capitaldesigns

I getting ready to start on a room addition project where the existing house is on a slope. From the front to back of the house there is a 48" drop in grade. Both the front and rear yards are fairly flat. The house has a raised foundation. When I built the foundation I set the footing depth at 24" deep. The lower level shows the correct footing depth. The upper footing shows the footing at around 6' deep. I want the footings at the top and bottom of the slope to be 24" deep. How do I do that in Chief ? Thank You, Mike House on Grade.plan

Thanks guys. I could not find the command to move the CAD mask forward or to the back. I just found it. Didn't it use to be in the DBX when you double clicked on the CAD mask ? Also did not know you could change the default settings for only a couple of dimensions in a dimension string. I thought buy changing the dimension default you would also changes all of the existing dimensions in the drawing as well.

I am trying to place a CAD mask over one dimension on the foundation line so I can type over it. The CAD mask does not cover up anything in the dimensions. Also the CAD mask is not covering regular text or arrows. It does cover up walls and footings. I have used these in the past to mask a dimension that was to long to fit. For example. a series of dimension such as 1'-2", 1'-8", 1'-10". They will be written over each other. Since CA will not allow me the change it to 14", 20", 22" I have put a mask over them and type over it with the dimension callouts I wanted. Does anyone know why the CAD mask is not covering up dimensions, text and arrows ? Thanks, Mike

I will try that. I come from an AutoCAD background. In AutoCAD you can change the spacing of these line by command called line type scaling. I did not know if CA had such a command. I see you upgraded to X11. How do you like it ? In your opinion is worth upgrading from X10 to X11 ? Thanks, Mike

Is there a way to change the line scaling ? I drawing a property line using the line with long line followed by 2 dashes followed by another long line. Looking at this line in the plan the lone line is very short and the dashes look like little dots. On one of the property lines that is 250' long there are over 100 of these line, 2 dashes, line combinations. So many that when printed you can not see any of the lashes. Is there away to spread these dashes out so there not so close together ? I tried using the line with the P/L imbedded in the line. Again there a hundreds of the P/L going around the property lines. I usually would only have one or two along each property line. Thanks, Mike

Slab foundation.

I am working on a project where we have a 36" high brick veneer on the exterior walls. I want the brick veneer to go down to grade. CA shows the brick stopping 5" above grade. Is there a way to lower the bottom of the brick veneer ? Thnanks

I'm working on a project where I am using a pony wall for the exterior walls. The bottom 3' will be a brick veneer with the top being siding. I want to add a brick cap on top of the brick veneer that will be perpendicular to the brick veneer. I'm sure CA has a video on this but I can not find it. How do I do this and how do I have the brick cap break at the doors ? Thanks, Mike

Thanks Mick for the advise. I will make those changes. Mike

Thank you Eric. That is exactly what I need. As I said in my post I spoke to tech. support this morning. His suggestion for this opening was to use the doorway tool to place the opening then create a custom layer for that opening and change the line color to white so it would not display. Mike

I found out what the issue is with Chief working very slowly. The new x10 has a problem with large rooms with a lot of walls. In my plan there is an existing 32" wide opening between the kitchen and dining room that the client wants to make 5' wide. Originally I used a doorway to do this. Doing this separated the kitchen from the dining room, living room and entry. I later decided to not use the doorway method since it shows a dashed line over the opening. I decided to use the break wall command and pull back one of the wall to create the 5' opening. As soon as I did this Chief got very slow. I spoke to tech. support and they told me that Chief has an issue with large rooms with a lot of walls jogging in and out. Large rectangular rooms do not have this issue. Hopefully they can fix this problem soon. Thanks for your help. Mike

Thanks for your help. Regarding the invisible walls. I do not recall drawing those. My wife's birthday today, we took a drive down towards San Diego today, I will be back tomorrow and take a look at the walls and curved stairs. Thanks, Mike

I just inputted cabinets on the second floor I everything works fine, no delays. The delays are only happening on the first floor plan.

The other plans I am working on work fine, no delays. This one I scanned a floor plan the client had and imported into the plan and used as a background to traced over. I deleted it from the plan to see if that would speed up things. It didn't. I even renamed the scanned image incase Chief as somehow still using it in my plan. That still did not help. Mike

I have input the floor plans from a job I just measure and Chief is acting very slow. It take Chief around 20 seconds to place one cabinet. I also have the same problem when I edit walls. Chief displays a rotating blue circle which last a bout 20 seconds before completing the edit command. I opened other job files I am working on and do experience any delays. I have tried closing down Chief and re-starting it a couple of time to see if that might help and still experience the same delays. I have attached the plan with the hope that some one might know why this is happening and how I can fix it. Thanks, Mike Levine.plan

I just started on a project where I will be tracing over an existing floor plan. The house has several areas where the walls have stepped thicknesses. I am not sure how to do this in Chief. I am also having trouble where 2 wall come together at a 45 degree angle. The corner of these walls come together with a 4" flat end. Chief wants to make this a sharp corner. How do I get a flat end of these 2 walls. I have included a snap shot of the floor plan and have circled the areas I am talking about. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike

Thanks Eric. I see that there are 2 moldings. I deleted the molding at the floor. I still get the outline of the ceiling molding on the floor. I double check to see if the floor molding was really deleted. It was. The only way I could get the floor molding to not show up was to increase the thickness of the floor finish by 1/2".

Thank You Eric, that worked. I just watched Michael David's video again and followed step by step what he did. He used a 3d molding polyline and did not get the molding showing up on the floor like I do. I tried your suggestion and used a molding polyline and everything worked out. No molding on the floor. Questions, why is it that using a 3d molding polyline is putting molding on the ceiling and the floor at the same time ? What is the deference between a molding polyline and a 3d polyline ? Both show the molding in 3d. When would you use a 3d molding polyline v. a molding polyline ? Thanks Again, Mike

I was following along with Michael David's custom ceiling tutorial. I added soffits around the room with molding. When I did the plan I get an outline of the ceiling soffits on the floor as well. I tried it again by following along with his video and got the same results. I did a third floor plan but followed along with Chief's tutorial on using the soffit tool. This time I did not get an outline of the soffits on the floor. Can anyone let me know why I am getting an outline of the ceiling soffits on the floor ? I have attached the plan and a 3D view. Thanks, Mike Untitled_10.plan

Thanks you Chopsaw and Joe. That will work. Mike

I drew a simple flat roof patio that I wanted to save to my user library. When I draw a marquee around the patio I do not get the make block command button. In the past I've made decorative posts on a base and been able to make it into a block and save to the library. On this project l used the roof planes to create the roof, the slab tool to draw the patio slab, the post and footing and beam under the framing menu for the framing. Does anyone know how I can make a block out of this patio and save it to my library ? Thanks, Mike

I just had a problem with a surveyor on a residential addition project. The lot was sloped in several directions. We ordered a topo and boundary survey. We were taking down a large carport on the side of the house and building a two story addition in its place. When I got the survey they showed that at two of the posts holding up the carport were each in there own 6' deep holes. This was not correct. The posts were at grade, not in a 6' deep hole. The surveyor also showed contour line under the existing house, again showing that there was an 8' deep hole under the house. I asked the surveyor how he was able to survey under the house. He had no answer. He had to redo the survey.

It was suggested that I create a warehouse plan for my typical details and notes. I recently created a couple of warehouse plans. One with residential notes and one with foundation details. The question I have is how do I send just one detail to the layout page without sending the entire warehouse plan that holds over 20 details ? When I used the Send to Layout tool and selected the Current Screen under the Send Options the entire warehouse plan is sent to the layout page. I zoomed into the detail I wanted to send where no other details were visible on the screen before sending it to the layout page. It does show up on the layout page as the zoomed into detail I send. When I click on the detail and drag of the edit handles the rest of the details from the warehouse plan become visible. Is there a way to send only one details from a warehouse plan without sending the entire plan ? Thanks, Mike

Thank You

How do I import annotation and layer sets from one plan into another plan ? About a year ago I was working on a project that was put on hold. The client wants me to continue with the project. Since then I have modified my annotation and layer sets. I want to use the new annotation and layer sets with this project. I see that there is and import layer set and annotation set under the file menu. Where are the layer and annotation sets files saved and how do I import them into the current drawing ? Thanks, Mike