Chrisb222

Since your walls, floor and ceiling heights are the same, I would model it all in one plan. One advantage is if you're doing a site plan, you can situate the two buildings as they will be built and keep your property line, site plan dimensions, setbacks, etc all organized and together.

I try to stick to whole inches but it's not practical for everything. My primary default is set for 1/2" but I dimension to the whole inch as much as possible. Very rarely, but now and then I need something dimensioned at 1/4" My work is strictly new homes, no remodel or commercial. 1/16" dims on a residential framing plan sounds like a good way to get a hammer to the back of the head when leaving the jobsite.

Wall insulation doesn't even appear in the wall specs until you enclose a conditioned room, so there doesn't seem to be any way to customize what is used for wall insulation until after the room is created. Floor and ceiling insulation are also automatic although they can be controlled somewhat in each room's default settings.... but only individually, which is not very convenient either.

Ah, yes thanks.

Whew okay, learned some stuff today. I had already added an insulation layer to the wall definition, but didn't realize I had to also go into the Components tab of the Wall Specifications dialog and specify the ID of the custom insulation as Insulation. Thanks for the bread crumb... I'm just doing this as an exercise too. To the original question in the OP, yes, a custom insulation material could be created to report custom batt sizes or even bag quantities, but then you have redundant wall insulation being reported. I was able to "delete" the default wall insulation component, sort of.... by just blanking out the information in the components tab, or changing its ID to something else. But I don't see how to remove it, or anywhere in the program to specify the default wall insulation....

Funny you say that, I played around with that idea after seeing this thread and could not get the material list to recognize a custom insulation material. I was able to fool it into reporting a custom insulation material, but only by making the program think it was either a wallboard or a framing material type, which made it report the material under either the Wall Board category or the Framing category, respectively. I had the idea because I already use multiple wall types with custom drywall materials that do report the various sizes I use, but I couldn't get it to work with insulation. I would be interested to see your technique.

And you were right! The last one we did had a different curve to the sides versus the front. And that was before my master framer passed away, so I don't think there will be any more of those. It was a real head scratcher! And yes, the copper material alone for that 3x9 awning was about two grand

I assume you mean "generate framing" in Chief. No, it won't build framing for that symbol, and if you make one from roof planes the framing will be a little wonky, but it will work. I threw this one in together a couple minutes to show: :

That's done by creating a custom Template Plan. Once you set all your defaults, go to File > Templates > Save As Template, and save the file as your custom template plan. You can then open it as a new plan by going to File > Templates > New Plan from Template, and the new plan will include all of your custom defaults. You can also choose to make this plan the default template plan when saving it, and new plans created with the New Plan command will use this template. This will only work with new plans. All existing plans will retain their default settings.

Great news, Scott!

You're welcome! Glad that helped.

Yes it will. Draw the new railing wall off to the side first and set it to "No Room Definition" I had to add an invisible room divider, perpendicular to the railing wall at the "top" end to keep if from breaking back downward.

I would just turn off the railing on the stairs, draw a separate railing over the stairs set to "follow stairs" and adjust as needed.

As Robert and Gene said, use the Elevation camera to draw the 3D molding polyline and they will automatically stick to the surface drawn on. You can also accurately dimension the polyline to other objects in this type of view.

So perpetual licenses could be renewed for only five years after they stopped selling them. Interesting. My concern has been whether perpetual licenses of older and current versions of CA will still function down the road. It appears that legacy perpetual Autodesk licenses will run indefinitely, but only on the hardware system it was originally activated on. From the Autodesk website: If you have a perpetual license for a version that has reached end of support, you still have rights to use the license for as long as you want. However, for unsupported versions, you can't get a new activation code to reactivate that version for any device. https://www.autodesk.com/support/account/manage/versions/support-lifecycle# If CA follows this model and eventually discontinues allowing perpetual license renewal, I suppose our current license will run indefinitely, but only on the last system it was activated on...

GAHH!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I finally had enough with having to resize the PB docked window every session, and searched and found this thread. OMG I was ready to break something valuable. Give yourself a "Solved" for that one, you deserve it!

You can get it by watching videos, searching the forum, and asking questions as they arise. Rather than purchasing templates, I think you're better off gaining the understanding of how the program is designed to function, so you can modify your own templates as your needs change. But that's just my opinion, as I prefer to develop my own working style and flow; others may prefer to follow someone else's flow and that's ok too. One of the main things you want to focus on is Saved Plan Views (SPVs). This is the core engine that controls your plan development workflow. As you develop Saved Plan Views for your workflow, you will also create specific Custom Layers (including SPV-specific CAD layers), Layer Sets, Saved Dimension Defaults, Saved Text Styles, and possibly Default Sets although those are somewhat of a leftover from versions before SPVs (some still use them as they can make things a little simpler when multiple Saved Plan Views utilize the same Default Set), and more, depending on the requirements to properly execute the view. It's fairly complex but also powerful. It's a lot to explain, and to digest. Check out this video to get started: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/2421/saved-plan-views.html?playlist=100

EXCELLENT ANALOGY! Although I'm sure someone won't agree, and hit me with a reddie.

This is a controversial topic and won't be resolved until someone actually tries to transfer a license. Until then, all we know is that in the past transfers were fairly routine, and that right now Chief is obviously remaining vague about the policy going forward. I do think it's unfair for a certain member to continue making posts and threads claiming it's no longer allowed, and I for one am tired of seeing it. @Fairhaven_Homes I would recommend advertising your license for sale, as has always been done on the Offering Services forum, and see what happens. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/16-offering-services/

I'm pretty happy with my Office rental, because it's only like $8 a month. I could buy it but the rental let's you jump in / jump out. It's a decent program.

Are they? I wondered in the other thread if legacy licenses with expired SSA might one day be deactivated, and got some heat for it. People said "don't worry CA said they would keep working"..... but for how long? People said "they can't guarantee the software will work on your OS forever"... which isn't even the point. The question I have is, will they commit to legacy licenses owners that they won't kill those inactive licenses? So far it's still unclear IMO and I think CA should clarify that... but I'm guessing they won't make any such public commitment, and we'll just have to go forward hoping we don't get strong-armed onto the subscription model.

I could not load a 3DS version either, but .dae worked.

So after doing some further reading, it seems that selling your license was a pretty straightforward thing in the past. Although the software license agreement makes it sound unlikely or rare that such a sale would be approved, posts by chief sales elsewhere on the forum, and older ads offering licenses for sale to "whoever," make it seem pretty standard that your license could be sold. I would think the question of whether that is or isn't changing would be a big deal to some people... The "Offering Services" forum is where ads are placed offering licenses for sale: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/16-offering-services/

I think you're right. Chief Architect addressed that question earlier in the thread: The policy does not seem to be changing, but I don't know that much about it, I never planned to try and sell my license. I've seen a lot of forum posts about doing it and it seems like it's a fairly common occurrence....

Of course. When I said "stop working" I meant due to the license having been deactivated. The software requires periodic validation over the internet or it will "stop working." Have they guaranteed us they won't simply decommission legacy licenses at some future point, in order to completely close out the "ownership" model?? No one would expect a software program to continue working indefinitely on newer hardware/OS, that's absurd.