built, planking and framing, and appears on level 1, but will only come through in materials when the all-project list is generated, and then the deck planking and framing is listed as on level 2. What is that about? McMillen Whitney.plan

How is the best way to get the material list to capture only the new work part of a job? I have modeled enough of the house to do the porch and room addition, and have a mix of as-built floors, roof planes, walls, decks, etc. on the plan. I see the "exclude from schedule" checkbox, but I don't think that is going to do it.

I use Chief to do the layout and for doing renderings, but rely on the free software eCabinets to build and source components. Ecabs lets you build a "seed" for every cabinet type you can imagine, and then for an installation, one simply inputs the variable (almost always just the width) to produce everything needed for the job. The hardware lists are generated also, and are all based on your preferences. For the example of basecabs with drawer stacks, I have seeds built for kitchen-height 3-drawer stacks with the drawers all equal height, and for the drawers as a small height top and two equals under, and similarly for a 4-stack. Same for "bathroom height." Whether you build faceframed or frameless, you build your seeds accordingly. And every element of the joinery is specified the exact way you build. If CNC-cutting for blind dado joinery, you can specify and set dado size, depth, mortise width clearance, depth clearance, everything. In eCabs I can input the data for a whole house job of cabinetry, using the Chief generated cabinet schedule, and produce the complete cut list for carcase parts, all the purchased (or built) doors, drawerfronts, moldings, drawer slides, hinges, susans, and other goodies, in short order.

Thanks for those, Cheryl. I have snips from Game of Thrones, Warren Miller extreme skiing, and NFL closeup action. I just thought that it is such a common need that a Chief bonus library would have something. Is there a bonus library for entertainment furniture and fixtures? TVs, TV tables, credenzas, stands? Speakers? I looked, but maybe not carefully enough. The ceiling-mounted speakers, both flush and mounted. The subwoofers. Sound bars, Center-field speakers. Stacks. All that stuff. Media room gear. Where is it? Should we have it? Has anybody asked Chief?

Where are these in the libraries? I have been looking and striking out. Everybody wants a 75 inch TV on the wall or standing on a wide console, so how is it best done and where are the images of golfing, basketball games, football games, shark week, whatever? I have done it before building a solid with surround frame, snipping images from the web for the screen, but doesn't Chief have these in some library somewhere?

I disagree. It's fascia, the finish, that you want to match, and I am glad it is there. If Chief did not give us the ability to lock fascia and rotate from that point by setting either pitch, or one of the other elevation points (baseline or ridge), we would have to work harder to do the match we need when dealing with roof configs with differing pitches. You just have to realize, when doing the lock on fascia, how it will affect, say, baseline, if you change pitch or ridge.

Happy Easter, everyone! I have been having a dialog with the truss designer for the project plan attached here. A cross-gabled roof has two side bays of slightly lower pitch intersecting a center bay, the center bay's ridge just 2-1/4" higher. Fascia heights are to match, and the fascia boards are 1x8s. 3/4 x 7 1/4 to be precise. I gave Mr Truss Guy the heel heights, pitches, and overhangs I derived from the Chief model I made, and I used all the Chief roof spec tools to get a model in which the fascia heights match exactly. I did not give him the fascia height. He built his truss model using his software, and came back saying the fascia heights did not match, and to study things, I used Chief CAD to see what's happening. Well, here seems to be the problem. Listen carefully, as there is some detail here. I always thought the Chief roof plane dialog, showing us the numbers for heights at ridge, baseline, and fascia, that the dialog is returning us points in 3D space that are co-linear. We all know about how a roof plane is manipulated with Chief, using the lock function. You lock fascia height, and that becomes the pivot as you change one of the other variables, either pitch, baseline height, or ridge height. Or you lock pitch, and change one of the other variables, either facia height, baseline height, or ridge height. Whatever your preference, the roof plane is rotating as you change a variable. And I always presumed all those height points were co-linear. And it was with that thought that I used CAD to see what Mr Truss Guy was saying. I drew the two cross sections of my building in CAD, and using the roof overhang distance, fascia height, and ridge height, the two heights right from the Chief model, sought to proof the heel heights. And that is when I saw the bust. When Chief generates the fascia and places it in 3D space, it is using the roof sheathing spec for thickness, and the fascia spec for thickness, to place the fascia so its outer top edge is co-linear with the top surface of roof sheathing. Chief is returning the true fascia height when it shows the figures in the roof plane DBX, and the thicker the sheathing, and the thicker the fascia, the more not-co-linear that fascia tip becomes, relative to the roof plane line. Mr Truss Guy did not tell me what fascia height his software generated with my specs, but now that I understand what Chief is doing, I'm going back to him and specifying only heel height and ridge height for the two roofs, and explaining that with my thicknesses of sheathing (5/8") and fascia (3/4") and logic that roof overhang is to outside face of fascia, he can be assured that we will have the common fascia height we need. Fawn_Ridge_Downsized.plan

I'm in FL but my jobs are in a place in NY with a 90 psf ground snow load. With a 27 inch gable roof overhang, we'll do upright 2x6 lookouts.

Thanks, Chopsaw.

I suppose I can draw a p'line solid, call it framing, and get it done that way, but I think it's a void in Chief that ought to be fixed. I'll do a suggestion. Edit: No, while a single p'line solid precisely drawn in 3D space will "work," in that it will be seen in a 3D framing view, because it is not a roof framing member, it cannot be copied and placed elsewhere in that roof plane, or another plane, and behave as a true roof framing member will. So, I was able to get another roof plane in my plan, one with the same pitch as the problem one, to generate a lookout, and that is all I need to be able to copy and mirror and whatever, to get them everywhere needed. But I still want the ability to "draw" one in place.