GeneDavis

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.

I opened your plan in X7, went to second floor plan, turned on for view all the attic walls, and unchecked "no room definition" so they would define your space. You can put rooms in it however you want and define room parameters to get the finishes, ceiling heights, etc., that you want.

Example shown below of Sketchup detail, Chief Blueprint font, bold, sized to be close to Chief Layout size for scale when the screencap is imported and resized. The top right corner is the imported image, the title below and all the rest is Chief.

Hi, Alan. I'm the fabricator and need to know the spread between the lugs so we can be sure it is right for the mating fitting.

Very nice, Alan! Your method?

That's a nice workaround, Scott. For my straight end to end footing, I would use a p-line solid. One still needs to white-out the section view to make it look like footing and slab are poured together.

Yes, I struggled with that on a plan that required a bearing wall down the center of a full depth basement. The basement floor slab is a separate pour after the footings and stemwalls are poured, and it sits atop the footings. I could do the wall with its under-footing, but only as I showed in the pic attached above. When I tried to call the footing a monopour, it changed the entire scheme to show the footings for walls all done as one pour, slab included. It is not how it's built, and I could not use the sections at all. So you can sort of get what you need, but your building section won't look true. You'll need to CAD-correct things.

I can get the right (almost) amount of concrete under the floor slab under the wall, but am unable to do the floor slab and the wall footing as a monopour. Furthermore I cannot get the sides to chamfer. Did I understand this right? A stemwall on footing is done around the perimeter, and a slab on grade is poured after so top is flush to top of stemwall?

Got an example of what you want to do? I use Sketchup, with its dimension tools, then take a screenshot and import the .jpg into Chief layout. My screenshot tool is Jing, by Techsmith, available free of charge. If you want a black on white look in Chief layout, use a style in Sketchup that has no horizon and no background color, only white. Use the same font for your SU dimensions as you are using for your layouts. You can size your font in SU so that when you upsize or downsize your imported image, the font size is appropriate for your layout.

One needs to imagine oneself on the jobsite with a pencil, tape measure, chalkline, and the floor deck under your feet. The length of a wall means little unless you are just using it as a check to see whether you have your end points right. Think "end points" and figure on doing your dimensions to define them. So if I give a skew dimensions (done with point to point) I label it "ref." To be sure, I dimension the end points in both x and y. And I always make whatever adjustments to the walls are required to ensure those dimensions fractions are no finer than 1/4".

If those are the roofs you want, just build a wall there that sits atop that lower back roof. It is a planar opening, and it is vertical. Think wall not roof. Not gonna be pretty, though, but it is what it is when you want that big 14:12 thing going on from the front.

Pretty sure if you are using auto-page-numbering you cannot get an inserted page to go dot 1. But if you do not auto number you can number your inserted page anything you want.

Perry, can we presume you scale your other text to the 4" for 1/4"? You have me thinking of redoing my text sizes, which are presently scaled from 4-1/2" and not 4". For others reading, I'll do the math for you. My text for 1/4" = 1'0" is 0.094" high, and Perry's is 0.083". I'll do some layout work using the P method and see how I like it.

If you are going for 3D realism, which I guess you are, try using an array of material regions all 8x10, each with your image as texture. Do a whole array of them on the floor, spaced as they will be, sitting just proud of the floor surface it cuts, the floor surface being your grout surface. You won't spend as much time as the tile setter, but almost, 'cause you will need to figure out what to do for the inevitable edge cuts. Your photo shows light reflecting in an area. If you are being paid by the hour to do a totally photorealistic render, you might want to consider photographing a dozen of the tiles in a studio setting, so as to get totally flat lighting on them, and use all twelve to create that many different textures, so you can try to randomize. Just like what the tile setter will do. I hang out at the Sketchucation website to see in the Gallery section what some of the pros are able to get with render realism. Here is a thread where a guy put a week into a kitchen render that has photorealism going on in the floor tile part. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=59221&p=538811&hilit=tile+floor#p538811

Chief's door tools have improved, but still lack detail and options when it comes to the sill/threshold. Same for windows, BTW. You'll probably be happiest with the look by setting the elevation base as from finished floor, and then using a bottom offset of 3/4". It looks more like actual build condition then. No, you can't get a sloped threshold. You cannot get an anodized aluminum threshold. You cannot get an adjustable-height oak piece under the door. You cannot get a door sweep gasket. You cannot get weatherstripping in the jambs. The Rolling Stones said it best. You can't always get what you want. But you get what you need. Amazingly, fine homes are getting built everywhere using Chief-drawn construction documents.

Close file, zip, and attach. Or save to Dropbox and give us the DB link.

You've tried to "draw" one? Manually? There is no auto-frame function that does trusses, roof or floor.

It's everything that's long. Subfascia, rims, mudsills, ridgeboards, maybe more. Much easier to think it all through, identify it, and recompute it to the number of sixteen foot lengths required. The material list is just a rough guide. Export it to a spreadsheet and get busy editing. And when you are all done with that, be sure to include enough 2x4 lengths for all the wall bracing the crew is going to need, plus the truss bracing, all the miscellaneous blocking, temporary scaffolding, and more, that goes into a framing job.

After seeing what happens when you pull the roof edges away from the walls, edit them back exactly to the outermost surface, which is the outside face of your siding layer. Not how you build a roof for real, but it is what you need to do in Chief with roofs abutting walls.

I've been fiddling and not getting anything that looks real when raytracing. A simple fixed shower panel in a standard little 5x8 bath. Tried tempered, tried plain glass. Tempered gives me the ability to modify transparency, reflectivity, etc. Anybody want to share their material and settings so the render looks real?