para-CAD

Great job, Chief!

I love stairs. I built these on Thanksgiving Day. (Basement set) And the second set last Saturday. (First floor set) three more stairs and the roof to go. that last one was a CA section exported to AutoCAD. Chief isn’t production-level accurate but I can Calc everything so it’s great for the picture.

I use Cisco WebEx. It has a whiteboard feature that can be pretty useful.

Cross Platform: OBS (Free) https://obsproject.com/ Mac: ScreenFlow 9 https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm

NVMe SSDs are awesome. They read/write about 6 times faster than typical SSDs. someone pretty smart did a thread that showed the best matchup of h/w to maximize CA performance somewhere.

I used to do 2400 DPI but someone on here said NO HIGHER THAN 600 so I tried that. Even 300 works well. The largest plan I've created was around 80MB.....easy peasy.

I'm a former framer. I agree that the artsy part of a plan's font choice held minimal value to me in building the structure. I hated when the plans became a bit scuffed up and the hand written fonts were even more illegible. Now-a-days, I guess I would have a PDF of every plan on my phone or tablet as a back up so I could have a pristine reference copy. But I don't frame any more so who knows. Commercial plans (hotels/apartments) were typically arial or similar and were designed for maximum clarity. If some want/like the simulated handwritten look. Fine. Whatever. As long as the information is clear and easily understood, that should be the driving focus....make it easy to build it according to plan. 2 cents

1. ALL CAPS ALWAYS. 2. NEVER HANDWRITTEN LOOKING FONTS (MINIMIZE POTENTIAL CONFUSION ON THE JOB SITE) 3. 3/32" TALL ON LAYOUT PAGE (4.5" ON 1/4" SCALE) SOMETIMES 4 IF NEEDED. 4. SF PRO AND SIMILAR APPLE DISPLAY TYPE FONT PRINT EXTREMELY CLEAR AT SMALL SIZE. i EVEN LIKE THE OLD SIMPLEX8

Back in the late 80s in Texas, we cut 11 ¼” off of a precut stud so that a 2x12 header could fit over an opening. Not all headers were 2x12, but it standardized everything for when such load bearing support was needed. This worked well but doors and windows always seemed to not exactly match at the top and needed custom trim ripping to get right. The space over the door was always bigger than over the windows. Chief has that still today. Setting door and windows to 80” above top of subfloor places the bottom of the header at the same 80” but the location where the bottom edge of the top door trim and the bottom edge of the top window trim don’t align and always need adjustment. This only becomes an issue when making mulled doors with side windows. And it seems most designers will get it close and assume the framer will figure it all out on the job site. A good framer will get with the window and door guy and get exact size info. Then in consort with the builder, make the whole thing look like the elevation, since that’s what the customer is expecting. I appreciate that you are going the extra mile to provide this level of support on your project. I hope it all goes well.

Solver sh/be on Chief's tech support payroll.

94 5/8"? Our "8'" pre-cuts are 92 5/8" out west. I tell new framers get used to feet and inches or FIS. 7'-8 5/8" 8'-8 5/8" 9'-8 5/8" and so on.

Y'all are great! I was up late last night and boom, this morning I received light. Thanks for illuminating my path. Glenn...I followed your steps...BOOM! Success. Thanks, brother! Created a ROOF LABELS text style so as to not screw with whatever else is reading from the default style.

Being that I know how these buildings are framed, I can GUARANTEE that exact never works. Now, I always present EXACT to my client builders with a huge caveat. "THESE NUMBERS ARE THEORETICALLY EXACT. YOU WILL NEED TO ADD OVERAGES BASED ON EXPERIENCE AND PAST PERFORMANCE OF YOUR CREW." Or something like that. Adding one sheet per plane is my way of rounding up for SF amounts that have a remainder. Instead of rounding up 1 sheet over the entire roof area, I round up 1 sheet per calculated plane. Even that is low, since the horizontal rips at the top or bottom waste a few extra sheets. Typically 10 - 15% is overage on hip roofs, less for truss/gable-ish ones. And the bastard hips....they burn plywood with the dual angles. Fun. Fun. Some Memphis builders still use staggered 1x10 white pine in place of plywood. Very killer.

It it even possible to create a data table on a layout page that presents numbers or calculated results from numbers that are in the material list.....that live update as the model changes? MATERIAL LIST FUNCTIONALITY.pdf

As seen in the video question, when I select different macro options, I'm unable to customize (MAKE BIGGER) the text that is generated. I need the text larger and any color or font I'd like. Thanks for any help.

So, is it possible that I'm not importing dwgs in the most optimal way for success? Everything comes across but some things are off. - arrow heads don't match - insulation batting does not match (probably a line type mismatch between CA and Autodesk - the diagonal line (as in 1/2") disappeared. It has happened on all the times I imported my dwg wall details and once on a 5/8" sheet rock reference. video explains best

excellent question, Sweeney i have fought with that as well like many things easy to frame correctly in reality not so easy to produce virtually and that's okay unless the virtual is a sales tool

I attended a CA training seminar where the guy next to me had a MASSIVE Predator (I think it was over 17"). I had a moment of envy just at the shear size and actual desktop replacement capability. Honestly, the smart guys here have posted quite a bit of good info on CA being more processor focused. I don't remember the details but the threads are out there. Get a laptop that can drive a couple of 4K monitors. And an NVMe SSD. That's about all I can suggest from my experience.

Genuineness....Competence....On point. You have the makings of a great online training future!

Here's what they look like in reality. When houses are expensive out here, people find all kinds of ways to keeps the costs down.

So rather than act like this is the way it's supposed to be and just accept it, why doesn't chief build this level of data retrieval into their program without the need for the customer to do additional work. If some of you can figure this out...then so can CA and they should market this capability...user friendliness. Totally odd to NOT be more service oriented, in my opinion. And the macro I bought never worked so I'm a bit jaded by the whole process.

That's helpful. Seems like spreadsheet logic from the 80s though. If they could feed directly to an embedded excel table that would be best. The power of excel, updating as the model is adjusted. Thanks for that video! That guy up north (of even you) is top shelf.

I searched the reference manual and did a search on this forum with no success, so that means that someone here has cracked that nut....or maybe this could be a suggestion. I have a builder who wants the schedules in excel. I can do that, but it takes steps and is not dynamically linked. The optimal condition would be: 1. make a change in the model 2. schedule is updated in chief 3. through OLE, that data is updated in excel. Is this "do-able"? I'd like to see an option to export to excel and to Object Link Embed to excel. Even Word, PowerPoint....whichever.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..CAD detail......ha!

I turned all ALL LAYERS and I don't see a schedule anywhere...at a loss.