johnny

I typically get my topos from Google Earth when I dont have a full survey - but I am curious what you are referring to. Was it something to do with the USGS?

There is a user here named "Scott" who will often do a video and answer this question like this.....hopefully he sees this and makes a vid.

This was a very good idea by Chief, but I think they should go further. For my Vectorworks purhase I use their $50 per month program that gets me the app and full support features - even though I owed full copies I could have upgraded, the $50 a month represents a better overall deal if I planned to upgrade each year (as I did). I also do that with my Adobe and MS software and so far I like it much better.

To me Chief had a huge learning curve due to all the neunaces - trust me, i've been frustrated many times. However, this community is about as good a place to get help than anything i've ever seen. Heck, Scott produces videos of how to do certain things using my project files - its been heaven sent. I bet SoftPlan is the same type of app Chief is. You won't hear an argument from me Chief doesn't need more CAD/Model tools - but Chief is still the best thing i've found for residential 3D design.

.....ah, i feel dumb. Thx Curious though what you dont like about the tool.....? Worked great for what I was wanting to do.

thanks glenn...i will do a search and see if I can find it.

Just a note, my experiance with SU is that unlike CA, if you dont set it up properly, it simply won't work. Meaning if you use "follow-path" or push/pull and you run into a situation like this, it will simply stop you dead in your tracks. I suppose at least CA shows "best it can" as Bill said. BTW, he is right about this miter and the cuts. One of the strongest apps I know for this type of detailed work is Vectorworks, but going back-and-forth between apps has proven to be no time-saver IMO.

To create a window box currently, I simply draw the exterior walls in the shape i want, and then set the floor elevation of the window/seat/box at a different level - by distiguishing the area via room divider. It works fine, but the issue I have is under the window seat an auto-generated wall is created without definable properties (appart from interior sheetrock) - as far as I can tell. I've been getting around this by drawing a poly solid and applying siding texture - placing it manually over the area I need to hide the sheetrock. I assume I have to be doing this wrong, so I thought I would draw a diagram to show the area I am having an issue with. Thanks!

Thank you - you second suggestion about getting to the main layer only revealed that the wall's main layer had been flipped somehow, and so the exterior dimension was actually where it was supposed to be, but the wall's main layer wasn't in the right direction. I didn't notice this due to the large door/window taking up nearly the entire area (but now I am curious how my elevations seemed to work. Oh, well ....fixed - thank you again.

I've been struggling with something I am sure there is some quick and easy answer (i hope) to. I've used the auto-exterior dimensions on this plan, but then I went back and modified the dimensions how I wanted. I have a situation in 1 corner where the dimension end simply won't allow itself to be relocated. Right now its going to the inside of an exterior wall (the only one in the plan), and I want to simply move the point to the exterior of that wall. I click the endpoint, drag to the corner I want it to be on (like any other dimension) and it remains locked in its originial config. Thanks for any help.

I do have to say, it seems like roof returns and eaves have had glitches now for many releases. Curious why these aren't being fixed.

This was a very helpful thread too. I did learn a lot watching Scotts videos - as I think it helps to see visual reactions to someone working thru the process.

Yeah, but why can't it divide spaces outside a building into a room?...I don't see a name conflict if it did - and that is how we were to create rooms/decks/spaces outside from the tool it replaced.

Never mind, I just made a typical wall and made them invisible. I will leave this up in case someone else has this issue, but why doesn't room divider work outside the exterior walls - the same way invisible walls worked before?? After all, there isn't really an invisible wall, so the room divider was a better tool - again, just not intuitive.

So in previous release to create an outdoor room or rather a space where the roof would cover automatically, you'd simply make invisible walls around the space. Now, we have room divider, and CA doesn't seem to act intuitively (the way you'd expect) in creating that same space via the room divider. How are we now supposed to create outdoor spaces covered by roof without manually drawing that roof? Per the pic I placed a room divider line to each side of where before I had invisible walls.

That is a good approach for truss based over-framing, but I believe the OP is trying to show a hand-framed condition.