robdyck

I don't mean this to be offensive but it seems odd that you'd consult with an Energy Advisor regarding the area of glazed openings relative to the effective wall area. If you post the plan, or a screenshot of the wall in question, I could help you out.

If you're going to use the wall area the way Chief will calculate it then you will be providing incorrect information that would not comply with the Alberta Building Code. The information you're talking about needs to be calculated manually and is measured from the grade level at each affected wall. Or, you'd need much more in depth knowledge of the program to develop your own auto calculating methods and macros, which, if you need to ask about, then you don't have it. Life - safety issues like fire protection need to be taken seriously.

1) to get the seams correct, you'll need to do virtually what the siding installer would do...cut and install individual pieces! Material regions or p-solids. Not what you wanted to hear but I've been there. 3) window reflections are the source of my premature grey hair! Trial and error...

I solved this issue for myself many years ago. In my opinion, the answer to this is a bi-directional layout title block. It may stretch your grpahic design skills but this will save you from ever needing to think about it again. Keep in mind that there's not a lot weirder than a plan drawn sideways or backwards or upside down. The "front" of the building should ALWAYS be at the bottom of your screen, and subsequently, your paper. When you have a structure that needs it's layout box rotated, no big deal because your layout template has 2 bottoms, the actual bottom, and the right hand side of the sheet. On site, even a cribber can figure out how to turn a sheet of paper (only one though)!

Actually quite simple. Build the ramp and sidewalk portions using roof planes in a separate new file. Make all your adjustments, then convert to symbol and place in your plan. Use a terrain hole to cut the surrounding roads / sidewalks.

The fastest way is to build it yourself. If you know exactly how all the framing and finishing will work together, then it's fairly quick to build it manually using p-solids and moldings, and then your plan views will match your section views, and renderings and details etc. You'll only have to do it once (unless the client request changes). I usually leave this step until I'm sure the decisions are close to finalized.

I'm not sure it would be that simple for the software to do it Greg. My guess is that it would be complex dbx's that wouldn't save time over doing it manually. I have my own 3d models of anchor bolts of various sizes with nuts and washers and it takes me about 1 minute to place them around a foundation. I think one of the issues would be the different types of sills used in various regions as well as various foundation types and concrete thicknesses. Sometimes sills are cast in 2x4's to the inside, sometimes to the outside, sometimes anchor bolts are left in the center for a 2x8 sill plate, not to mention larger homes with 10' high basements and high back fill may require 10" wall thicknesses. Not to mention the many different ypes of ICF walls and core widths... Alaskan Son nailed it.

One simple way would be to build the foundation as a blank floor plan, then copy and paste everything from floor 1 to floor 0. Then delete everything on floor 1 and rebuild, or select all the walls and change the wall type to your chosen framed wall.

The comparable software is Hot2000 available for free from NRCAN. It won't do what your looking for though. It's for energy modelling of a home. I also use Excel to do what you're doing. I have over a hundred different opaque assemblies listed in a spreadsheet, and the list keeps growing! I can't find any truly automatic way to incorporate this info without bogging down Chief. I have various templates for assemblies and update the text boxes manually for each plan. You can copy and paste from Excel into a Text box, but not into Rich Text. I feel your pain.

Has anyone else experienced a frozen screen when closing an elevation view? Also, some options in various dialog boxes will not open; mainly labels. I've tried the obvious, closing, restarting etc. Everyhting is up-to-date, and I've made no changes to my system. This problem shows up on every file, not just a single plan. I've got an open ticket with support, but deadlines are looming....

Hey Chris, I do this all the time and would recommend a section view that is back clipped, and clipped to the sides so that the display goes just slightly beyond the wall you want to detail. Add a breakline to each side of the view and/or the top and bottom as needed. You can't clip the height of the camera ( that I know of ), however a white CAD box covering the floor below works well. Or the view can be cropped in layout.

Very impressive!! I understand exactly how difficult a project like that is. I've built homes using ICF for over 20 years, and have built 3 for myself. It's fantastic to see others who have figured out the fine art of placing dozens of cubic meters of concrete in a styrofoam cup and keeping it exactly where you want it. You can be proud of a project like that!

The cleaned up result is posted. Of course, now the stairs from the house to garage need its height set manually. That's not a bad compromise.

Here's a quick and simple fix to this situation for correct modeling in 3D and 2D: Think of the 4" concrete slab as a 'floor finish' and think of the substrate (a 6" gravel fill in this case) as the floor height. In the room dbx set the floor height 4" lower than the desired top of slab elevation. Keep the stem wall top at the correct elevation (floor to stem wall top will increase by 4"). This will allow materials to be set with custom CAD fill patterns for each layer. Final step is to set the bottom of the overhead door 4" above the 'floor' (gravel layer) and set the overhead doors framing to have a rough opening of 4" on the bottom. The slab will now display through to the outside of the main layer and the CAD fills will be what you want, and not the odd sized default fill. Now if the fill could just be set for footings, wall layers in elevation view, line weights matching the item that they were produced from...and so on.

I tried a couple of other things that may help if you want to stick to what you're currently doing. One thing to keep in mind, never zoom in in the camera view unless you're going to export a picture. Send to layout, and then expand the view there and it should display correctly. I'm not sure how you quickly changes pattern lines to grey in layout. I've never tried that before. I changed my stone to have a pink pattern just to highlight what I'm talking about. My girls like it! These are both vector views showing plot lines (not live), one with color fill, the other without.

What's happening is as though Chief is building 2 overlaid views: One is the plot lines, which match what you see on screen, the other is a render that is based on the camera's actual location. I have a couple of suggestions that may help: -I also use gray pattern lines. I edit the material to adjust it's pattern line color and line weight. -To get a very similar view to what you posted, try, the technical illustration with both warm and cool colors set to (only 2) different shades of grey. You can play around with the colors until your happy with the appearance. I'd leave the shadows 'as is' as sharp shadows (legacy) take longer to draw, and in some instances aren't really that realistic. Some color will bleed through those grays, and that can be removed by just turning off the color. These cameras can be saved, sent to layout, and the views can be kept live which is handy throughout back-and-forth with the client.

Glad to help. This situation comes up regularly, due to the complexity of wall connectivity at different wall junctions. Some walls don't snap together the way we'd like. The only way around this, that I can see, would be if Chief allowed absolute poly-line control of wall shapes.

Complex handrails can me modeled using 3d moldings. It's a bit tricky but it can be done quickly with a bit of an adjustment to the mindset. In Chief we're used to dragging and moving things. A 3d handrail that makes turn and has offsets requires a bit more planning, and constant awareness of x,y,z of each line and segment. I've used it to make spiral handrails, as well as to notch around a wall, and return back into a newel post. If you post a plan, I'd be happy to take a look and see if I can help.

I also do exactly what Mark described. He's bang on when it comes to control of getting just the right reveal over the finished side of a cabinet to match the reveal over the front of a door. Another instance would be where a 5/8" or 3/4" gable end is installed tight to a cabinet box, whereas a door has a small gap to accommodate bumpers. Using the molding line keeps you from having to try to match full height cab. with wall cabs. Try remembering all those offsets when you have a build up of 3 moldings!

Viz, you can send that view to layout and remove the lines there using the "Edit Layout Lines" tool. Note that those lines will come back each time the view is updated, and then you'll need to remove them again. The reason those lines are showing is because your walls are not connecting the way Chief would like them to. Right now it looks like they overlap. If you drag them to meet exactly or use the default top and bottom, then they'll connect and the line will disappear permanently.

Hey Scott, thanks for the vid! I was kind of surprised that anyone would go to that level of effort to respond. I typically build the slab exactly like you did, exact I build it on floor 0 the first time! (kidding). I'll point out a couple of things that were going on in that plan there: -the molding that you deleted was actually a plywood or puckboard used to cover the above-slab portion of the ICF fdn. It will manifest itself later in a 2d and 3d detail. -the man door is 2" above the slab to show the sill correctly and to get the framed R.O. to match the manufacturer's spec's. exactly. No adjusting headers when doing a framing detail. I don't mind making this adjustment. I was just hoping to learn something new. By the way Michael, the bearing material in ICF walls is concrete and the XPS is insulation.

The workaround is what I'm going to do until I learn something better. Thanks to all who took a look. Perry, hope my last post didn't sound petty. It certainly wasn't intended that way. I'm not the best at making sure a typed response relays the pleasant conversational tone that my voice naturally provides!

Hey Newell, I opened your plan and took a look. That stubborn roof just keeps cutting the wall... until I checked 'no special snapping'. Just open that roof dbx, then in the 'Measurements' section under the 'General' tab, you'll find that option. It worked, and is holding... I've dealt with that issue before. Hope that helps. By now you've probably figured it out anyhow. Rob.

Here's an interesting work around that I just experimented with. Once you're stairs is finalized, copy in place, and change the railing profile to the insert. You'll just need to guess at the new railing height to get the plow insert into the right location. With the 'princeton' rail and insert, lower the insert railing height by 2". That nails it.

Perry, I've got the plan posted right above the picture. The picture is just showing the top of the slab is level with the top of the door buck, and the inner layer of the ICF is the white strip that is displaying.