DzinEye

Look is most important, but would be nice to know how to get the framing to work if/when needed. I suppose I could do a big solid up there too... but is that the only way?

I created a curved ceiling plane in this exterior porch room, but I can't figure out how to close the face above the arch? I suppose I could create a wall with an arched opening to match, but would like to know if there's a different / better way?

Also note similar anomoly in this screenshot. It works, but it would be very odd to build it that way. The clouded side hips should go away, it should just be one big hip roof. Again this may be due to wall alignment.

See links below for building dormers manually, but also note that for some reason your auto-build roof is creating anomalies per red clouded areas on attached screenshot. You'll need to look at your walls defining the space, make sure they're lining up properly, etc.. How to manually build dormers https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1521/manually-drawing-dormers.html This one not relevant to your current situation but good to know... https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1520/creating-openings-in-roofs-for-manually-drawn-dormers.html

Just roughly cobbled it together for you here, but there were a lot of inaccuracies in the roof you should look more closely at. Going forward you might try copying your plan, erasing the whole roof auto-rebuilding it all again then add the dormer, what you're calling an 'A-frame' afterward. Sanibel_r1.plan

Good observations showing the apparent bug, and how the tray ceiling tool can be improved. It seems that there will have to be another checkbox added to the tools dbx whether to ignore invisible walls or not.

Got it!... thank you... I'll give it a try next time. That will work on walls, but I get all kinds of other things having this issue too... drawers, hardware, components I've modeled in Sketchup, etc etc.. I've tried painting them with no success. The only method that always worked was turning off the sun.

Rob, you said: 'paint the wall material with the same material'.... same as what? It must be related to the sun, leaking or not, because it always goes away when I turn off the sun. I've never had the effect from interior lighting.

I frequently get glowing artifacts in my PBR's, and as someone above suggested it seems to have something to do with sunlight leaking into the building. My quick fix is to just turn off the sun which works frequently, but obviously would'nt in your second shot... which looks great BTW. I am trying to figure out how Mark McAniff fixed it. Are his notes indicating things he changed? It appeared from your dbx screenshot that you already had given those triangle walls a room definition? Did you have success using his fix? If so, what exactly did you end up doing?

Does that wall continue down to the floor or is it only between the two roofs? If you're just doing rough modeling to see how the building will look (not for con. doc's) then it can sometimes be faster/easier to draw 'wall material regions' to show different wall materials.

I'm using this method too, but I have to say it's still rarely that simple. You're mighty lucky if you only ever have just one outstanding option that you're waiting for a client to decide on so you can just go back to your original or whatever. Or do you just say you're not going to do any further work until a decision is made? Seems it's not unusual for me to have one or two options outstanding and before those are decided on by the players I have to continue to move forward with other plan/model development, and then sometimes I guess right and do that development in the chosen plan and sometimes I'm wrong and I have to copy things over to the other plan...which can be a royal PITA depending what was done.

Thanks guys! Interesting you have to do it from a 3D overview. Kind of like exporting to Chief viewer. I can now see it's not quite what I was imagining, but would def. be useful in some situations.

Huh?.. I was just wondering about this in a different thread. How the heck do you do that Lew? Add to library is not an available option if I select the whole house. You must have to turn off certain layers I guess? Which ones? If I only have walls, windows and doors on it allows, but otherwise no.

Wow, this is a really good thread! In one of the fairly recent forum posts, I think Glenn offered a pretty cool suggestion that lines could be quickly connected with one click by selecting all lines, using 'extend' tool and clicking near the center of the group of lines. They need to be already touching, but not connected, which is a common issue when using Cad detail from view for moldings. Michael then discovered that the 'trim' command did the same thing. (I have not tried that one). Def. agree. If you already have the SU knowledge, some things are just far less time consuming to model in SU and import into Chief. However, I think with what I saw advertised to be improved ability edit p-solids from more than one plane in X12 Chief is getting better at this. I learned that it works fairly quickly once you get used to not looking at the dialogue box, but I do wish Chief would allow a direct entry method similar to other platforms. It's a hurdle learning not to look at the dialogue box, because a pop-up dbx is meant to be looked at. But furthermore, not looking at it often causes slowdowns, because the Tab dbx frequently does not take the dragged direction properly...which requires undoing and re-doing the last process then manually adjusting the angle entry. This definitely needs improvement. I also had this 'attitude' coming into Chief. Part of it comes from the fact that many of the otherwise wonderful training videos skip precision for the sake of speed. That may be partly to keep the video short, and partly to emphasize speed of Chief to do things, but it wouldn't hurt to have some of the entry level videos show the process of drawing with precision in mind.

Looks like you have the 'opaque glass' setting checked. See your rendering technique settings

I'm on SSA by monthly basis, so not available to me quite yet

Wow, you really did a deep dive on that subject. Very strange why the scale changes in the text block instances...any idea why? The text instancing ability (if it worked right) would be especially helpful.

LOL!... Hilarious. That kind of drawing (though perhaps not quite that cartoonish) was actually not that uncommon in rural areas not all that long ago. The only thing it's missing is a coffee cup ring for an architectural stamp.

I looked at your settings before posting, which showed how you did the walls, but didn't see anything about the cap. Sorry if I missed it. Nice job on that detail though! Yep, that's my understanding and practice as well. Though you may want to pin a landing area in some cases.

Ahh.. I glanced at that too quickly... I just saw 'wall cap' and assumed that only accounted for the very top shape without looking at the dimensions. So you said 'with his method'... what method did you use?

Clever idea to use a wall cap to get the shape Eric, but curious why it does not show up as a separate piece?

Ahaa!... well it appears that it achieves a similar result but in a different way. It seems to me that it would work just about as well for most cases, only difference being you have to manually switch the palette each time... but perhaps having different plan views for each would allow you to have several different ones at the same time? Will be nice to check out when I can get my hands on X12 next month.

For Interiors folks especially, It would be pretty cool if there was a way to make a 'block' of the basic plan, or alternatively what I can only best describe as a 3D reference... or using Acad terminology... Xref. That would allow just the basic model without all the interior stuff added, to be referenced into several different options, and any structural (wall, door, window) moves would automatically get applied to all instances.

This exactly^^^. In my experience jurisdictions rarely care about specifications for residential, except for a few things like fireplaces. As others have said, if you do have a client that wants, (and wants to pay for) specifications, then they're most likely to be properly looked at if they're on the plans, but I would recommend doing it on an alternate set of plans that doesn't go into the permitting jurisdiction. As Rene said, it just invites more questions during the permit process... and 9X out of 10 everything gets changed by owner and/or builder as the project progresses... and then what?.. back to the city for revisions? I would only ever do specs on an hourly basis. For ensuring better quality work the best approach is to help the Owners get a contractor that does quality work without having to be told how to do quality work. Also, rather than specifications, a few well considered arch. details can do a lot more than lots of words in a spec.. The only Code Notes most jurisdictions require are related to; egress, temp. glass, railings, stairs, fire protection and a few plumbing and electric. You should be able to cover the relevant ones with a list of less than 30 code items. I list them in a numbered fashion on the side of the plan and reference them with a small note at each relevant location. Although you could of course put more than these minimal amount of code notes, I feel you then only risk glazing over the eyes of who ever is reading the plans... not to mention it just muddies up the plans.

Appears like you want the window not AT floor level, but between floor levels... correct? If you use invisible walls/room divider walls to make a room behind the window the size of the floor hole you want and assign it the 'open below' room type you should be able to put the window there.