Chrisb222

I set mine for 10 passes and get nice results in about 3-5 minutes. You reach a point of diminishing returns after so many passes, 10 works for me.

+1 Personally I feel no duty to offer engineering input here but you made a valid point, structurally speaking. This program is for designing structures, presumably that will actually be built, with humans occupying the spaces under and within them. I see no reason why a valid structural concern should be withheld. A wall like that built with wood will be shaky no matter how it's done, and your advice was wise and valuable.

Using two, need four.

What a mess! With all due respect, throw that away and start over.

+100

Yes. Preferences > File Management. Uncheck "Auto Save." Good idea, I might start doing this. Would be nice if you could instruct Chief to auto Date-Time stamp the file name...

+1, this is me. I turned auto save off immediately after starting out with Chief. Sometimes I don't want to save, and I don't want auto save saving something I don't want saved. Hitting Command-S is too easy, and 30 years in the computer design business, back before Auto Save or Archives, teaches you the hard way to SAVE SAVE SAVE

Deck framing should also have this control, Beams > Placement > "With Joists" or "Under Joists" I build decks this way more often than not.

In case any Mac users need this, the App Store has unRAR Free.

Just contact the governing building department where you plan to build, they should be able to help you.

You can select multiple windows then Open and change the type, but not in all cases. For instance it doesn't work if you select single windows along with mulled windows. The easiest way to multi select is using the Match Properties tool but it will select both mulled and single units so it's limited for your purpose.

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00370/adding-drywall-to-part-of-an-exterior-wall.html

Wow, I never noticed that Chief stopped a garage slab at the cutout, and didn't extend over it. I played around with this and couldn't force the program to extend the garage floor over the foundation wall. No way that would be done IRL, or would ever be desirable. Unless I'm missing something, and there's an easy way to make a garage floor behave properly, this should be made into a suggestion...

Here are four unique views of one foundation, in different scales, on two layout pages, using layer sets to control what is visible:

What's displayed in the Layout Box is controlled by layer sets, or annotation sets. Select the Layout Box and click the Layer Properties tool to see which layer set it's referencing. Your Layout Box is probably referencing the Default layer set in the plan, so whenever you alter the Default layer set in the plan, it changes what's displayed in the Layout Box. If you set up layer sets for what you want to display (or better yet, annotation sets) it gives you much more control over your layouts. You can then change which layer set (or annotation set) a layout box is referencing in layout. This is very powerful because you can copy the layout box and paste to another layout page (paste in place keeps it tidy), change the referenced layer set or annotation set, and change what is displayed without changing the original layout box.

You're welcome! Before Chief, when I drew plans on paper, or later, a 2D CAD program, I always worked in 1/2" increments for framing, and 1" increments for foundations. As Joe indicated, with studs at 3-1/2" and 5-1/2", minimum of half-inch is necessary for framing. My plans don't get into dimensioning things like drywall, but on rare occasions there will be something that does have to dimension to a smaller than 1/2" fraction, but it's the rare exception. Post spacing for 5-1/2" posts is the most common place I encounter this, since they're 2-3/4" to center. If designing a block foundation (don't often encounter those now), I tried to work in 8" increments when possible, for efficiency of block-laying. But I'm not an architect, I'm a builder who also designs, so I'm thinking of keeping things simple on the jobsite. Plus I just think a plan looks cleaner with only whole or half-inch measurements. When I work in Chief, my dimension defaults are always set to "Grid Rounding". That way if all my dimensions read how I want them to (whole or half-inch), I know the sum of all dimensions in a string will match an overall dimension even if some dimensions are not really in 1/2" increments (see example). I've never had any "surprises" due to this approach.

Personally, I use 1/2" as the smallest fraction on plans.

Thanks for that info, but I would probably run the software native on whatever system I'm using. I do run Chief on a PC, the HP laptop, but prefer the Mac. Haha, my "first" computer was a TI 99/4A. Spent some time with basic programming on that jewel. Then moved to a Radio Shack TRS-80... WITH dual 8" floppy drives, that contained all program and user data. No hard drive. Yeah, I'm old.

Yes, it's a bummer, I'm in the same boat. Luckily, I was following the discussions here re: issues with rendering in X10 and so have yet to start a new project in it. I'm playing with X10 but still doing workflow in X9. I want to take advantage of all the other great new features, but rendering has to be sorted first.

I'm not 100% sure what exactly you need to do, but if you're trying to eliminate a narrow rip deck board at the end of the deck, try altering the spacing between deck boards, "Plank Gap Width" in the deck room spec DBX, Deck tab. If you want to move the rip to be against the house wall, try changing the "Plank Direction" 180°. I tested this and it worked to reverse the plank order, but one time when I tried it I had to change it from 0° to 180° then back to 0°

Yes, and I expected that, but my current system is GPU handicapped. I haven't given up but RT still works, just differently. So learning is required either way... Come "back" to a PC? Haha, I began computer-graphicing with a Macintosh SE in 1988. Can you say 9" Monochrome Screen? LOL Of all the many Macs I've owned, I only ever bought one PC for myself (although many for the kids)-- an HP laptop for remote Chief presentations. I hate it. However, I may be forced to go that route just to run Chief. The bad thing is while I'm fairly nimble running a Mac, I know next to nothing about operating a PC...

Thanks, I know I need to invest the time to learn the ins and outs, just not sure that's practical with my current system. I'll try though, and thank you for the tips!

I don't delete apps but as a Mac user since 1988 I can tell you, just drag it to the trash. If you want to remove the only other bit of info, go into the Library on your root drive, find the folder for the app you're deleting and move it to the trash too. Then empty trash. Done.

Take an elevation, select the wall, grab the top edit handle and pull the wall down level. Then grab a corner handle and pull the corner down. Use dimensions to get the desired shape/slant.

So far, nothing in this thread addresses why CA needs to automatically change zero-width walls to a thicker wall thickness. Understood that CA changes them, but why is it necessary? Why would a "Room Divider" that divides an open space into two "rooms" ever need to be more than zero width? Why would the software arbitrarily override my desire for the Divider to remain zero width? It seems to me that this behavior defeats the purpose of the wall type. It's a thing that makes you go "hmmmmm" This comment escapes me. What is it about differing floor or ceiling heights that causes us to need a thicker "Invisible" wall??