VHampton

Thank you Doug. Please excuse the delay in getting back. Your post was greatly appreciated. This is going to be a huge help in the future. The project which I started the thread with got the ok by the municipality, but your precision script is all the better particularly since it hones in on the exact glazing. Much appreciated! - Val

Thank you Mr. T! In terms of SH Canada's comment... It's a mystery. Below is a theory, but 100% plausible. In toggling back and forth between an "Architectural" plan w/ room labels vs. the "Structural" plan w/ no room labels ... The toggling between the layer set of "no room labels" may be causing the glitch where Living Area appears and then disappears. When Living Area goes missing... so do ALL of the room names in the layer set where they had previously existed. Living Area happens to be under the layer (of all things) "Room labels". Placing Living Area under a new dedicated layer seems to have resolved the disappearing issue.

As an observation... I may have found the glitch. Initially I thought that it was the result of bring an X-14 plan into X-15. Not so. This occurrence happens on "out of the box" brand spanking new plan files. So... if by chance you may delete "Living Area" there appears to be a direct correlation to losing not some but ALL of the room labels. Thankfully it's become easier to rectify by holding the shift key after selecting one room. Then you can click, click, click and get every room to highlight. Turn on room labels all at once with the opened dialogue box for that one room. Anyway... lesson learned is not to delete the Living Area. This has happened far more times than it should have. Ideally X-16 will have corrected this bug.

Indeed. It's quite similar. That's the (4) sided flitch plate ridge beam which carries the cupola. They furred-out the load bearing cupola walls with an interior thickness. This is probably what your engineer will do. Meaning to place the cupola over the structural ridges. Then you can frame down the shaft much lower as per your rendering (just as they did in the photo). Trusses will also eliminate the need for the steel over the bar stools. There will still be a beam, but now there's only "dummy" rafters (sloped interior ceiling framing) which will not be presenting tons of weight. (A glue-lam could probably do all of the work in carrying the sloped ceiling). Good luck with the project!

Architect w/ civil engineering background, but don't take my post as anything other than general observations. Your design is do-able in any number of ways, and ultimately the engineer will decide. For example... They could opt to use a four sided ridge at the base of the oversized cupola. This would allow the upper "cupola" walls to bear down onto the 4 rectangular interlocking ridge beams which would spread the load onto the structural hips. Very much like Michael has shown, and as others have suggested. The use of collar ties as shown in Michael's cross section would help support the ridge by means of posts. The bottom line is that there are always many ways to approach a structural solution. If truss manufacturing is local to your area, then by all means consider that as a possible cost savings method. All the best!

Flitch plates bolted inside micro-lams can address the roof. They can weld a moment connect at the ridge. They'll do the same welds at the base of the longer walls. The rafters by the Kitchen have no bearing wall. They'll need a W section to handle the gravity loads (posted on both ends). There's enough height however to get a tall beam in there. Engineer will probably size something 14 inches tall and at least 100 lbs per foot. By the way, even if the vaulted area gets collar tied (which it should) steel over the bar stools is a must have.

Basically each "step" is treated as a landing. So to get to the point... you've got (5) landings, and each one gets progressively smaller as they approach the door. This thread will help.

Auto-roof will do the basic essentials - meaning a perfect overhang and with the baseline established neatly against the outside wall. Once the eave and gable end overhangs have been calibrated, that's where your skills with manual tools can take over. Example... there are often multiple roof edge heights (and ridge elevations) in designing Shingle-style homes. By simply changing roof fascia heights (and slopes), you'll get perfect results every time. This is where the initial auto-roof build tool forces the roof "baseline" to be butt up against the outer wall frame. It's the green dashed line. Ideally that should be up against the house rather than 2 feet away. It's somewhat of an important relationship so that the rafters are being birds-mouthed over the top plate. It's a fulcrum point which keeps your cross sections clean. (All of this will become much more obvious as you learn how to master the program). Anyway, great job... and that plan sure does look nice and clean now.

A few suggestions... Turn off the base lines and changing the line style of the roof from dotted to solid. (Some roof sections have unequal overhangs. ...might need a bit more adjusting) On a side... this is a fairly straightforward design for the auto-tools. After the roof is constructed (by auto build) fine tune the center ridge which needs to have the lower pitch. This way... the eaves will be perfect. Hope this helps. ...Not intended this be a critique, but rather a pointer. Custom roofing can get off to an excellent head start after the program has set the ground work for perfectly established baselines and overhangs. After that... manual edit as necessary.

Not exactly dormer... Those are referred to as gables. Reverse gables to be specific. Meaning that they run perpendicular to the primary ridge line. Shingle style houses are known to have the roof edges begin at the first floor eaves. Here's an example. Two primary gables with a dormer in between. A dormer is smaller by nature.

Man... Never knew this until today. All the more reason to visit the forum on a regular basis!

This is quite true Michael... For what it's worth, I never export .dwg files with fills or patterns. The receiving end always wonders why the walls have hatch patterns and a fill, which is what us old timers refer to as poche. The question arose about how to place two plans side by side, and that method works. On a side... A CAD detail (made from a plan) still appears to maintain the line properties of whatever gets converted to CAD. For example, when the program does the CAD conversion, a fixture such as a toilet will appear as a block. Interestingly, that block will maintain the layer property of "Fixtures, Interior". This is actually quite helpful in that an AutoCad user can still toggle through the various drawing layers. Anyway, great observation on your part. ...Likewise, I only export one floor plan at a time. As soon as they import to the same AutoCad file, that's when the plan offsets can be done. ~ All the best!

Open the 1st floor plan and make a CAD detail of the view. (under CAD tools) Go to the 2nd floor and do the same. Copy/replicate the 2nd floor plan in the CAD detail, and move it however far you like. Example 100 feet. Copy the offset second floor plan and paste it into CAD detail of floor number 1. The two CAD plans will be side by side. In large text you can advise the recipient of the 100 foot offset. In summary, you'll be making a a single (and helpful) comprehensive CAD file for export. This is often far better rather than trying to export all floors at once which can be quite a mess for the end user.

For fun, I tried an AI rendering resource. In 20 seconds or less it spews out a life-like view. They take an uploaded photo (or sketch), and the cloud based rendering computer spews out a Frankenstein-ed version of the original design (even if it looks nicely rendered). The problem is however, is that the AI won't hold true to the original design. They added a second floor outdoor shower to the house, when it was initially shown on the grade level. But that said, the rendered result is pretty darn close. (Now if CA had the bandwidth to provide a cloud based rendering engine... that would be really great). Everyone always posts about making more realistic renderings, and this AI stuff is literally everywhere. ...anyway X-17 is probably going to have some form of AI tools. Still curious as to what new features await us in the X-16 tool box. Time will only tell.

It's coming. My guess is in a year or so. Many of the softwares are heading in this direction. On a side... No wonder NVIDIA has a 2 trillion dollar evaluation at the moment. Everyone in this industry may require a hardware upgrade just to keep up with this.

As noted... a layer may not be checked off correctly. What's going on there however is slightly unusual. For instance, it's strange how the terrain in Glass House mode isn't "glass". The solution may be as simple as recalibrating to the default setting for the various camera types under "Technique Options".

Interesting. For what it's worth, the symbol method has always been the 'go-to' in terms of multiple structures within a single plan file. I believe that it frees up the program in terms of speed as well. Auto-rebuilding of walls etc. is minimized. Anyway... glad that this thread was started. Glenn's post is quite insightful. ~ All the best!