GeneDavis

When they are spread one facing each side of wall, no bottom plate header needed. Less lumber for sure. For 2x6 wall construction, which is in play just about anywhere it gets cold, the problem is insulation. No one makes readily available 2.5" thickness rigid foam board, which is what one would want between the headers. Fooling around with 2" and 1/2" is something no framing contractor will do. Insulated headers are available in some markets, but the problem with them is the lack of size availability. Typically they are sold only in the tall 2x12 height. You end up over-headered in many places. But yes, Chief should have a setting whereby exterior headers (and there needs to be a distinction between exterior and interior) may opt for paired 2x lumber, tight, faced to outside, with a plate under.

The followup question is where do you source the tile? All I could find is this, in four colors. Black, white, something called "nude", and another called "pearl." https://www.wayfair.com/home-improvement/pdp/ivy-hill-tile-bethlehem-hexagon-6-x-7-ceramic-field-tile-sost2292.html And this, in black, white, blue, and green. https://www.tilesdirect.net/hexa-ocean-wave-glossy-hexagon-6x7-wall-tile/

As I said earlier, I use the scale in use by builders and framing carpenters and plans examiners and inspectors just about everywhere inch-foot measuring is in play. 1/4" = 1'-0" And I've yet to do a project I couldn't do with one of the industry-standard page sizes, ARCH-B through E. You must work in some alternative universe. Every printer I know works in those paper sizes. But I think I understand your issue. If you are fixed to a paper size due to your own printer's limitation, or that of your print shop, and your plan won't fit at 1/4" scale, but WILL at 3/16" scale, you have two choices. ACCEPT that your text and dimension heights will be 75% as tall as when printed at 1/4" scale, or . . . . . . EDIT all your anno to your smaller preferred size. I find that editing anno height often requires editing placement as well as arrows. Chief won't do it automatically.

I don't think you have the concept yet, Wilson. There is no "scale factor" for text and dimensions. There is a scale one sets when sending a plan view (or an elevation, or CAD detail) to layout. The most common is 1/4" = 1'-0". Another way to look at this scale is that it is 1/48th full scale. Text and dimensions have a height setting. That height is FULL SCALE, i.e. 1:1. The setting in imperial units is done in inches. If your height setting for text is 48 inches, your text will all be 1" high on your layout for any views sent at 1/4" scale. Out of the box, Chief comes with the text and dimensions set at 6" height for 1/4" scale. 6/48 = 1/8. Text will all be 1/8" high for views sent at 1/4" scale, and with text height = 6 inches. I set mine at 4-1/2", so my text is 3/32" (0.093") high at 1/4-scale. Joey sets his at 4, a little smaller. His comes in at 0.083", about 10 percent less than mine. In my opinion, Joey's height of 4 inches for 1/4 scale is about as small as one might want to go.

How many different scales are you using in your construction docs? Most of us use 1/4"=1' for every kind of plan view except for plots, site, landscape, and kitchen & bath. And for me that means there's a need for 1"= 20' for the bigs and 1/2" for k&b. Large-footprint jobs, for me, mean we're gonna go from C to D or even E size paper, because we're always gonna scale at those figures above. So what's the issue here? Plan views are for PLAN views only. They don't apply at all to sections, elevations, CAD details.

Show us a screencap of the situation when you select both windows. The "block" symbol is what you use to mull, and it is there whether or not you can mull the windows. Here is what I get.

See pic.

Do you want them mulled with that large space between? I know they will mull if stacked close, but you are beyond the mull join distance.

Does the material list area work for you?

If commercial work that is not wood-framed is your principal focus, then Chief Architect, which has strong wood-framed structural tools and which best addresses single-family residential work, is not for you.

And so my client, the builder, can share it with his client. I sent it to the builder via Google Drive, but are there alternatives? These walkarounds are huge files.

I don't see sloping walls. I see a perspective view.

Yep, that's it DzE. Thanks! And Eric, thanks for the nice example.

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.