rlackore

23 minutes ago, 152431 said:

Figured it out.  Easy clicking and dragging....

I suggest downloading the Reference Manual. If you are on X10, page 671 is your friend. The Reference Manual is always my first stop before turning to this forum.

I believe you're out of luck - Chief doesn't allow us to assign a name to the "Exterior" room. May i suggest creating a Custom Object Field and including it in the Electrical Schedule? I frequently use this strategy for other schedule types.

So much depends on what you're trying to do everywhere else, but one possible solution is to to use an Open Below room and manual Slab with Footing: slabtransition.plan

After Auto Detailing you'll need to create the chamfer in the slab edge. But, again, so much is affected by what you're trying to accomplish in the rest of the model.

10 minutes ago, GeneDavis said:

I have the foundation room supplying the floor for the room above

I think that's your problem - you need to define the garage slab floor within the garage room dbx - don't have the foundation room supply the floor.

You should post this in the Seeking Services forum.

I often use a railing wall on the level below: Wireless_1 with lattice.plan

1 hour ago, rwlang said:

how long does your typical home take to draw (ready for pricing)? we produce two sets of drawings for each home (structural shell and millwork/cabinetry) our plans have alot of building and wall sections, details, schedules and interior elevations.  a typical structural set may have 20 sheets with 20-50 millwork sheets

Nothing is typical, but 200 hours isn't unusual. My two most recent projects that are under construction were 59 sheets and 54 sheets: site & grading; foundations; structural framing and schedules; floor plans; finish plans; reflected ceiling plans; interior elevations; lighting plans; sections; details; and a fairly comprehensive specification. These are houses that take 12-18 months to complete, not including landscaping. Contractors complain about the size of the drawing sets, but when they call with a question I can usually refer them to a specific drawing sheet and detail because the situation has been anticipated. Chief saves time on the front end when we're producing massing studies and general layout, but we lose the time on the back end because Chief doesn't do sections very well, and the CAD tools are poor. We were on AutoDesk products for 20 years, then switched to Chief.

1 hour ago, rwlang said:

that's unfortunate. We are a high-end, unique custom home builder and we typically draw one house at a time. with a staff of 3 draftpersons it takes us 30-60 days to complete structural shell drawings and millwork/cabinet drawings. It sounds like CA may not be right fit for us. 

Our bread-and-butter is high-end residential, though we also do commercial and institutional. We have several projects proceeding at any time, but we try to keep any single project with the same designer for the life of the project. Of course, this isn't always possible, but we try to limit project swapping. I guess the key is that all our designers are capable of carrying a project from design to construction drawings and through to completion of construction. Our inter-office collaboration is limited to structural calcs, MWFRS design, etc. Our experience is that projects don't fare well when they are shared in Chief; there are so many ways of doing things in Chief that establishing "standards" for the workarounds is impossible - and with custom, high-end residential, you'll need lots of workarounds.

There is a layer named Cross Section Lines; when Chief cuts a section it automatically generates CAD lines and places them on this layer - these are the only lines to which you can snap (and dimension). If you turn this layer off, you lose all snapping functionality.

The quickest way to get an accurate response is to post the plan file, and tell us what version of CA you're using.

Post in the Seeking Services forum.

Here's what I have: wireshelving.calibz. They're fairly generic, but may be useful.

I suggest you work with Chief technical support.

The "label" you see isn't a Label, but is part of the CAD block assigned to the symbol, so it isn't affected by the Label defaults; you'll need to redefine the CAD block assigned to the symbol.

Have you tried the Wall Elevation tool?

12 hours ago, Designer1 said:

So in order for us to figure out which ones come with a smooth surface vs the hand scraped look do we go on the Armstrong website and go through the different styles and match up the names on chief?

Yes. But, once you find a hand-scraped material in Chief, you can copy/paste it into your User Library and put it in a special folder, rename it, etc.

Chad,

The Armstrong materials don't have Bump or Normal maps assigned:

...so that's why they are smooth and flat.

After you've blocked everything you want to move, double-click the block to open the CAD Block Specification dialog box, and then set the Line Style>Drawing Group value to 38-Back. This should send everything within the block to the very back so you can see the house footprint as you position the block.

Refer to the Reference Manual beginning on page 421 (assuming you are on X10); this section of the manual will describe the various types of auto-calculated room areas.

3 hours ago, AlvarD said:

 

Did you expand the row? Here's a pic showing the light expanded, and lights 1 thru 8 selected and changed to 9lm. 

 

 

-Alvar

I feel stupid. You know what I was missing? That Adjust button down in the lower left hand corner:

This makes things so much easier. You know how much time I spent adjusting 96 lights? Thank you!

11 hours ago, solver said:

No, the user specifies wall types and footings, and tells (or draws them manually) the program where they go.

Eric is pointing you in the right direction. To help you get there, dig into the Default Settings for Floors and Rooms, Foundation, Framing, Roof, etc. You'll quickly discover that Chief's "auto-build" behavior depends on the parameters you define within the Default Settings. I suggest you download a copy of the Reference Manual, which delves into these settings in detail. There are also helpful training videos available on the Chief website. The Default Settings Summary and the Framing Basics videos may be of particular interest to you.

Go to the Armstrong hand scraped web page here. You should be able to find most of these within the Armstrong manufacturer's library, such as the Wide Plank Rural Living Extra Dark ERH5304:

Put your schedule in a CAD Detail, Send to Layout, adjust the Layout Box to fit as much of the Schedule as you can on the first page, then Copy/Paste the Layout Box onto a second page and adjust the second Layout Box to display the remaining part of the Schedule.

3 hours ago, AlvarD said:

Thanks for the symbol Robert!  

 

You mentioned that it was very tedious to change the light output since you had to modify every light individually, but if you expand the light in the Adjust Lights DBX (with the arrow on the left of it), you can then group-select any, or all, of the 96 lights and change their intensity at once. 

I can't make that work. By selecting the Group row I can change Color, Used In, and Casts Shadows for all lights at once - but not Intensity. Maybe you know a trick I don't.