tahoebrian5

That did the trick on the file upload, thx! Kintz-Model2.plan

For some reason I'm unable to upload chief files. Iv'e tried both the advanced uploader and the basic uploader. If you are interested in helping and need the actual CA file PM me and i will email it. Thx!

Im assuming I've got some defaults set wrong somewhere but I cant seem to find any setting to fix this. It seems like its dimensioning the same thing multiple times all over and the end result is an unusable mess. Also it seemed to get worse when I added more floors for some reason, but it was still a mess when I just had a single floor albeit not as bad. Help! auto inteior dims.pdf

Is it possible to format this way or maybe a macro? as in 30 68

I've got 2 issues that are stumping me at the moment. First on the truss framing. I want the main span trusses to ignore the dormer except to have the tails cut short and then I will specify over-framing in that area. Is there a work around for this? (see the pdf) Second issue.. take a look at the same pdf. The stemwall in the porch area is dropped down. How do I go about having the stemwall ignore the porch? Should I rebuild the foundation without the porch in a separate file and then paste them in to the main file or is there a direct way? trusses and stemwall issue.pdf

Hello chief talk, I hope everyone had a good holidays! I'm just getting back into the sometimes fun, sometimes extremely frustrating task of learning chief. I've just finished watching the first two vids in Wendy's series on adding a garage to an existing design Link https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/6474-one-more-from-wendy-adding-a-garage-to-a-finished-design/ My question is.. Is the sneaky use of copy and paste the best way to do this? Can we not lock certain parts of the model so we can add and build new parts without affecting the existing? Most of my work is complex additions so having one part of the model stay unaffected is going to be crucial to me. Just wondering what my options are.

It's all making a whole lot more sense. Now say I wanted to move the entire structure up a couple feet to do some sort of split level. Is there an easy way to move the whole thing or would I need to set all the heights again in the structure dbx?

Well I got a few mins while we are waiting for the doc. I'm kind of excited that this appears to work better than I thought due to my conceptual misunderstanding. Anyone care to take a shot at explaining how the 2 levels (floors) for 1 space works. For example I created a garage space by drawing four walls. Chief automatically created a room at floor 1, and unknowingly to me a room at floor zero below. Watching the video above by Alaskan Son, he set the floor height at floor zero structures dbx, and the ceiling height at floor 1 structures dbx. Is this just bcause it's a garage? Or do you do the same thing with a raised floor where crawl space is set by the floor below? Mainly looking to try to fully understand this so I can quit spinning my wheels. Thanks a bunch for the help and the family wishes.

Ok, I did have a few mins and wathced the first video. I think my main problem is I was not understanding that there are two different rooms to deal with. I was trying to do everything from the floor 1 room.

I've worked with quite a few home owners that designed their own plans. My suggestion is to work with an experienced designer. The money you spend on the designer will be nothing compared to construction costs. By all means draw it up in chief but let your designer help you dial it in. This will not only result in a better floor plan but also will likely save construction costs. The hard part is finding the right designer. Best luck.

Thank you all so much for the help and your time. I have not had time to dig into your responses as my wife has gone into labor and we are heading to the hospital to have a baby this morning. I guess that takes precedence over Chief I, looking forward to figuring out where I went wrong and will post back soon.

I think the main point we all agree upon is that Chief has a weakness and we are all using various work arounds to deal with it. So far based on my about 20 hours of use, this and the heights in the structures dbx are the two hardest parts to swallow about chief. To be honest if it wasn't so very good at some other things it would be a deal breaker. It just seems to not be very versatile in the way it allows you to do things. I do realize it's called chief architect and not chief structural engineer but I do wish they spent a little more time with structural issues in mind. One of the biggest strengths in cad based engineering Imo is the ability to create reference drawings that can be shared across multiple drawings and disciplines and the way chief is setup is not very powerful in that aspect.

Ok, I've attached my plan. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the heights correct. I want the top of slab 8" below top of stem wall, and the top of stem wall to top of plate height to be 8'-6". If anyone has time to take a look would be much appreciated. heit garage CA.plan

Okay, screencast worked today. Im not sure what my problem last time was either. Another day another problem. The cad cross box is likely what I will do for now as there does not seem to be any better options. It's a travesty though to have to draw cad objects in such a great 3d modeling program.

I'll check with my truss guy. It would be really great if we could import trusses

I'm highly intrigued.. Unfortunately I'm unable to watch videos on screencast. My iPad is my normal web browser and that's no good, but my main Windows ten computer also will not let me view them.

Somewhat related... I'm using a surface pro 4, i5 and it works just fine. It doesn't have a graphics card, only integrated graphics but still seems to be just fine, but I'm not really doing any heavy duty renderings.

I don't know of any but I'm new to chief myself. Plenty of work in the area. Hit me up if you do decide to move.

Thanks Joe, I figured as much. I'm just whining at this point! Is there anyway to group or block things that are on more than one floor? Like maybe add a post on each floor and then group them so you can copy them or move them around?

Attached is a pdf with images showing my structures dbx settings, and the resulting dimensions in section cut. They don't match. Very confusing! structures dbx.pdf

I see what you're saying but the assumption is that none of your posts are continuous. I deal with physically continuous posts a lot of times either steel or what I call out as CVG (continuous vertical grain) the axial compression strength of wood is much stronger in the vertical axis as it is in the horizontal so sometimes when a post load is high enough I cannot have it framed onto the bottom plate like trimmers and King studs. It actually cuts thru the plates and floors and is either continuous or has a splice detail at the center of the floor joist space. Another scenario, I have a deck in the top story of a three story home. The exterior posts originate at floor 3 and continue down to the foundation. They can't be shown unles we use floor 3 as the ref set, and then we don't get to see floor 1 posts. my point is that chief is holding itself back by not allowing us to display what we want to. We should be able to turn on anything we want in any view imo. Corner Windows and 3D mouse options are all good and all but this seems like a huge functional drawback and I really hope it's being taken seriously.

Thanks Chuck, I will take a look at your settings in about an hour here when I get to work. Now that I've slept and my brain is not fried I think I can state my question better. What I don't understand is why there is more than one absolute dimension. It seem logically that you would want one absolute dimension, ideally finish floor, and once set it is locked. All the other heights would be relative to this. Also there needs to be independent settings for top of stem wall, and bottom of stem wall or footing. Okay enough with dreaming, the reality is I don't understand which setting to start with. I'll take a look at chucks plan though.

What I'm really asking is which settings to use. It seems like there is a couple different ways to go about it. None of which seem very intuitive.

The room height dbx (structures tab) is giving me fits. I'm doing a garage. I want the plate height to be 8'-6" above the top of stem wall (concrete). I want the garage floor slab to be 8" below the top of stem wall. So top of slab to plate height will be 9'. Please advise the best way to set these things up. Also I've got another issue coming up. For a raised floor type foundation I have one area where grade is above finish floor. How would I go about raising a single foundation wall up a few feet for a ledger type system? Thanks!

Perfect, thanks a bunch