Chrisb222

This is mostly true. It doesn't "blend" colors, i.e., blending yellow color into a blue material does not make the material green, it makes it yellow. But in the most literal sense it does not "replace all other color values with the color picked" either. There is some blending going on. The hues of the existing values are changed to match the hue of the color picked, while the values remain relatively unchanged. Color value refers to the color's relative darkness and lightness. These relative values are not changed. Hue refers to the place on the color spectrum, red, green, etc. The color picked determines the hue of the new blended material. The "blending" that happens is the new hue being blended with the previous values, modifying the material to have the same distinct shading but a different "color." It's a great tool that allows us to create a material that possesses the shading characteristics of the source material but with a different color, as opposed to wiping out the shading definition and just ending up with a flat color. But it could be made much better if it didn't always completely erase the variety of hues. Some textures, stone for example, may comprise a variety of hues, which when "blended" are all mapped to the single hue of the picked color. At times I want to make something just a little "browner" or "redder" without losing the variety of hues in the texture, and without going into Photoshop or another image editor and making a new texture file. It would be nice if there was an option to shift the color of all hues without mapping them all to the one new hue. (Suggestion time?) Finally, the existence of such multi-hued textures is why all textures are not just grayscale value maps with a single color hue applied.

Right, I'm aware of those methods, thanks. Would be nice to create my own drop-down though. I have custom configs now but with user-defined drop-downs, much more could be accomplished in one toolbar, without taking much screen space. Time for a Suggestion.

Do we have the ability to add a user-defined drop-down to contain our library item buttons? I could get all kinds of custom content on my toolbar if we could do that, but I don't want to clutter it up with a bunch of single buttons...

Wow, that's what I call whipping this program into submission! Nice work, thanks for sharing your technique.

You can say that again. Even if you don't need assistance, just reading what others are talking about is a gold mine of great tips and techniques.

All the textures from chief shown here look like barn metal to me. There was a link on page one to some decent standing seam textures, but like Joe said, they're all just flat pictures and will never look like true 3D. A decent fake? Yeah, depending on viewing angle and need for accuracy.

Good point, "Fencing" wouldn't be a great way to create a wall like that on sloping terrain. They're also available on the main "Build" menu.

Don't you mean Newels/Posts? Nice work.

Anyone here would just be guessing what your local building department requires. Why not ask them?

Maximum difference between riser heights is 3/8". Same for tread depths.

That's a shed roof where I come from, but we also don't wear shoes. Mono pitch sounds positively snooty.

As with many other weak texture files in Chief (shingles are about the worst), there are tons of better, free textures online. Just do a search. Look for "seamless" they're, well... seamless.

In X10, this change is done on the General panel of the Define Material specification. There you can change the Sheet size.

I think there was more wrong with that house than just lactating anchor bolts.

Yes but the method depends on which version of the software you're using. My models use three types of drywall: 4' x 12' 1/2", 54" x 12' 1/2", and 4' x 12' 5/8"

One way to do it is to draw a room for your stairwell at ground level using Exterior Walls. Turn on "Auto Rebuild Foundations" or draw foundation walls under these new exterior walls. Select the room you created with the exterior walls, open it and make it "Open Below" room type. Under the Structure tab, uncheck "Roof over this room." Select the walls you drew to create the room, open them, go to Wall Type > Define and hit Copy to make a copy of that wall type. Delete all layers except the main layer, and change its Material to "Insulation Air Gap" (an invisible material). Make this layer 0 thickness. Return to the foundation and draw a foundation wall to separate the stairwell from the main foundation. This will defeat Auto Rebuild Foundations.

You have a layer of plywood on the bottom of the joists, in Defaults > Framing > Foundation > Floor Structure. Remove that plywood and check "Automatically build floor and ceiling framing" and the joists cut at the beam. That plywood is forcing the joists to continue under/through the beam.

This is a great conversation. Imported dormers, seeing floor joists through plywood, using a spud bar as a trowel, lactating anchor bolts... I could go on. But we have it too easy. According to my father-in-law, in the 50s foundations were poured by wheelbarrowing concrete from the street, up a ramp crossing the overdig onto and around the 2x6 catwalk, then dumped into the plywood forms they built. (Wow. I think I would've found other work.) And of course all those homes were uphill from the street, and had 1/4 mile long driveways. Amazingly, a few of those homes are still standing.

HAHA! Interesting. I too am a design-builder with more experience and knowledge of construction than design. But whether you're a designer, a builder, or anyone really, it should make sense that the plan pages reflect what you can actually see in that space... if you think about it.

+1 When I thought about that I actually thought, no, when the building is framed, if you look down when standing on Floor 1, you see the surface of the subfloor, and when you look up you see the floor joists for floor 2, or the roof framing. Just like the way Chief and architects have always viewed it.

Thanks Joe. After further studying / testing this issue, manual dimensions have the same restrictions over the arrow size and style, even with the added control of Dimension Defaults. That is, if we're wanting a common dimension string to appear differently in different views, the above control -- or lack thereof -- discussed for automatic dimensions also applies to manual dimensions: the text style and size, and line weight and color can be controlled independently by Layer settings, but not the arrow size and style. Joe, your Suggestion to add Auto Dim Defaults to Annotations is a good one, but I feel we also need some way to control the arrow size and style for common dimensions that we want to appear in multiple views, but with different attributes. Not sure if that's even feasible, given the current architecture of the software... your thoughts?

Wow, that's horrible, sorry for making light of it. Good luck getting everything back.

You're welcome, now go tweak that template plan file some more!!

Create a text style specific to the layer set for that view. The layers respect different settings for different layer sets.

You can control the size, etc of the auto dims text, as well as the line size and color, using the Auto Dims layer set controls. Then at least those attributes will switch with your plan views. If you can live with a static arrow, that will solve your issue.