VHampton

On 3/14/2024 at 5:59 PM, Doug_N said:

I have been working on this for a while and with a but of progress have come up with this.

 

 

 

Window_Glass_Area.json 416 B · 27 downloads

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. 

1 hour ago, winterdd said:

What a perfect example of a pic.

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!

20 hours ago, winterdd said:

That's some good info right there. Something tells me you are an engineer.

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. 

2 hours ago, leyi123 said:

And a side note, when I tried to do auto roof, it doesn't recognize the part that there is only one floor and created one big roof to cover both floors. see this pic.

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. 

1 hour ago, DBCooper said:

While in a camera view, find the door style you want in the library browser, and then in the edit toolbar click on the "plan mode" button and then just click on the cabinet door you want to change.  Bam, all the cabinet doors in the plan will change to the new style.

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. 

3 hours ago, SHCanada2 said:

What they should do is just batch 10 different options, so he can go have lunch and then come back and see ten different results

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!  

Thanks Glenn. Very interesting. 

Residential work doesn't always require this intricacy.

Meaning that that the average user most likely draws one plan only.  One and done so to speak.

The benefits of this however are quite interesting, particularly when dealing with possible multiple iterations (options) to show the client. 

...it's always great to keep learning. Thank you! 

5 hours ago, Charles said:

I want to design a typical unit plan in one file and in another floor plan be able to clone the unit plan over and over again using a reference.

This is so if there are changes by the client it can be done once on the typical and automatically show up on the entire floor plan

This is tricky.

If every apartment were fit neatly together on a layout sheet to create the sum total, that could work. 

So lets say there were apartments A,B,C,D, E etc...

Each .plan file has a viewport which is cropped tight to the outside walls and then joined together on the layout sheet. 

The groupings of the individual plan files on one sheet will essentially show the sum total floor plan of the entire complex. 

Each apartment can be stored in the layout file as an individual plan file on some other page. 

(The plans for each unit can then be modified independently).

When going back to the primary layout page, the "overall" apartment plan would illustrate the modifications. 

Not sure if that helps, but it's a unique way of being able to alter each unit. 

I could be wrong, but you could draw just one "apartment" plan.

Walls, windows, doors etc.

Convert the sum total into a symbol.  

Import the new symbol back to the primary plan.

Then it would be possible to duplicate that one apartment many times over, but as a symbol only. 

It could be placed side by side with other "clones", in addition to being stacked on top of another module. 

Not sure if that answers, but it's a plausible option rather than having to draw the same apartment umpteen times. 

What's great about Chief however is that the build floor tool can repeat the floor below as each new level is created. 

Alternatively, the initial house design can be made into a symbol.

Import the "symbol" house back into the primary plan, but for use in demonstrating texture and color changes only. 

So in sum... it's conceivable to create a streetscape with 3 or 4 or 5 identical house in a row.

Then switch them up as necessary.   

Example...

Model 1: Siding Type A w/ Trim Type A 

Model 2:  Siding Type B w/ Trim Type B

Model 3:  Siding Type C w/ Trim Type C

etc. etc... 

The important thing would be to create a new name for the siding and trim on each house "symbol". This way, a material change for siding won't result in a universal change across the board with each model.  Most importantly, the original structure wont be changed. 

10 hours ago, SHCanada2 said:

one thing to be careful of, the wall thermal_envelope_area does not work for walls which are partially below grade (i.e. basements). It is easier to draw a polyline on the elevation, and use its area.

Thanks Jason. This observation is spot on.  The wall surface label isn't anywhere near the actual square footage of the wall. 

I probably have the wrong macro, but that said, thank you.

And thanks again Mark.  I was monkey typing with the label designations.

The glazing input was something which I was trying to show elevation view.

It does however appear in the schedule, where the surface area can be done with a high degree of accuracy. 

Really appreciate the tips.  

Thank you Mark.

I've tried adding "glazing" a variety of different ways within the macro, and glass area doesn't appear.  

Having said that, I realize that the sashes are resulting in a larger surface total.

In any event, this macro provides a rather helpful approximation. Again, this is new to me, even with the many years of Chief experience. 

%thermal_envelope_area%

Thank you as well Mark.  

For years I've been ignoring the value of "rubies" and macros.

Somehow I wound up going down the rabbit trails of our old forum and there were some posts circa 2010. 

Thank you both once again. This is a great help. 

Excellent. This is exactly what I was looking for Rene. 

Thank you so much!!