GeneDavis

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Everything posted by GeneDavis

  1. 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.
  2. Select the wall, look at the string of icons across bottom bar, click on the one for framing.
  3. 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?
  4. 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?
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. The 1/8" must come from the common practice to use 5/8 sheetrock on ceilings. On goes the rock, then with a 97-1/8 rough ceiling your rough floor to ceiling is now 96-1/2", just right for two widths of 48" rock on the walls lifted up 1/2" with that little rocker the guys keep in their pocket.
  13. I am getting into remodels with as-builts, and it's all new to me. All has been new construction until now. This, as a service to a builder, a good friend, who brings me jobs already designed by an architect. Archy does floor plans and elevations only. My scope is to redraw in Chief, focus on structural and details, and get as accurate a material list as possible. These jobs usually have some parts of the as built getting new siding, or roofing, or drywall and finish. Maybe new doors or windows. For as built walls and roofs, I have been making them with one or more layers of insulation air gap materials, only going with "real" materials for the finish that will be done new. Is there a better way?
  14. Figured it out. Conical roofs are joined groups of many piecut segments, and each is handled separately. I had to break the cut in the planar roof into segments to closely match those of the cone, and get the opening close before joining one by one. Conical roofs. Why so popular? Seems like an expensive ornament to me.
  15. Local Chief user asked for help and I cannot fix this. A conical staircase turret roof intersects a planar section of roof, and he has not been able to get roofs to intersect there. Is there known issue with sections of conicals intersecting? I cannot post the plan as it is not my work.
  16. Gotta ask. Why would you want to model 5/8 frameless? Ikea? 19mm or 3/4" is pretty much everyone's standard, and the 1/8" isn't seen in plans or elevations, or noted in schedules. Why the need for this precision in the 3D model? Are you using 23/32" floor sheathing?
  17. What's the behavior with auto-dimensions?
  18. Saw this and liked it at a Lamps Plus store, so I modeled it in Sketchup and just uploaded it to the 3D Warehouse. If you want it you can see its title and it will pop down from the Warehouse into your nice empty SU file, from which you can get it into Chief. I imported it as an electrical symbol so it could have a light, and placed a point light that gives soft shadows in raytrace renders. I fiddled the textures a little, making the bulb object "lighting white" and the shade an emissive fabric.
  19. Look here. http://www.tectum.com/acoustical-roof-deck-panels.html
  20. Thanks! It was Plan Defaults that was the place. All fixed. Going back to award some points.
  21. Thanks but that did not work. I changed the stud spacing in the build framing dialog to 24. Changed the attic wall's spec also. Forced the truss rebuild. File attached. Storage and guest.plan
  22. I want 24" but am unable to change it from 16". Any way to do this? Trusses are in unframed gable walls that have wall def for main (framing) layer at 24-in centers.
  23. I used a mechanical design package over 20 years ago that had an easy way to get an arc tangent to two circles. You identified the circles, specified the arc's radius, and, boom! You would only fault out if the specified arc radius was too small. But that was a mechanical design package. In designing products, machinery, tools, and more, there is a regular need for this feature. Not so much in residential architecture, unless you are using the software to model objects that are furnishings and fixtures. I did not check, but I hope someone included this in the Suggestions area so Chief can see it clearly. It ought to be easy to add.