tommy1

I'm sorry to hear that this hasn't been resolved yet. I know very little about her situation but from an image I saw of one of these projects, it looked very good to me. I have known Annette for many years and we get together often via Skype, email, phone and our user meeting. I can assure anyone that Annette is very honest, patient, and does good work and has a great personality. I will always back her up because I know the kind of person she is. Thank you for the heads up Annette.

That looks like a garage. If there are no interior walls, then try placing floating dormers. If it won't let you do it, then it's probably because the dormer is too big. It looks like you have a fairly shallow pitched roof for a dormer. Try making the dormer smaller before placing it.

Scott, Things have changed dramatically over the years especially in the last 3 years. Yes you have to attach an original legal survey (stamped), but you also for a remodel have to include a site plan based off the survey clearly showing the new work and impervious ground coverage. The legal survey attached must reflect the existing correctly. In other words, we often get surveys that are old and if it doesn't match the current house due to a previous remodel, then we need to the homeowner to get a current survey. The City Of Houston will require this. The only time you don't need a site plan is if you're working from with-in the existing perimeter walls with no new living space or garage. Any time you use and engineered beam or lumber, an opening larger than 10' wide, or all any concrete (foundation or flatwork), then you have to have it stamped by an Engineer to obtain a permit. The city codes have changed a lot and now you have to have the IRC code (with code number) noted in the plan for a lot of things. The plan checkers now are young and are total a** holes. It's getting ridiculous around here. New construction or involved remodels takes about 1 month to hear back from the permit office. It's now almost impossible to get new construction permits through the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. time. This includes adding new garage apartments. Most of our remodels, we can get through the permit office the 1st. or 2nd. time. Everything got a lot stricter after Hurricane Ike. New construction is a major pain now.

Scott, the only time I ever do this is possibly for surveys. I do it just to fine tune it if I'm tracing it for driveways, sidewalks etc.. Most survey's we get are screwed up anyway. I get scanned surveys and often they are skewed which is a pain. Like I said , I do it just to fine tune. it's not for anything critical.

Open the arrow dbx.. change the color of the line style. I do this all the time. As you know, you change the color of the arrow too.

We have a free online meeting Monday, Oct. 6, 2014 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (Central Time). If you would like to attend, then please send me an email using my email address shown in my signature. Feel free to call me if you need more information. Sincerely,

Another work around you could experiment with is to do a "view to cad" of the plan view. Now draw a marquee around the interior walls and doors and delete them. When done, depending on how you're doing the site plan, send that view back to a site plan layer set/ annotation set. Not sure if you know where I'm going with this. You could also do your site plan in that cad detail. Just food for thought. Then send that view to a layout to whatever scale you want.

We only use call outs for the new windows and doors and are in the schedule. Existing windows and doors show nothing and are not in a schedule. We do note in the elevations what's new and existing.

Lew, the corner handles do move it concentrically except when you do a right click. In previous versions, the side handles would shrink the image (not concentrically). In X6, when you drag the side handles, it crops it (which I like and it didn't do that before). I like this much better.

Read it closer Lew, you need to right click. Then it works.

Thanks Glenn. That's the trick!

It used to be that if you imported a jpeg of lets say a survey into the plan view, you could drag the sides (not the corners) and reshape the image. In X6, it only crops it. Is there any way to make it work like it used to by dragging the sides? TIA,

Jim, I don't think you can change the embedded (not sure if embedded is the right word) ceiling heights of the 2nd. floor on up unless you build blank floors as mentioned. I don't know why Chief changed their default 1st. floor to a 9' ceiling? It didn't used to be that way in earlier versions (like X2 and earlier). I have already changed it to an 8' 1st. floor ceiling in my profile plan.

Concentric jump is the way to go.

Jim, I just placed 4 brick walls, added a window, made the exterior casing 2" and recessed it. Everything looks okay like it should (it didn't before). I didn't try other different scenarios.

I agree. I also generally dimension the exterior too manually. I can save a lot of un-necessary dimension strings and arrange them like I want. Editing auto dims can take a lot of time depending on the plan.

Please read Joe's last post again. If you still don't follow, then give me a call or email me and I'll do a quick online meeting and demonstrate it for you. I'm walking the dog right now for a few minutes so if you call and I don't answer, call me cell- 832-754-6160.

This is exactly right if you're wanting to change the "cad block" which is probably what you want instead of the label. I have seen many people show the electrical labels in plan view too which I don't show. BTW, if you want to know some other tips about the electrical cad blocks you see in plan view, then give me a call or email with a number to call you with. I did respond a while back from an email you send back when you posted help on Linked-in. Might also consider taking advantage of our user group (Houston User Group). We're there to help and try to answer any question you might have. We have people from several states joining in. It's free.

Go to the cad block management to find the cad block. This wasn't mentioned.

I usually use solids. Yes it takes longer but to me it looks more realistic....especially when the tile is done with lathe and screen for existing older showers. I also have a bullnose trim I use for the edges.

Be sure you have the carport in a blank plan by itself first.

Geez, this can be done in 5 minutes.

I personally would use slabs in plan view (change material) and adjust the heights in an elevation. Just another way to do it. Either way is very fast.

Scott is correct. Vector view doesn't look right in the corner but you can do a view to cad and fix it.

Perry, this is how it frames doing it the way I do it. No wall framing editing prior or after. I'm sure other people do it differently but this method is easy for me working with just the window only. It seems to frame okay.