GeneDavis

Not sure what I did, but here is the file. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17835038/Westfall%201250%207_pitch%20roof.plan Started out with all sheetrock-surface walls set to material = drywall, and then wanted to paint the inside. Ended up with a spec getting into ROOM SPEC > MATERIALS > WALLS that I did not really want, and somehow, it has affected my ability to get a fireplace wall (stone faced) to show in 3D as stone faced. Materials, the painter, and the rainbow tool are all mysteries to me. How is that default set for room walls materials, and how is it reset to the default?

Very kewl. What did you use for modeling the newel? This one is a wonderful display of what can be done with the molding tool. Stacking up the cables, each with its offset and height done to follow the curve, is a great way of using the Chief tool.

Two topics for one thread. My model has a pony wall with the lower wall finish face out 5.5 inches from main layer. Soffit stops there, and I want it to continue and be stopped using the upper wall finish face. Is this possible? I have my roof raised to bear atop the ceiling frame. Wall finish goes to room height, and I wonder how I can get the sheathing and finish to go up where it belongs. Can certainly make this all look correct with CAD details, but was wondering if the Chief model can be tweaked, or else specified somehow to behave how I want.

Glenn's solution did it for me. Thanks, Glenn.

That is what it seemed to do. I should have waited to do the terrain thing. I was not done with all the rest, like cabinetry, structural, etc. Had most of it all in there, but there's more to be done. Laid in all the contour lines and the terrain built, and thus added many many many elements to my model, all those little triangles of terrain surface. Thousands, I'm sure. Turned my Chief operations into a grinding mess. Zooms, pics, pans, all waiting while the little circle spins. So I did a save-as-new to capture the model-with-terrain and then stripped the terrain out and did a save-as-same. All runs fine now, and when I am really done, I'll copy and paste-in-place that terrain back. Or maybe not. I don't need to show any topo in my plot plan. I only did the terrain to see what I had to do with the foundation and stone-ledge-drops. Does terrain slow you down? Or was my problem something else.

Thanks, Bryce. Thanks, Perry. I'll go watch Scott's production.

Thanks, Glenn! I had been trying that, but at only one level of blocking. Solved it by setting for each level.

Hey, Ross. Where in Ft Wayne would you get a connection like that? We lived there for almost fifteen years, out at the suburban limits, next place out, Grabill, horses and buggies only. But things in town seemed up to date then. Glad you are coming along with Chief. The whole rooms thing is a study in itself, innit? Then there are walls. And materials. And you are just getting started.

X6. I have not used a surveyor's data for topo, but will be trying it soon. Thus far, I have pasted a .jpg of a plat with gradient lines, and traced over to produce terrain elevation lines. I've a guy who will give me the topo in .dxf and .dwg., 1-foot gradients. How will this go?

This is in X6 but has been around for a long while. Am I doing something wrong? Missing something? I tight-join windows, vertical stacks and side by sides. Zero space. I do this because I want the realistic look in 3D camera view and renders. Join all, block all. But Chief leaves a surface there and it makes for a not-so-good look in 2D plan views and sections. The surface is there in 3D, and to a window purist, looks bad. See the attached pics. I am always building with exterior walls framed with 2x6s, and with the windows we use, factory-mulled units are evident with the join-plane of the units inset from the surrounding trim. It is the look I want to see in 3D camera shots taken inside. I included a photo clipped from the Andersen website gallery pages. We discuss 3D imperfections here all the time. This one, in something so basic in housebuilding, ought to be fixed.

His whole foundation is block, and looks to be parged on its outside. I would make the wall as two layers, the main layer the 7-5/8" thick block, the outer layer about 1/4" thick, in a stucco texture. The block layer is main, and its material is block. The inside of the garage will look just like the photo.

It's always good to model something you built or had built that you know really well, and it looks as if that is what you did. Congratulations.

The OP says, "I've manually placed some roof and ceiling planes." It's the ceiling planes part that has me wondering. We are giving him answers based on the ceilings being flat and at plate height. Manual ceiling planes throw a new thing into play, like, if you have manually placed the roof and manually placed the ceiling plane under it, you have already set your heel, sort of. You have done it for sure if you made sure your wall height and the springline for your manually-placed ceiling plane are at the same elevation.

You might like Scott's "save as" method. SAM is what he calls it. Essentially, you never begin a new plan using a profile plan, but just go new by scrubbing your existing one and going from there. Re-name, re-link, and you are good to go. That way all your defaults, layersets, annosets, even CAD details, are all there for you right up front. Lots of videos on SAM, on Scott's YouTube channel. Good luck.

He wants his gable with a steeper pitch than the rest of the roof. I don't see a way of doing an auto-build where one can specify in the gable line dialog, a pitch for the gable planes. The pitch is set by the wall over which the gable lies. Maybe we should suggest to Chief, an enhancement for the next build?

You want a legend, right?

A curved ceiling plane would make the surface, but then you would have to deal with the vertical surface and its bottom shape. So, to do it best and quickly, just model the center and the flanking rectilinear soffits as one polyline solid.

Try making your furred studwall your main layer.

Lemme guess. You're using Vectorworks? A laptop you got off the sidewalk on East 85th, from a guy named Serge?

Shadowboards, or whatever we wish to call them. And yeah, it was Wendy that wanted them, and thanks to Wendy and the wizards of Coeur d'Alene, we got them. As all things in housebuilding and other endeavors, everybody has a different name for something. Ever look at what the British call their car parts? Bonnet, what's that? Just about every single part of an automobile has its own name in Brit English, as compared to USA-talk. And I'll bet once you get 50 miles outside southern New Hampshire, housebuilders have some different term for what we Chiefers, and Wendy, all call shadowboards. But I digress. Here is what I found interesting. Roof edge in plan view, when using shadowboards, is to the exterior extent of the shadowboard molding. But fascia height? Height is to the top outer corner of the fascia, the board behind the shadowboard. Something to keep in mind, if you are getting into the deep weeds of design.

He says it won't load, but that the message spits out as shown above. I'll try giving him the info in .dxf format. Anyone else have this problem with .dwg not opening in ACAD 2007?

He has ACAD 2007 and I exported using the right one from Chief. See the pic. Ignore the layerset shown in pic, as I was exporting a plan view, using my plot plan layerset. Here is the message he gets when trying to load. “file was saved by a software application that was not developed or licensed by Autodesk” So, what to do. .dxf?

Look, it's simple. I did not post the plan because I did not think it was necessary. I thought ceiling framing generated with the FRAMING>FIRST>BUILD CEILING FRAMING command. That command builds the ceiling framing, but as I found out, not for user-built ceiling planes. The user-built ceiling frames frame when the FRAMING>ROOF>BUILD ROOF FRAMING command gets checked. With roofs. Simple. Done.

Glenn, the ceiling frame popped in when I auto-framed roofing. It did not frame when I auto-framed ceilings. And as I said, when trying to manually draw a ceiling joist for the inside vault, the joists laid flat and did not pitch. So, not knowing the ceiling would auto-frame with roof framing, I went ahead and created joists with p'line solids and called them ceiling joists with layer ID. I noticed the auto-built joists in the ceiling, doubled onto the ones I manually built, when I zoomed in on the 3D framing overview. I deleted the auto-built ones, having already sized and placed my p'line solid ones. Two pics attached, one shows the ceiling frame, the the other shows the whole array of framing, roof over ceiling. I'll edit it all down to get close to reality now.

I've a room with no ceiling specified, and have placed 4:12 pitch ceiling planes to make a vaulted ceiling. The 7:12 roof is a few feet above. I want to frame this ceiling. Ceiling joists are not working. They do not pitch at the required 4:12. Roof rafters won't work, as they want to track the roof above. What to do here? I can make p'line solids and call them ceiling joists, layer control, etc. Is that what I have to do?