Lighthouse

thanks, tried that but it doesn't change it

I have finished basement walls that I have made by creating a wall that has 10" concrete for the main layer, and fir framing and drywall for the interior layers. In camera views, when I have checked "main layer only", and unchecked "wall layers", the interior layers (the 2x4 wall) still appears. Is it possible to get only the concrete portion to appear? Or do I have to create two separate walls (which I don't want to do because there are a lot of window openings)

got it, thanks very much for your help!

Where is the "ceiling tab". The only place I can see to define ceilings is in the room specification dbx, in the structure tab, there is a ceiling spec where I can define the ceiling structure. I created the ceiling there, but it doesn't seem to build anything when I rebuild floors and ceilings. what am I missing?

you guys are correct, as always! thanks! That is exactly what happened, I manually placed the joists (a while ago, forgot that I did that) and then adjusted the floor level. I just deleted all the joists and regenerated them and it fixed it. So that problem is solved. But just one other question (I'm really trying to learn how to perfect the model and not draw CAD sections)- is ceiling framing only available when you don't have a floor above? For example, let's say you had a 2x10 floor platform but you want to make a hung ceiling below that out of 2x4s. Would you make a lower ceiling height and then use ceiling framing? Or will it not work because it thinks the floor is the ceiling?

I'm trying to understand what CA shows in section. In the attached image, there appear to be two layers at the top of the joist, which I would assume are the subfloor and finish floor. However, one of the layers is below the top of the joist, which doesn't make sense. I also don't understand what all the lines are below the joist. I created a 3/4" space, as can be seen in the dbx, below the joists, because here in New England we run strapping (1x3) perpendicular to the joists, and then hang the blueboard on that. My questions are: -why does the subfloor appear to be flush with top of joist, instead of above? -does CA show the ceiling plane in section (I have it turned on , but is does not have a red mark) -what are the lines below the joist? (I thought they might be top plates, but I have wall framing turned off) thanks for any help!!!!!!

Hi, I started the design on a project in Exeter NH for a very nice couple, but don't have the time to continue on it as it's a long commute from the Boston area where I'm based. It's a renovation/addition on a Lindal Cedar "contemporary" house. The clients are great and have good taste. My fantasy is to find a NH based design build company that wants to take over the design and construction (to be clear, project is just in the planning stages). Anyone interested?

I got excited too soon. Actually, soffits were checked :-(. I tried it with checked and unchecked, rebuilding each time, didn't change anything. Oddly, a few of the roofs on the house do appear as wood, even though they seem to have identical settings to the roofs that appear white

Wow, not something I would have found in a million years! You the man!

Hi, When I generate a roof frame, the rafters appear as a white material, even though my rafter default is set to fir framing. I can't seem to globally select them to change them to fir, the material painter just does one at a time. There are hundreds.... How do I globally select and change material? I tried locking all layers but rafters and selecting them all, but I didn't have the option to change material. thx

hmmm, I never heard of a truss polyline so that's a good tip, I will check it out. I'm curious to see if there is an advantage of creating polyline solids. thx

I'm trying to create rafter tails on the high side of a roof, where I have a cantilevered overhang. I've tried reversing the roof pitch, and spinning the roof around, etc, but Chief always figures out how to put them on the low side where I don't want them. I know I can create individual rafters out of PS, but I'm trying to do things the right way (auto generate framing, instead of stick building the house on the computer). Any ideas much appreciated!

shoot, I should have figured out file associations. that worked, thanks

I have x10 and Viewer installed. I have the viewer so I can see the interface that my clients see when they view the plan, so I can walk them though how to use the viewer. However, since I installed Viewer, when I download a bonus library catalog and click to open it, it opens in viewer and does not appear in x10. I have checked "associate program with whatever" (the box that appears when you start CA). I have placed the downloaded content next to other libraries in the x10 folder, but it still does not appear in x10?

After feedback from the forum (thanks to Tommy and Solver), I think Saved Plan Views would be better than annotation sets for my workflow. I like the ability to have multiple plan views open in tabs, and to have external reference files. I have many questions about actually creating and implementing these. Does anyone have time to work with me on this today? I'm happy to pay for the consult. Thanks!

I'm wasting a lot of time in producing drawing sets because I have not set up annotation sets. I've watched the videos but it looks labor-intensive to do, and I know many of you have already done it. I would like to pay someone to walk me through it, or better yet just let me copy theirs and show me how to modify. I'm better at designing than producing drawings, so I think someone else's defaults (in terms of font size, dimension defaults, etc) would work fine for me. I mostly do modern work, like to show details in 1 1/2" and 3" scale. Ideally would do this in the very near future. Thanks, David Hornstein light-house-design.com davidhornstein@verizon.net

Hi Steve, thanks for the reply. It's not working for me. I have the 1/4" scale default set to a new layer called "framing text". I have verified that the annotation set is using the 1/4" scale default, and that the default is set to "framing text". However, when I draw a text arrow, it is on the "text" layer, not the "framing text" layer. It appears that there is no way to set the default layer for the text arrow. You are saying that the text arrow uses the text default layer. But that is not what is happening for me

I'm sure there's an easy answer I'm missing... I've put text on my framing plan on a separate layer called "framing text", so it doesn't show in the default floor plan. However, I cannot get the text arrow to default to that "framing text" layer, it wants to stay on the "text" layer. There does not seem to be a way to set the default layer for the text arrow, and even though my text is set on the "text framing" layer, the arrow is still on the "text" layer. The same is true for text leader lines. How do I get my arrows and leader lines to default to my "framing text" layer? Thanks!!

it's an interesting phenomenon. When I have "reach" set to 6", it easily finds the line my cursor is on, but when reach is set to 36", it finds a line further away. So I guess my understanding of 36" reach was "reach anything within 36", starting with the closest thing", but CA's version is "look for something 36" away to snap to". Good to know, and thanks again

Robert, I'm a complete idiot! I saw "reach", and confused it with the extensions to and from object. So that solves it. But the odd thing is that it still doesn't explain why it would initially choose a line further away than choosing the line I put the cursor on.

Sorry, to clarify, this is in CAD detail, not elevation or section. I was referring to an elevation in a cad detail

How do I control what line in a cad detail the dimension snaps to? I often have a problem in cad details that the dimension snaps to part of the drawing much further away than the thing I'm trying to measure. For example, I have an elevation of a house in a cad detail. I draw two cad lines (on the cad default layer) 10' from the house to show the height of a porch roof. I pull a dimension from one cad line to another. Instead of snapping to those lines, it snaps to a point on the elevation instead. When I click on the dimension line to change the snap point, it doesn't recognize the line as something to snap to. In the dimension dbx, I have "cad objects, lines/sides" checked. It seems like there should be a way to control have far the dimension tool "reaches" for an object to measure. Thanks!

Is there a way to globally explode cad blocks in a cad detail? I have a problem where some of the line weights of the cad details that I send to layout are too heavy. On the layout page, when the show line weights is toggled off, everything looks fine. However, when I print to pdf, I see the heavier line weights. I have tried selecting all the elements on the cad detail and globally changing the line weights, but it doesn't change the lines that are in cad blocks (there are lots of cad blocks). I can explode each cad block individually and change the line weights, but that's going to take a very long time. So I wondering if there is a way to: 1) get the pdf print to look like the layout page when show lines weights is toggled off 0r 2) globally explode all cad blocks, or somehow change the line weight of cad blocks without exploding them or 3) some other method thanks!!!!!!!!

right, that's what I did, but as I tried to show in the image, the size of the hashmarks in the 5" dimension line (which is using the arrow dimension default) is smaller than the temp dimension arrow