tundra_dweller

Agreed 100%. I am working on a project with a walkout basement and I was finally going to try the basement as floor 1 method, but I gave up on that because it has an attached garage with frost footings and I could not figure out a way to make that logically work so that I have all my footings and stemwalls on one foundation plan sheet. Plus, not having my main level subfloor at zero absolute elevation drives me nuts.

Yes you just have to set up your floor structure for that room just like you would a deck. Sloped sleepers / joists / slabs would be great, but at this point I think they're best handled by separate details or CAD over sections.

Yeah you have to deal with the deck structure & support elements of a deck. I think I remember a ceiling finish issue for the room below too. The balcony room worked great for me this time.

I used the Materials > Exterior Wall Surface tab of each railing wall dbx to control that exterior finish layer. In my case it was already set to a white trim material. The main thing I remember was getting an error message about a deck room over a non-deck room or something like that. That was a few versions ago so that may have changed. In either case you should be able to set up the floor structure however you want it.

@GeneDavis Gene, open up the room dbx for the porch and adjust the stem wall top to match the floor elevation.

Yeah I'm not sure because it makes no sense. I'm not even sure how I managed to stumble across figuring this out a couple weeks ago. I think there should just be a dedicated tool button for the living area label that can go on your toolbars.

What works for me in X18 is to select the "exterior room" and then hit the new don't show label button. Seems totally counter-intuitive but it works.

I think the only time I've had this happen before was when I was working with manual roofs and I either didn't union the roof planes together at the peak before framing, or when I selected only one of the two roof planes to frame at a time. Good to hear you got it fixed, and your sig too!

I had the 1st floor done yesterday, and I didn't have to fight the software as much as I figured I would on the 2nd floor with the deck, gambrel roof, and shed dormers. It went surprisingly smooth.

Try going into Preferences > General > Unit Conversions and edit the ' and " units, check the Default Unit box.

Thanks all for the assistance, the balcony room worked good! I'm not going to worry about the slope, this is the existing condition and the new addition will be farther back under the shed dormer area.

Great info, thanks Robert!

Thanks Scott, I'll check it out!

Okay balcony it is, thanks guys! I probably won't worry about the roof slope either. I'll try and remember to report back on how it worked out.

I'm working on an as-built for a cabin that has a 22'x24' deck built on a flat roof over a living room. Before I start on the 2nd floor I'm wondering what the best way to model this "room" is. It's been a while since I've done one of these. I'm hoping I can just build the room with railings, set the room type as whatever with no roof over, set my floor framing to the right depth, and change the flooring to decking. If I remember right, setting the room type to deck doesn't work very well in these situations. The addition won't be attached to this deck so I don't care if the roofing is included or the framing spot on, I just want it to look close on elevation views/renderings. I will probably just use a molding to model the soffits/fascia under the deck.

I would take the leap. I've been using X18 exclusively for about the past month, both bringing a few projects forward from X17 and new projects. I can't think of anything from X17 that is "broken" or is compromised in any way. There are some great new tools/features that are big improvements. I think there are a few things with the new X18 features that probably need to be refined somewhat, but I'm happy with X18 overall. Edit: I just now noticed that X18 official was just released, I have not used this latest version yet.

@winterdd Your plan link is private, it needs to be set to allow anyone with the link to access it. My first thought was that you have a ponywall set up with an airgap for the upper wall, but I seem to remember that wall caps with pony walls usually put the wall cap on top of the lower wall anyway. Interesting...

After losing a Springer and a Brittany, both 14 yrs old and full fledged members of the family over the past ten years, I know how you feel. Rest in Peace Jimmy. And also my boys Jackson and Caden.

Currently there's not a very elegant way to handle this as far as I know. Something like what's suggested in this thread would be a good improvement IMO.

Layer based fills is by far the new feature I am using the most thus far, I haven't had a chance to dive too deep into anything else yet. Looking at Rene's list I'm looking forward to checking the rest out when I can. Another thing I am super excited about is the As-Built app. Costco had a good sale on I-pad pros last week so I picked one up and tried the app at my house this morning. It was more accurate than I expected and even if I have to do a few check-dimensions it's still going to save me a ton of time over my old way of doing as-builts, which was mostly pen/laser & paper. X18 is a really great release. Is there room for improvement? Always. But in a world where enshittification is now the normal trend for almost every product and service I've relied on over the years, I'm extremely happy that Chief is one of the few who are still listening to their users and don't seem to look at pure profit as the end-all/be-all to their business model.

Great question and this would be pretty cool. I also typically dimension it on sections using either a cad line or a point markers so it's not dynamic and subject to errors if I forget to update.

Glad I'm not the only one who's run into this, I couldn't figure out what would be causing this. After seeing the op pic they even seem to be in the same pattern as I usually see, so I know this is probably a software issue vs user issue.

I just ran into this problem as well. If you're trying to place the vent in a 3d camera view, try placing it in plan view instead, at your attic level. I've also run into problems placing these when you have an attic wall running perpendicular to your gable end in the space where you want your vent.

Yes! This would apply at least 80% of the time for my use cases.

I get the same behavior in X17. I don't think I've ever tried to put a footing under a railing before. You can get a simulated footing by making the railing a pony wall and putting a wide concrete wall as the lower wall type. I'd probably just use a solid and put it on the footing layer if I were doing it though.