Bill_Emery

You'll need to open the DBX of the room above the living room. Under the general tab, select the drop down menu for room type, and select "open below"

Mickey, Attached is a plan with the beveled beaded surround (jamb extension). The beveled beaded surround is done as a blind and stretches nicely with the window. It can be copied, or saved to the library. The rosettes are done as a curtain, and stretch nicely in width, but must be adjusted in the DBX if the head is raised. Beaded surround.plan

I think might work well to have a bead "door" symbol in the library. Then it would be possible to drop a bead "door" and any cabinet door into a plan. The door, and the bead "door" could be aligned, and a new combined symbol could be created (door with bead). It would then be easy to make any door beaded. I do think it would be nice to be able to specify the bead on the face frame; but for now it seems like a fairly easy work around.

Thanks, Jon, Perry, and Ken, Window attachments can be used for other purposes as well. I use "blinds" for window surrounds (jamb extensions), and radius drywall or stucco wraps. See this thread: http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?64641-How-To-Create-a-Deep-inset-Window-With-a-Stucco-Wrap&highlight=drywall+wraps Starting at about post 20.

Here I've just taken a couple of minutes to make up a molding of the bead, and the 1/8" reveal. I used the molding to create a cabinet door, and applied it as an inset door.

Here's another take on the casing. I developed a casing using molding polylines, and saved it as a symbol But instead of just placing it on the wall, and carefully adjusting it to each window; I have applied it as a window treatment, in this case, a curtain. This window can be copied and pasted, or saved to the library. The advantage of this method is that the casing places automatically, and stretches in width with the window. It will also stretch in height, or at least the top of it, but the bottom must be adjusted manually if the sill is raised or lowered. This will also work with mulled units, as long as the treatment is applied after the windows are mulled. I've attached the plan so you can check it out. casisng as treatment.plan

I've been running the Seiki 50" for almost a year now without problems. The refresh rate is not a problem for drafting or any of Chief's 3D graphics. There is no flicker; but it is possible to see mouse trails when moving the mouse quickly across the screen. I can review a Arch D (24" x 36") sheet full size. You can see the equivalent of four 25" screens running on the Seiki; while I have my menus and Boise BeamCalc running on the tiny little 30" monitor.

Lee, Set up your header defaults for your typical windows. If a window differs in header count, size, or material; it can be adjusted in the window framing DBX, and will report the change to the material list. The window defaults will also allow editing of size of the header based on span. You can customize this DBX based on your load requirements.

I think it would be a good idea to post the plan. Joe has a good strategy in working from the top down. When I have a problem similar to what you're experiencing, I will pull the ends of exterior walls back from the exterior to lose room definitions, as a way to isolate the problem.

I generally export it to Excel, and do a lot of sorting to get a coherent list. There has been a lot of discussion on this subject. Some seem to find it effective, and others find it a waste of time. Much depends on the model accuracy and taking time to set it up properly..

Often a review in Google Earth Pro will help you site the house, as it will allow you to look at the big picture; not just your property. Using Chief I often trace over the contour lines to get my elevation lines, but in this case I might just convert the existing contours; just because there is so much of it. The caution is that there may be lines that are missed, or have spurious data. You can group select and convert to elevation lines; but you must then assign elevation to each line. You must have a terrain perimeter, and you must tell Chief to build the terrain. I will generally assign my zero elevation to where I think the house is going to be located; and then go plus or minus from there.

Display of"No material" or transparent materials in vector view have always been an issue. I don't think that has changed, but ALDO makes it easier to get it toggled on or off.

Thanks Larry, I've been following your thread on the structure tab of the room DBX. It's frustrating to run into the limitations of what Chief is able to do without some kind of work around. This is a similar situation where I just want to generate a railing over a roof, and there is just no easy way. It reminds me of the Joke: How do you get an elephant out of a Safeway shopping cart? The answer is you take the S out of Safe, and the F out of Way. But after you think about it you come to the conclusion that, "There is no "F" in Way". I think using Chief is sometimes like trying to get that elephant out of the cart.

In the attached plan I've used a roof plane drawn at the basement level to represent the concrete deck to allow the framing and the concrete to slope and 1/4" to the foot. The deck room has no floor, so that floor framing will not generate and the rafters can take the place of level floor joists. The framing isn't perfect, but I've left it just the way Chief generates it; this could easily be corrected. It takes a bit of effort to get the railings to generate above the roof plane. roof deck.plan

Attached is a detail of a concrete deck with sheet metal planking. this is generally how it's done in my region.

It probably should work out something like this. I've extended the radial lines to get a center point, and shown the 45' radius. This is just a guess on my part.

The survey data is wrong. It appears as if the 137.75' and 109.19' shoud be 10' longer to account for the 10' of utility easements. But even if I account for this, the arc won't connect.

I just took some time to try Joey's suggested method for isolating remodel material from existing material in post 21 above, and Joe's elaboration of the method in post 46. It works to a degree. I'm able to isolate many things including walls, windows, doors, cabinets, etc; but the area that this system falls apart is with floors and ceilings as they are part of the room definition . I can't isolate the new from the existing; there is no way to put new and existing rooms on a separate layers. In other words, anything that is associated with the room DBX including molding cannot be isolated. This forces me to revert to either deleting everything not in the scope of the remodel, or using a marquee select for the material list of the remodel area. Both of these methods are not very precise, and it still leaves me with the problem of defining new and existing floor and ceiling in the area of the model that must remain. I've also experimented with using walls with no room definition to eliminate the floor and ceiling which eliminates the unwanted elements; but then the model is no longer correct. There is some benefit to following Joey and Joe's method, but it's a lot of trouble for very little gain.

If I'm just working on the uppers, I will lock the base cabinet layer so they can't be selected, otherwise the base cabinet usually gets selected by default. If I'm just doing one or two uppers, I will hit the tab key to shift the selection from the base to the upper.

Here's a simple case where the material list is technically correct, but not usable for estimating or purchasing. build a house that is 8'-10" square. Generate a material list. 8 sheets 4' x 8' of drywall are required. This is correct Take the same house and add a few doors and windows. Now six sheets are required. This is not correct. In the world of drywall it still takes 8 sheets. I can compensate by doing a "save as"of the house and then delete all the doors and windows, and get 8 sheets, but I shouldn't have to do this. I should have the option to calculate this material in a way that makes sense to me, and to my drywall subcontractor. There is a very similar issue with OSB sheathing.

Mthd97, Wendy posted a few months ago in the chat room regarding 4K monitors (you can do a search). I responded to her post, but did not hear back. I'm with you in that in working full time, I follow the forum as best I can, but rarely post, as my work keeps me way too busy. I do think that the forum is not representative of the average user in that the posts are dominated by a few who seem to have a lot of leisure time. I do believe the forum represented a broader spectrum of users in the past. The market has a way of sorting out what software will flourish, and which will founder; in the mean time I'm voting with my dollars on Chief. When I purchased in 2006, I could not find a better software to fill my needs, and the same is true today. Chief is quirky, and imperfect, but it works for me.

I would use a landscape layout sheet. The plan view in layout can be rotated to get the orientation you want; The elevation can not be rotated if you want to keep it live.

Prior to X6 we had better control of door numbers, but creating a custom schedule was a lot of work. I miss the control, but schedules are easier now, as long as we can live within the limited parameters.

Johnny, From Earth Pro I do a screen capture from the overhead view, saving it as a JPG to a convenient location. I then import it into a plan as an image and scale it to fit using a known distance. Google Earth Pro (now free!) gives you the tools you need to establish a known distance. Nothing very difficult about it. You can put the image on it's own layer so you can turn it on or off as needed. You can align the image with your terrain perimeter.

The roof planes are not properly joined. Select one of the offending roof planes and hit the join roof plane tool (the default keyboard shortcut is 2), and select the ridge of the adjacent roof plane. Thanks for posting the plan; it makes it easy to find the soluntion