Chrisb222

Had that idea this morning while laying in bed trying to not wake up yet. That probably would fix it, but I'm heading out to set trusses in the sleet... Yeah, that stairway was not ready for prime time. I made it quickly to illustrate my issue with the invisible wall covering the stair drawing. Pulling the 3-1/2" wall away to expose the stairs also pulls the railing out which may not be the desired location for the railing. Zero thickness wall fixes that but is not always cooperative. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Got it, yes that "solved" all of the issues. You like puzzles, don't you? Thanks for your work on this Eric. Thanks, I will do this and report their answer, if any, in this thread.

Okay, I was able to recreate that process and it worked for simple stairs. I guess I need to stop building stairways manually. Even worked for the "L" shaped stairway using Room Divider to split the stairway... until I made one half of the split a vaulted ceiling. Then the divider jumped to 3-1/2" and has white fill covering part of the stair drawing. Besides, I'm still wondering why an invisible wall, with "Fill" set to "None" and invisible wall layer off, has a white fill in the first place... See attach. Thanks. stairway2.plan

Here we use four 8" courses above footer. I leave one full 8" course above FINISHED grade (after grading up to create drainage slope). This gives 32" below grade frost protection, code for this area. ICC Code is 6" minimum between ground and non-decay-resistant finish materials:

Yes, I only turn on invisible walls when I need to see them, that layer is always off otherwise. The solid white fill remains even with the layer off. Here's a simple plan that shows the issue. Even if you turn off Invisible Walls, the invisible wall covers the line that indicates the top of the stairs. That's using a new Wall Type with "None" selected as Fill Style. Moving the wall so the stairs show completely changes the desired location of the ends of the railings. That invisible wall was a zero-thickness room divider until I made the stairway "Open Below" then it jumped to 3-1/2" thick. stairway.plan

Hi, I'm often frustrated with invisible walls that have a solid fill I can't turn off. I also often have Room Divider walls that jump from zero to 3-1/2" thickness for no apparent reason. This usually happens when I create a stairway and need to use an invisible wall at the entrance to the stairs. Often the line defining the top end off the stairs is covered by the invisible wall, even when I turn off the Invisible Wall layer. Changing Fill to "None" in the Wall Type Spec DBX didn't help, and neither did changing the fill to Transparent. Why can I still see a white solid fill on a wall that is on a layer that's turned off?? I've worked around it before by using a zero thickness wall but that doesn't always work as the walls will usually jump to 3-1/2" thickness without warning, and it just seems wrong that the fill is there when the invisible wall layer is turned off. In the case today I need to divide a turned stairway into two rooms so I can create two different ceilings over the stairway, i.e. the stairway is an "L" shape and half the opening has a vaulted ceiling and half has flat ceiling. I got the ceiling to work fine, but the invisible "Room Divider" wall that I used to split the Open Below rooms keeps jumping up to 3-1/2" thick, and it has a solid white fill that obscures some of the stairway lines. When I do finally say the proper curse words, hold may mouth just right, and force the divider to zero thickness, it wrecks the ceiling and attic wall alignment in the room, and also messed up the wall intersections (see pics). I didn't post the plan because at this point the stairway is a mess, I just have some basic questions -- should I be able to make an invisible 3-1/2" thick wall transparent so that lines underneath show in plan view? Why do zero thickness walls change to 3-1/2" thick? Is this something we just have to deal with or am I missing something obvious?? Thanks CA X9 Premier Mac OSX

Odd... I added a second floor to your Wall Thickness plan, moved the standard Stucco-6 walls out flush with the thick wall, and the windows did not fill in... even using the windows and arched doorway from the other plan... no clue why. Looks nice though! Wall Thickness - 2 story.plan

You can get a Win98 machine on eBay for 100 bucks, if your only goal is restoring what you had.

Make sure in RT settings, on the "Advanced" tab, that "Use Photon Mapping" is check-marked. With "Use Photon Mapping" checked: Everything exactly the same, except with "Use Photon Mapping" unchecked:

You can make anything as shiny/reflective as you want using the "Adjust Material Definition" tool. Vase with stock Polished Copper material: Same material after material adjustment:

I use a 17.3" HP Pavilion 2.6GHz i7 8GB for remote presentations and it runs X9 just fine. I don't ray trace with it, and rotating a 3D view is slightly jerky but it's fast with static 3D cameras, and the thing only cost $700. HDMI out connects to the client's TV. Perfect for me.

That's it --- exposed, carpet-wrapped studs WILL be in one of my houses some day...

Mark, yes I avoid the CA Library cabinets too, but it's frustrating that the "Build" menu has only base and wall cabinets, not sink bases, drawer units etc. When you say make your own and place in library, are you saying those cabinets will now behave like the ones in the "Build" menu? Can you please expand on this advice? Thank you.

Yeah, after upgrading to X9, occasionally I will get the disappearing cursor in the workspace. It comes back after I close some views or open others. Mac OSX High Sierra, CA X9.

When you're trying to do something you don't know how to do, go to google, type "site:chiefarchitect.com [keyword]" and you will likely find your answer ([keyword] is whatever you're trying to do). This will restrict your search to the chief website and includes results from the tutorials, the training videos, and the chieftalk blog. This is how I learned very much, and still do.

Hi, reviving this thread because I just used it to learn how to make this type of rake wall / railing, and found that if I deleted a few of the objects connected to your flat ramp (the full height walls, the landing), then hit "undo" to restore them, the tread overhang popped out to match the tread on the angled ramp. It's weird but I have found that with CA sometimes you have to delete objects then undo the delete, to get it to fix a quirk. I also got the effect by turning off "Treads" in the ramps, and specifying a bottom rail for the railing that was 3/4"H x 5 1/2"W, with "Raise Bottom" unchecked, which I have used often to generate a shoe plate on a flat railing. It didn't work at the connection of the two rails, however. It won't pass under a newel, and with newels turned off there is no baluster there. (See pic) ) I like the ramp technique for this problem. Thanks to everyone for the tips in this thread.

+1 love it

Experiment with Ambient Light: Color settings in Ray Trace, Lighting panel, with "Use Camera View Settings" unchecked. The default Color setting is white, making it gray will affect the darkness of nighttime ray traces.

This worked for me! Thanks Michael.

Haha, funny thing is I did do a forum search and didn't come up with that hit. I also tried writing a macro before posting the thread but was unsuccessful. Anyway, that worked, thanks Eric!

Thanks. I know, but I only have three types of flooring in the entire house; hardwood, tile, and carpet. They can be different colors or styles, that's up to the homeowner, but the type won't change. I also like the graphical look of the floor plan with just shapes of areas that share flooring types. The schedule is tedious and doesn't give totals for like rooms, you would have to add all the hardwood floors together for example.

Hi, I want to convert the rooms into polylines and show total area in rounded sq ft. I have combined the living/dining/kitchen/hall which all receive hardwood. When I assign the Object Specific "Area" macro to the label it gives me area in decimal feet with 6 or 7 decimal places. I would like to round this to ZERO but haven't had luck. I can't use the "Room Area" macro because they're no longer rooms, the macro is not recognized. Any ideas? Thanks. See attached.

@solver Thanks again Eric. Thanks to your kind help I can now show my client what they want, and not have to make excuses why I can't.

Great, thanks a million. Working with it now, practicing holding my mouth just right...

Great idea, I'm going to steal that one too. Not a fan of stock room divider.