GeneDavis

That function is available in other CAD packages but in Chief you need to work around it with a patch. In the two images, you can see the dimension as generated, the patch, and the patch moved to cover the true dimension.

Try it yourself. Go into a wall detail with whatever dimension default you want to use, turn off the framing finds, and you'll see you cannot get a dimension pulled. Then draw two vertical parallel CAD lines and dimension with end to end or baseline. Now pull OFF THAT dimension to snap dims to other points. It'll find all the stud edges, when it would not before. It's like the starter in making bread.

Well excuse me! That was it! But the big question remains, which is with the preference for framing find (edge or center) OFF, why does it start to find edges or centers when one begins a string using CAD lines?

That's not it.

The only kind that works is point to point. No end to end, no baseline, no running. I can do it if I "kickstart" things by drawing a cad line and pulling a dimension from the CAD line, but without that kickstart, Chief CAD will not pull a dimension. Try it yourself. Draw a wall, frame it, open up the wall detail, and try drawing some stud to stud horizontal dimensions.

Each of those is done with a wrapped molding. Note: Attach your images, don't attach a link that must be downloaded.

That "door height" is actually the door opening height. Chief does not give you door heights. Play around with cabinets and take section cuts, use the measure tool, and you'll get up to speed on what to do. Some of us use the faceframed approach to do frameless cabinets, setting the "separation" (i.e. faceframe stiles) width at 3/4", and the overlay at 11/16". Customize your verticals however you want, but I set things to my wall cabs have a top reveal of 1/8" and a bottom of zero. Basecabs top reveal is 3/8" and bottom is zero. You back into these numbers setting separation sizes and overlays.

Wouldn't one, after changing pitch of a built roof, just take a section and measure how much it should be raised or dropped, to re-seat properly? This, whether one rotated the planes about their baselines, their ridgelines, or their fascia lines?

What scale are your floor plans at the Super B layout page size? What scale are they at the Arch D page size? Did you rework all your annotation to be scaled right for the larger layout page size? Whether I am printing at letter size or Arch Whatever, I want my letters and numbers 3/32" high. What would carpenters need to know that they would scale from a print? Please be specific, because scaling seems so archaic in this age of digital plans-making. The only thing I can think of is "where does this interior door go?" My interior doors are either (T) for tight, or located with a dimension if not tight. "Tight" means "you guys figure it out from however you are going to case the framed opening. That casing edge should be maybe 1/8" off the sheetrock."

Thanks, Mark. I did not know that break that happens between separation = 1.875 and separation = 2. I can certainly live with 1-1/8", particularly with all the LED strip lights we have available now. Back in xenon bulb puck days we needed more depth for the housings.

Well, that's the diff between Pro and Free Make!

Thanks. I probably did what Michael did, which was to do some degrouping. A lot of the stuff you get from the 3D Whse needs this kind of fiddling to get textures to identify separately in Chief.

David, what version of SU are you using. I see it is labeled as 18.something. I use free Sketchup Make 2017 and could not open your SKP file, but downloaded the Cessi chair group from the 3D Warehouse. Is yours the web-based 2018 version of Make?

My customers get their cabinets made by batching entire jobs or rooms using eCabinets software, then buying out the packages of components: carcase parts from a CNC shop, fronts and trim from someone like Walzcraft, hardware from usual sources, drawerboxes from another, etc. Unbundled sourcing. All is put together on site. It is fast and VERY cost effective. Uppers always get undercab lighting, and instead of doing light rails, the decks (i.e. carcase bottoms) of wall cabs are raised 1-1/4", a behind-door piece of trim goes on at install-time, and the doors overshoot the decks by 1-1/4". See the sketch, attached. The applied valance trim piece, 3/4 x 1-1/8" is shown. How would one do this in Chief? It's no biggie for me that I cannot do it now. Just thought it might be good for accurate section views.

WHAT 3D Framing layer set? If it is one you created, not something Chief has OOB, you should give us more detail. Sorry, found it. But what real value is there in showing this on the plans, without extensive annotation?

They build those walls one at a time, so I give them each elevation, and show where the on-center layout origin is, plus other details. Here is an example. They use the floor plans to locate the window and door openings, and the interior wall junctions. Wall heights are in the building section views.

I charge extra for garages, piers, and thickened slabs. But the offset tool, the "follow me" tool and of course the push-pull hotkey make pushing out a quick foundation in Sketchup pretty easy. Here's my foundation story. Long ago, two years out of school, this engineer was running two gangs of union surveyors every day doing line and grade work for a paper mill expansion in Pennsylvania. Way before 3D, way before CAD. The preps for the pours was being done by a 65-member gang of union carpenters working out of a large site-built shop, building forms with lumber and plywood. From October through the following June, we averaged 60 redi-mix loads a day pouring 'crete, a number of the heavy pads for things like digesters being 7 feet thick. Winter pours were under temporary enclosures built by that same gang. With air temps in January and February of maybe 7 F., you can lay atop a 7' pad poured early this morning, and the heat emanating from the curing 'crete will make you think you are in a sauna. It may be different today, but just the machine foundation inside a paper mill needed about 40 thousand cubic yards of concrete. We didn't need 3D then, and lets face it, it's use today is really just window dressing.

He wants 3D. I just doodle it in Sketchup and show a view of that. Takes less than ten minutes, stepdowns and all.

Are your walkout walls done as pony walls, framed wall up, concrete stemwall down? Because if that is what you have, you cannot do the view you want.

Thanks. I popped those three control dropdowns onto my CAD detail config, and it's interesting. Since I had commanded for CAD Detail from a view that had a forced layerset via the annoset spec (meaning a specified layerset rather than the passive "using active layerset") I could only FORCE the CAD detail config the way I wanted by FIRST commanding the layerset, then the dimension default, and finally, the annoset. Trying annoset first did not work. I had been snapping back to my framing layerset because of the hard annoset for framing that specified the framing layerset.

I figured I could do that, but how does one set an annoset to a CAD detail that sticks? Chief keeps popping back to the annoset that came from the view I was in when I chose to create a CAD detail. Chief seems to ignore this in their training video. All I want to do and cannot, readily, is have dimensions, arrows, and text be drawn in at whatever scale I have chosen for my detail. I can edit the anno that I create (which comes in at the 1/4" scale size) to what I want, but I want the creation of such anno in my detail to be what I want.

How have you set up Anno Sets and Layer Sets for a.} drawing CAD in a CAD detail window, and b.) annotating (i.e. dimensioning, text, arrows, markers, whatever). My near-OOB setup has the Anno Sets tool in the bar, but is not displaying which anno set is in play, nor is the layer set tool even there. The problem I have is that when initiating a new CAD detail, that detail inherits the layerset and anno set from the plan window one was in when one selected CAD Details, and I don't see a way to change it when in the CAD detail. My CAD details are usually at one of the scales larger than 1/4", and whether I am going with 1/2", 3/4", 1" or maybe even 1-1/2" = 1.-0", I cannot really establish it until I view the density of the info in a detail sent to layout. So I start with 3/4", usually. I can readily annotate a CAD detail, but I then have to edit the anno down from the king sized 1/4" scale anno. What am I missing?

Yessir. Updated however annoyingly. A Windows restart seems to have fixed it, but I have had to do this multiple times in past few weeks.

It is an intermittent thing, but the toolbar is now stuck there and won't go away, which makes using Chief almost impossible. Yes, I believe I have chosen the correct settings. See the screencaps.

I don't have any, but I'll bet some of you do. I have an ulterior motive. I want to see how some might look, as I am in a relatively small town, but one that has dealerships for Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborgini, of course Porsche, and private collection garages here are sized for up to 40 cars, with living space for the caretaker/mechanic. Doing the space is easy, outfitting it with doors, decor, and surfaces isn't too hard, but populating spaces with gas-and-oil stuff (as The Pickers of cable-TV fame call it), is going to require more creativity. Then there are the cars, but the 3D Warehouse and other sites have cars, in all their huge-poly-count beauty.