GeneDavis

"I am not through moving the stair tower walls . . . " Why not wait until you are done, then build stairs. Stairs with manually-specified starting and ending elevations remain stable. Have you tried that?

Post plan please.

Working at the material level, I did a wall with a brick exterior layer from the library, and edited the material pattern colors (both field and lines) so the background (field) is white, and the lines are gray. Shown here is the result of sending the elevation to layout. This has no effect on 3D views because in those, one sees the texture, and not the pattern.

Yup. A weakness, but some might say "une bug." Worth reporting, I suppose. Has it already been done? Reporting?

I just drew a four-wall building, changed the walls to out-of-box Chief-X8 stucco, then with the paint tool in object mode (one wall at a time) painted one wall another color of stucco. That is the wall on the right in the two-color image. I then went to my 3D tools and changed the spraypaint mode to "blend color with material," selected a pink, and did the wall to its left, going clockwise. The other image is the other two walls, original stucco.

You want the tool to work at the object level. Use HELP to find out how to change settings, so you can just "paint" one wall at a time. There's object level, room level, floor level, and plan level.

Each of the flare-out steps can be done as a landing. Any shape can be drawn with Chief CAD, and then turned into a landing. I just sketched out a couple of landings, one as your first step, the other as your second.

Model it up in solids, block, make symbol? Looks like Texas.

If selecting perimeter walls and specifying footing parameters is called "manually," then yes, done manually. If there's a better way, I'm all ears. Why would Chief confuse us by giving us two ways to do this?

I've done a string of jobs for a guy that builds RV barns, all of them monoslabbed, and have not used level 0. If inside thickening is needed, such as for a single load point or at a loadbearing wall, I use p-line solids and line and layer control to include them in the plan and section views.

You can get a foundation plan. Layers, line control should yield this for you. All on level 1. Here is a quickie plan with mono slab and the plan view I show has only "slabs" and "footings" turned on.

Isn't your problem created by the level 0 foundation you built? If I am building a plan with a thickened-edge slab foundation ("monolithic" meaning single-pour) I specify everything needed on level 1 and do not build a foundation under on level 0.

remodelerJK, I see this is your first post. How about you figuring out how to get a signature line in your profile so we know what version of the software you are using, maybe what you use for hardware, and more. It sure helps when dealing with questions like yours. There are various ways of modeling a sloped ceiling plane in your bathroom. Solids, ceiling planes, and roof planes can all be used to get this look.

Skype.

Thanks again, Jon.

I've a gallery loft up above the second floor, but created on the second floor. Second floor sits atop 8/0 nominal walls, and this loft floor is 60" higher. The loft looks as I want it in 2D but in 3D there is an open-below room under it, and that room generates walls I want gone. The "walls" that are appearing in 3D are under two of the three interior railing walls that define the loft above, and have a height equal to the default floor structure thickness. This "room" can be selected and opened for spec in 3D only. I cannot open such a room in 2D on floor one or floor two. What is creating this, and how is it deleted? SkinnyTrussedFixed.plan

No I am not. It is now a worse mess than before. The house has a complicated second floor, because of its multiple levels and because one bedroom has a loft area that extends over the hallway of a lower level. The big gable wall interfaces rooms at three different levels: the second floor primary level (107-3/8"), the top bedroom level (137-3/8") and the loft floor level (up 62-1/4" above its bedroom floor). I had wanted the second floor plan to include the primary second floor and the upper bedroom. I built a third floor so that the loft would model in 3D and be able to have its floor structure defined. The problem with defining the large gable wall as a pony wall (thanks, Jon) is that in plan view it needs to be broken in order to show the doors that are in it, with breaks at the doors. The break allows one to display the lower wall (drywall both sides) inside, and siding for the exterior. But doing this complicates window placement. What to do, what to do?

Thanks, again. I'm getting there.

Try another sink. A sink symbol is a special animal, one with a part of its spec defining a cutting polygon that cuts a hole in the countertop. If other sinks give the same result, then it is something wrong with your cab arrangement and counters.

Thanks, Jon. That cleaned up the gables but now I need to find a new way of doing the loft floor and walls I had built on the third floor, to define the screwy space in that bedroom. That is what the invisible railings walls were for. And in the front bedroom, the doors were lost, and while I can put them back and they look OK in 3D camera views, they don't "cut" the wall in plan view.

Russian guy, goes by the name of Ithil, did a lot of that in Sketchup. See some of his works at this page: http://i-t-h-i-l.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24 I attached a snip of one that's there. It might be easier to learn SU and do it in that than to try to stretch and bend Chief to do it. Or just have Ithil do it for you as a subcontractor.

I did this plan in X5 and have brought it back using X8. I cannot remember what I had to do to get the gables in the front elevation to show complete, but I recall doing some wall dragging, something I try to avoid. The back one, the highest, is the biggest mess, probably due to, among other things, having a partial third floor behind it. The roof was done manually, and is a hybrid of trusses and sticks. Don't know how that affects things, but I cannot get the walls to snug up tight to the rake (gable fascia). Then there are all the pieces of wall that make things up. If one of you geniuses would take a look and advise, I would be much obliged. SkinnyTrussedFixed.plan

Stairs go from finish to finish. So, yes. There is a lot you can now do with the Chief stair spec tools. Go manual and you can set things to whatever you want. This is X8 I'm talkng about.

I am a cabinet guy, having built and installed quite a few. So I like to do the details so things get built the way I expect. For the special corner cabs in this island, I used Chief to model the doors by making the "cabinet" 1/16" thick, and then specified only one door in each corner instance to show in the schedule. Then I call out in the schedule that it's a custom and I show them how it's built with a Sketchup model.

Tried this out and found it pretty cool. For the project at hand, the chimney cap, I did something using p'line solids first, then slabs. Either way, the face tool snaps to corners, but only the corners of the defining first face of the slab or p'line. So with doing it using these, you are constrained to snaps only there. But hey, it works. Each face created is a separate object, and thus can be painted any texture. Since I'm a Sketchup user, I would go to that tool and import the object into Chief, but this face tool might come in handy for something, and I'll remember it. Thanks, Yusuf, for the lead and the demo videos.