21st Century


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Why doesn't Chief Architect get in the 21st century and frame roofs with roof trusses instead of the old by gone roof rafters? Todays roof truss manufacturers can frame any imaginable roof with pre-manufactured trusses.

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I would be willing to bet that 95% or more of residences in this country are built with pre-engineered roof trusses. Who can afford the labor of a contractor cutting his own roof framing? There is not one contractor in my area that hand

frames roofs. they may do the occasional hand framing of a small area but about it. I have worked with roof trusses in

chief but poorly represented and inaccurate in the program.

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 I have worked with roof trusses in chief but poorly represented and inaccurate in the program.

What is the exact problem you've had? My experience has been just the opposite, provided you know how to use them. It would be helpful if you would add a signature line with your version of Chief.

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I would be willing to bet that 95% or more of residences in this country are built with pre-engineered roof trusses. Who can afford the labor of a contractor cutting his own roof framing? There is not one contractor in my area that hand

frames roofs. they may do the occasional hand framing of a small area but about it. I have worked with roof trusses in

chief but poorly represented and inaccurate in the program.

 

I agree that a huge majority are built with MFR trusses.  But you claim of them being poorly represented?  Like Richard, my experience is the opposite.  Granted, I do have a couple issues that come up, but most are user error.

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I use x8. I can get them to work but takes a lot of time and not always as accurate or detailed as I would like. Our truss supplier uses Mi-tek Saaphire and that works great for them but I like to do the layouts myself as I review shops and layouts before ordering. This is the way roofs are built anymore and would just like my cadd program to catch up with the times.

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For example, today was doing some trusses for a L shaped garage with 4 roof planes. The first problem was that it would

not build an energy truss even when "force rebuild" was checked. Then I edited in a cross section but when copied

reverted back to the bottom chord coming back out to the fascia. Couldn't leave the "lock truss" option on as every trusswas different and didn't feel like editing every truss and a fairly simple layout so just gave up.

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Well, I can think of a few issues. One, for the energy heels to work, the roof must be raised off of the top plate by 7" min. Was it? Two, you should be editing the trusses in the Truss detail window, not the section. You can get much better answers if you post the plan you are having trouble with, and have specific goals in your question.

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What I have done with verifying Mfr trusses with Chief models is have the truss Mfr export there 2d/3d models and importing into Chief.  Works well in making sure the trusses are right and let me know if there is anything that i have to change with the design. 

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I would be willing to bet that 95% or more of residences in this country are built with pre-engineered roof trusses. Who can afford the labor of a contractor cutting his own roof framing? There is not one contractor in my area that hand

frames roofs. they may do the occasional hand framing of a small area but about it. I have worked with roof trusses in

chief but poorly represented and inaccurate in the program.

I hardly ever use trusses, 4000 jobs in 40 years, maybe 10 used trusses.

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Why doesn't Chief Architect get in the 21st century and frame roofs with roof trusses instead of the old by gone roof rafters? Todays roof truss manufacturers can frame any imaginable roof with pre-manufactured trusses.

 

You must live in a bubble.   LOTS of houses are still stick built.   Custom homes are almost all stick built.   Most complex roofs are not worth the headache to truss.   Sure, they work on paper, but the labor cost to block and infill is not worth it in the long run to have a job that does not come out as nice.   Volume ceilings and treys are much more limited in truss homes.

Sure, run of the mill boxes that you are going to build the same plan 100 times,...by all means truss.   

 

Also done a lot of commercial mixed use (as a framing contractor back in the day).   Most plans done by architects (and we are talking big firms and 50,000-80,000 sqft 3story complexes) are very low detail.  Just showing a few basic shapes and aprox layout.   The actual "detail" is done by the EWP manufacturer.   Silly to invest a lot of time into laying out something you cant run the calcs' on anyway, and you are not going to seal.

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