Bill_Emery

Hi Joe, To paraphrase the Rolling Stones; It's not exactly what I want, but it's very close to what I need. Yes, it could be better but the Bottom line is that it conveys the information , and works for me the way it is.

A skillion (shed) is the simplest form of roof. It might be good to post a plan that shows what you want to do. It's best (but not necessary) to keep the baseline at the outside edge of a bearing wall, as it makes it easier to reference the height of the roof plane relative to the rest of the building. I'm guessing that you may want to rotate the baseline to have the roof pitch diagonal, or skewed with respect to the walls It is also possible to change the angle of the baseline with respect to the horizon, but this can become confusing, and is generally not necessary.

Perhaps others know this; but it's new to me. I just noticed that it is possible to show roof pitch in section, and elevation as I was detailing my cross sections. In elevation or section use the "all off" set with roofs and roof labels turned on. Shift select the roof planes, and open the DBX. under the camera view display, check "show in this view", and then adjust the Y value so it sits above the roof.

I do remember that plan; it ate up almost all my RAM even when displaying correctly. And it was just four small walls and a few roof planes.

I think you may be haunted by tone ghosts of Chiefsmas past. This was a common problem in versions 9 and 10.

Others may differ; but I would put the house and the garage on floor 1, and simply adjust the garage floor to -54" (or whatever the elevation difference is). Adjust the garage room height relative to the floor; and you should be good to go.

Andy, Just wondering how your doing with export to ACad. Chief exports well if you set it up correctly. Perhaps the biggest weakness is with hatching, which must be re done in ACad. Most users don't realize that we can export a fully functional 3D model to ACad, that can be viewed and edited. This is really significant, but is often overlooked, as we have few knowlegeable cross platform users.

I think that others have focused on the roof, but the parapet wall can be done in at least five or six different ways, depending on what the cross section should look like. This is a place where Chief offers a lot of options; none of which are work arounds.

Open your layers dialog in ACad, and you'll see that you have line weights, 0.09mm is shown. You may want to increase your line weight, as the 0.09 is quite thin You can change a setting in the lineweight settings dialog box to be able to see lineweights in your drawing before you preview a plot, but they aren't very accurate unless you're using layouts. When you print from model space, you have to preview the drawing from the plot dialog box to see how the lineweights will look

I like Allen's idea. That's a lot easier than making door symbol that would be, and a lot less limiting.

I'm going from distant memory, but I think you can get much of what you want with a custom door symbol. likely it will look good in 3D, elevation, and section; but may not be right in plan. I've gotten away from using custom window and door symbols as they are essentially broken in recent versions. I may give it a try in the morning if things don't get too busy.

You may not get everything that you want; but have you tried "show newels and balusters"?

Set a hot key for bumping and pushing, and you'll free the object to move, but retain the X,Y tracking.

For elevation callouts I simply establish ground floor at zero; and then use the transform/replicate tool to copy them to the proper elevation. I use the information in the DBX for plate height, floor height, ridge height, etc. for the Z value. It's hard to make a mistake this way, and it's easy. If you use these in your template plan with saved elevations, it's easy to adjust them to the reality of a new plan. I do think this is a bit of unfinished business on Chief's part, as one would expect the number in the DBX to place the marker at the correct elevation. Looking back, I think this is what Graeme said above.

I think this is what the original poster is looking for. This was done with a ceiling plane, and two stacked roof planes. It is possible to show the strapping in section, and also to show the purlins for the roof insulation in section; but I have not done that here as it would take a little more time. The plan is attached. Double roof.plan

Save the baluster to the user library. Open the symbol and rotate it 90 degrees. Then open the stairs and change to the new baluster.

Use a roof plane as the wall cap, And the wall will be restricted by the curve of the roof plane.

I usually make several breaks in the roof planes to be joined, and adjust them so they are fairly close before attempting to join the planes. As a side note,these curved intersections can eat up a lot of memory.

Yes, just adjust the angle or the baseline in the roof DBX.

Hi Richard, If you're referring to the cross section that I posted; I simply showed where Chief shows a roof beam by default. I would have to raise it to create the birdsmouth; but I just posted it as a quick comparison of vertical, compared to perpendicular. That seemed to be the essence of the discussion between Perry and I.

Mick, You can automate the process. Just stretch one lookout, then use the multiple copy tool. They will follow the roof plane. Then group select, and raise them as necessary. You'll have to raise the roof plane an equal amount. The only downside is you'll have to turn off auto roof framing.

I guess it figures that they would put the purlin on the wrong side of the rafter downunder

Hi Mick, We also call the horizontal members on top of the rafters, purlins in my region as well. These are used mostly in agricultural pole buildings. I use modified lookouts for these as well.

Hi Perry, Although this is still in the code book, we rarely see them in new construction here. We also see them in agricultural pole buildings. I looked up the definition, and it can be any horizontal member that breaks the rafter span.

Hi Perry, This is a purlin shown in the Oregon Residential Specialty code. They can be vertical as well; but then I would likely call it a roof beam.