Chrisb222

Absolutely. Stop the bus, take whatever time it takes to get this under your belt. You're driving an outdated bus that's been superseded by leaps and bounds. Get into the new bus and get up to speed! Actually no, but you'll still get your desired result if the "bus" is configured properly. All joking aside, I create live plot plans using the actual building plan file, and the lines weights are preset to look correct in layout. If I want the plot plan to be 1"=40' I send it to layout at that scale and the line weights are what I want. Because I'm using Saved Plan Views and Default Sets properly. Make the move! https://www.chiefarchitect.com/search/?default_tab=video&q=saved+plan+views *EDIT: You're not actually changing the "drawing sheet scale" on individual SPVs. This has been requested but is not a feature yet. What you'll be doing is assigning various defaults to the SPV to achieve the line weights, text sizes, and other variables to suit the scale that the view will be sent to layout with.

I agree, I'm sending it in this morning just for a look-see. The truss setting should perform the same as the rafter setting. What's interesting is my setting is balloon through ceiling above. And I always draw ceiling planes to the inside of the wall and the wall stops at the ceiling. Confusing. Right, that option is also being explored. Different pros and cons.

Material Definition > Materials List tab: You'll probably want to make a new material with this new size definition.

You have no exterior wall layers in your wall specs. You need at least one exterior layer to wrap down over the floor structure. This is typical:

Finally got this to work. Initially it ballooned to the top chord, but dragging the sloped ceiling out to the outer wall layer stopped it at the bottom chord.

Yes, I already tried that. Balloons to the truss top chord which isn't workable. The wall builds correctly using rafters without any adjustment to the wall. That's the difference.

So I have a project that calls for a high shed roof with a matching vaulted ceiling, built with parallel chord trusses. The program doesn't want to build the high wall when using trusses. It will build it with rafters, including ceiling joists. See attached images and attached OOB Residential Template sample plan. I can manually raise the wall top height, but it doesn't function correctly for setting high windows, and caused other problems as well. Thanks for any insight if I have missed something, but I think this is "unintended functionality" that needs sent in... Rafters: Trusses: Sample file: High Shed Roof.plan

Make sure it wasn't moved to a non-standard location. From Support: If the Chief Architect Premier Data folder is renamed, moved or deleted, the program will automatically replace it using default information from the program's installation folder. When this occurs, customized user settings and custom user library content will not be available.

Just change some things around. Tell your clients you cannot and will not copy anything verbatim, unless they can prove they own the copyright or have permission from the owner to copy. This has been litigated to the point of establishing fairly clear lines of what is legal or not. You cannot copy someone's work verbatim, but you're allowed to be inspired by others' work. i.e., if you're working from an existing design, change some things around and you should be good, with the caveat that anyone can sue anyone for anything. I do know of one local instance where, after negotiating with a midsized regional builder, a person took the simple flyer of one of their designs (basic floor plan / ext rendering) to another small builder and copied it - just the floor plan, with significantly different exterior - and the first builder went in the building after framing and recognized his floor plan design. He threatened to sue the owner and demanded some thousands to settle. I was consulted by a mutual associate on behalf of the owner, and felt the first builder didn't have a claim since the house was greatly different. The owner decided to settle out of court, but it would've been interesting to see what a judge would decide. Interestingly to the OPs question, AFAIK the second builder, nor whoever drew the final plans were involved.

Set your screen to a shape roughly equal to your target dimensions, go to File > Export > Export Picture, and click "Units", type in the dimension you want, keep "Retain Aspect Ratio" checked, then enter something like 200 DPI. That will produce a pretty high resolution picture, about 3.6 MB. Some clipping may be required to change it to the exact dimensions, unless you can set that ratio up before saving.

+1, I had forgotten about the 2D CAD plants, which DO show in plot line views.... and I even use them in layouts!

The standard 2D plants are just "pictures, " they are not 3D objects and cannot be converted to plot lines.

There's a couple of window wells in the library. Might be a bonus catalog, I'm not at my computer. Automatically cuts the terrain, has separate material settings for the retaining wall and the "floor" so you make that gravel, dirt or whatever you want. Resizable.

Actually, you definitely want to use Roof Beams to get the benefits of automatic placement under ceiling, easy adjustments, plumb joints and ends, and automatic grain direction. The easiest and best method IMO is to create another separate roof at the pitch of your ceiling, draw the roof beam there, then move the beam into your project. If using Auto Roofs, make another building with the roof direction, size, and pitch matching your target ceiling, draw the beam there then point-to-point move the beam into your project. This will allow you to retain Auto Roofs. If you're already in manual roofs, just draw a roof plane outside the structure somewhere and create the beam there. See pics: Plumb ends with auto grain:

You don't mean a cricket do you? I'm a little confused by your question. I don't know that we actually "add" a valley, they are simply the result of two perpendicular planes... A screenshot with some notes would be helpful...

I'm sure there's a good explanation for this alternative workflow, and that I'm dense, but I have no idea how these various elements and phases can be "automatically controlled by the software" without some user directives that I would think would require some amount of setup work and diligence, not greatly unlike the directives we assign with Chief...? If you want a chance at catching lightning in a bottle you at least have to hold up a bottle (i.e., nothing will change by posting here, head over to the Suggestions forum)

I think you'll want the additional RAM in Option B. Or upgrade Option A to 16GB for $200. Rendering speed won't be a problem with either choice, I use a Studio / M1 Max and it flies. But it has 32GB unified memory, so that may be a factor...

Open the Room Specification > Structure > Ceiling Finish and delete all layers: Do you have the layer Framing, Floor Joists set to display in your Standard camera view?

You can raise the roof without affecting the wall heights.

Then the poor framer has to think!

It's doing that because your Dimension Default is set to Distance Rounding. Change the Primary Format to "Grid Rounding" and the problem goes away. And I would absolutely urge you to change your dimension defaults. Most of your user dim defaults beginning with an * are set to use Distance Rounding, which has the potential to introduce dimension errors in your dimension string. (You also should check "Use Greatest Common Divisor" instead of "Use Closest Fraction.) From Help:

Did you link to the right plan?? I'm not seeing anything like your screenshot above. And no need to back up the entire plan. Just save, close Chief, zip and send.

IDK when I set the smallest fraction to 1/16 and type in a 2/3 dimension it automatically displays 5/8. Maybe post a plan showing the behavior.

Why not add a second ref display. Or a third?

I've done it before using an invisible railing to close off the slip.