DzinEye

Was wondering the same thing. I figured (hoped) the OP must know this...or maybe the client doesn't and complained about two colors? This seems to me like something every brain realizes just from experience...or maybe I'm assuming wrong.

I thought maybe you turned up the gravity setting a bit too high... try a 3 instead of 10

Try turning on the sun and shadows and then manually adjust the tilt and angle so it shines nearly equally on both walls.

Never had opportunity to do a groin vault before, but was fascinated after watching your video on the method for forming one over a rectangular area. Had to try it. Did you develop this method for building it? Ingenious way to get those compound curved joints. In playing around, I accidentally discovered something which I wonder if you ran across in your pursuit of this solution. I had run a curved ceiling plane in both directions across the room so they overlapped through each other. Then I had changed the curve of one so it was a fraction lower than the other at the apex. In messing around with the Use Room Ceiling Finish checkbox of those two planes I had stumbled on a situation where the ceilings automatically cleaned themselves up to show just the lower parts of the vault correctly. Now trying it again I can only get 3 of the sides to clean up... but it seems like there's something to which arched ceiling is built first and which is set to be lower than the other and which is set to Use Room Ceiling Finish or not. Will continue to try and sort it out, but thought you may have some experience or thoughts on this. Would sure be a time saver if it worked reliably...and anybody really needed to model a lot of groin vaults.

Decided to move to a laptop a year or so ago and it works just fine. 99% of the time it sits closed here in the office connected to a usb hub via Thunderbolt, which connects a standalone keyboard and monitor. Takes up very little space and gives me portability when needed. Only need to plug/un-plug one Thunderbolt cable (and the power cable) when taking it anywhere.

Depends what properties you want to see. If you leave the ALDO (Active Layer Display Options) open, you can see and alter the objects layer, color, line type, lock or unlock, etc..

It's funny... many moons ago I suggested 'smarter windows' for just this reason... at the time I didn't know that ability was 'Windows' driven and I'd wished I could do more than just scroll when hovering over any given window. I still do, but only about 2 weeks ago I learned that this behavior was controllable in Windows, and ever since I've been wondering if I should turn it off or not. Too many times I get messed up because I feel like I'm in the active window because of my ability to scroll in that window. Tough decision because I use that scroll ability a lot.

One thing you could do which will help if you accidentally do not follow Joey's instruction on wall moving. Draw a polyline that follows the proper outline of the walls and make it a bright color. If your walls move you'll see and be able to snap it back to the polyline. Needless to say if you do this, you should put the polyline on a special layer.

I often do like Jorge suggests in the design phase. I will copy the walls of certain rooms off to the side of a developed floor plan to show alternative options which can be shown in 3D. I've even copied multiple copies of the whole house off to the side to show options. But once you start developing ConDocs you should make multiple copies and just keep one alternative plan per copy. If you register all copies to the same place in the virtual modeling area, then you can easily copy and paste things between plan if future changes to all options are made. Keep all alternative plan files in one folder unique to the particular project. The 2D Cad detail route is another totally viable way to do it and you'll have all versions in the same plan file. The best procedure really depends how you intend to present the options and whether you'll need to have a full plan set for each option or just a small cropped plan view of the alternative room configuration.

Roberts ideas are just clever, but Michael's are CLEAVER!!!

From your Pic it looks like it maintains the 'bottom left' location...

Eric, I think he means where is the molding going to be in relationship to the molding polyline.

Doh!... I immediately set up a view outside the window, figuring that it where they'd be drawn. Didn't even notice the inside camera.

How'd you get the cad lines to show up Joey? I turned on all layers... nothing.

Need more info Gene... Can't figure out which window(s) you're talking about and what custom thing you're trying to do with the lites. I see a grouped set of three double hung with div. lites in the top sash, and a big shaped transom window with no div. lites... maybe you wanted that divided? Need more info. and pic of what you want to achieve.

As Graeme said above... saved plan views is perfect for this example you give. You could have all three floors zoomed in to a particular room open at the same time...or just flip between them in the saved plan view pull-down.

Nice sleuthing! It would sure be awesome if there were a routine that could be run to help identify whatever anomalies cause these lighting glitches in PBR's... they constantly haunt me.

It's hard to provide a one-size-fits-all product (Chief), nor a one size fits all answer for how to use the tools Chief gives us. If you wanted to be able to show a rendered 3D view of exactly how that stair would look, then I think you'd be having to do what Michael suggests....but if you just wanted give the suggestion of how it would look, (open risers, floating treads, double steel stringers, cable rails) you could very quickly make that happen with the stair tools. The first stair below took less than a minute. Selecting 'No stringers' and instead making polyline solid stringers in a section view as seen in the second shot took an extra 2 minutes. For some users the goal is to have every single nuance modeled in 3D so that any given building section or zoomed in shot will provide a ready detail. In my mind, that costs 10x the time investment than to just draw a 2D detail and refer to it as needed in the plan. Personally I think Robert had the right idea with have the stair mfr. detail the shop drawings, and you just providing the client a reasonble expression in 3D, and the mfr. shop a cad detail and/or inspiration photo as you did above.

That's just a load calculation... okay, I do those all the time... that's very generic and takes a couple minutes to do... a far cry from what's being asked of Casey in Tuscon

Ahh!.. ha ha ha.. okay! Do you do the electrical work yourself or bid out to electricians? Perfect! I just got educated a bit on 'notes' fairly recently and have yet to use them. Looks like just the ticket for this usage.

If you're working for the Owner-Builder then they should provide the 'electrician' to layout the electrical. Aside from code required specifics they probably have their own way of doing things.

Yes, for commercial projects... I have not seen it required for residential?

Blech! Sounds like Tuscon hired a commercial electrician to be the CBO. One avenue of moving forward you might look into is seeing if you can separate out the electrical part of the permit and do a deferred submittal for the electrical permit, which the electrician, once hired, can take care of. Putting a 'fully dimensioned' plan together with electrical layout is asking for a mess in my opinion. Dimensioned plans should be separate from the electrical plan. For starters you can use the labels function in the Dbx for each receptacle and each light fixture and/or built-in appliance to assign them a circuit number. Are you familiar with code for what appliances require their own circuits, and that there are two 20 amp circuits req'd for kitchen, etc., etc. ? If not, you're going to need to spend time reading, or just hire an electrician to help you out. Better yet use the electrician who'll be doing the installation job. If you do it yourself in Chief, you can layout and number all the different circuits then you can import the Panel Schedule you first pasted into the forum here, and fill-in the information... or better yet if you have software capable of editing PDF, then fill out the form in your PDF editor and then import it into Chief. The plan-checker can then cross-ref your Schedule with the numbered circuits on your drawing.

Where is this project? Wow... I'd be curious to hear if or how many other folks have this requirement in the areas they work. Is this for a general 'building permit' or a stand alone 'electrical permit'? I've worked in around 30 different cities and counties around the S.F. bay area and never have I been required to provide anywhere near that level of information. Gas lines, yes, but not electrical. I sure hope this is not coming down the pike for all of us... yikes...PiTA. I can't imagine it being anything automatic in C.A.... there are just too many different variables. Sounds to me like the Chief Building Official in your jurisdiction is creating a make-work project for the local electrician(s). Unless you're familiar with electrical, you're probably going to need an electrician to help you out. For actually doing it in Chief, I would suggest separating lighting from receptacles, and using CAD lines/arcs with different colors for connecting each different circuit.

I haven't yet tried the Duplicate Page ability, but after reading the posts by Rene and Mick I wanted to try and see how it worked exactly in regards to numbering... and your reply answers the question without me having to do it. Yep... I can certainly see that what you suggest would be nice. Might want to throw that one into 'Suggestions'