GeneDavis

See my edited post above.

If that is a level ridge coming out from the house, centered on the bay feature bump within the porch, there must be a cricket in there that we cannot see. There is snow and shadow in the way. Your Chief model only shows us what you tried to do to duplicate it. We need better photos of the as-built. Are you able to better examine all those elements of the porch roof, and measure pitch of each? Is there something like this going on?

Material region tool works, whether joints are recessed or proud. Very useful tool. Multiple copy makes doing an array easy. Things like this, board and batten, and more, all now possible for good looking 3D.

V10 seems so long ago. It may have shown floor structure and ceiling structure in simple diaphragm format, when doing a section. Lines of the outer envelope. We got to add more detail to structure as releases came out, thus your issue. We now don't get the diaphragm bounds, instead, we get all the details of frame and finish. So why not just settle for some CAD boxes and call it a wrap, if you want that old look? I am kind of surprised a cabinet specialist like you would not want the wall elevation instead.

In that case, draw the wall and move it under the stairs.

Sure is a pretty staircase. Looks like mahogany. I like the way the first few steps flare with their curves. To reproduce, get a good stairbuilder, and get out your wallet. Looking for advice on how to model this using all-Chief, with precision, to match the real thing? Your attempt shows your stairs curving at the bottom, which is not what is happening in the photo. Your stairs take a flare on one side, with treads and risers going from rectangular (tread #6 from bottom, it appears) to being arc segments as you go down 5-4-3-2 to the first tread at 1. Your wall-under-stair follows that nicely-done flare. Consider modeling a sequence of landings for numbers 1 through 5, with appropriate curved shapes in 2D plan, then springing your straight run up from #5. Chief's stair tools are a little lacking when it comes to doing a stair with this geometry. Getting that railing with its curve, rollout, and bottom newel will take some work. Your skirt is going to take some work, and may need to be modeled outside Chief, then imported as a symbol. Good luck. Here are a couple pics of stairs like yours, but not as nice. Whoever did yours had a great eye.

I am going blind looking for this in the window spec dialog. Used to be able to get a cottage style look. How, in X6? Edit. Got it. Sorry.

Thanks, Glenn. Problem solved!

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.