GeneDavis

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

What's the behavior with auto-dimensions?

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.

Look here. http://www.tectum.com/acoustical-roof-deck-panels.html

Thanks! It was Plan Defaults that was the place. All fixed. Going back to award some points.

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

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.

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.

Nice, Solver! Explain to us, please, how to get the grain to look so nice and real.

There is a way you can fake it but you won't get the lines and the space you might really want. The treads are rectangular 3D boxes and all you get for control is to be able to paint a material on them. All six sides are "painted" with your material. Take a no-shadow photo of a pair of 5/4 x 6 deck boards with the right spacing and tread length, and the space should show up as dark shadow in your photo. Now go and edit your photo to capture ONLY the boards, then use Chief tools to make that a texture. Use it on your treads. Be sure to check appropriate settings so your texture stretches to your tread size. ..

A building is built into a banked site. 8-inch stemwall foundation around a slab which is at grade on the drive-out side. The rear wall has foundation coming up to 48 inches above the slab floor, the two endwalls have the foundation stepping down to 24 above then to zero, the front elevation has its wall on grade equals slab. I can model with accuracy for build and materials using pony walls for the rear and end walls, with the lower portion of the pony wall matching the 8-inch stemwalls. My issues, and they are minor, are that the 3D framing view does not show the concrete pony wall sections, and the wall framing elevations for stepped walls only show a section at a time. The attached pic shows a 24 x 32 building, and the 24-foot end walls have steps, thus are three wall segments.

The owner is a foundation with a board, and no one on the board is paying much attention, except for the cost. I do work for the contractor, modeling up the jobs with enough accuracy that he can use the material lists for cost estimating. The first set of prints done by the archy was a floor play and four elevations, no roof plan, and you gotta admit this valley extension needs a little explanation when seen only in one elevation. The roof is all trussed and the spanning valley adds cost the contractor felt was unnecessary, and so he suggested the cut roof or the dropped section. The architect was asked for more detail so we could see his proposed arrangement. It's a barn to be used for maintenance vehicle storage and maintenance, being attached to an existing 125-year-old barn. The archy does big commercial work and this barn is a tossoff for him. He has a relationship with one of the board members.

It'll get done, but we thought it was interesting how dug in he was on this arrangement.

You guys will love this one. The architect, when asked for specifics as to how the roof all goes together, replied that it should be built as I show here. His sketch calls out the extension of the valley as a "structural fascia" from which the rafters are hung.

Thanks to you both. I am offering these two possible solutions. One maintains the 8:12 pitch but drops the ridge at the connector, the other keeps ridge height and results in about a 12:12 pitch for the small lowered roof.

An architect has done a plan for a new barn to be built adjacent an existing one. Roofs are all to be 8:12 which is what the existing one has. My rough model shows the way the roofs come together now, which does not seem right as for what it does with the valley and the existing rake end of the existing barn. The new barn and the breezeway connector are the larger group shown on the right end of the plan. Any suggestions to improve this are appreciated. Barn.plan

There's a sample plan at Chief's website that's a good example of a step-down house. I call a walkout a step-down because it suits my structural-engineer sense. The foundation is stepped into the hillside. Auto-build won't work for these. You'll edit stemwalls and footings to get to proper bearing and frost-protection (if needed).

Thanks, Eric. You're the Solver!

We once had this but now I can see no way. I posted on Seeking Services and of course only get replies from users that come onto the forum. A whole lot of Chief users don't come here. The earlier forum website allowed a user search. Is there one still? We need someone with an IL license.

Thanks, all!

Any cautions? Just arrived at the camp, there's no WiFi, but I want to work on a couple files. i can access WiFi down at the library 6 miles away.