Sub basements

[Caddyman]

I'm looking for ideas on how to create a sub basement for a steep piece of land. The plan is already drawn with 10' basement now the customer wants to raise the house first floor another 16'. This will be done by adding another level below the basement. I realize Chief has only one foundation level (floor 0) so I'm looking for the most efficient way to add the floor for the sub basement without too much headache of the existing floors and roof. Any input and potential pitfalls would be very helpful.

[javatom]

This is one of the most cumbersome things to do with chief.  There can be many ways to do this.  As Eric said, you have to insert a floor.  I have also done this by creating a new plan with the required number of floors and using a cut/paste to place the floors on the new levels you want them on.  It is a pretty fast way to rearrange things.  This also works if floors need to reverse which level they are on.  One hint on any of this - Objects should be set to have the elevation above finished floor instead of absolute.  That way they will move up and down with the floor it is associated with.

[Caddyman]

I have tried to insert a new floor. The issue are the elevations. The roof and floor seems to move up fine, but the moldings and millwork stays on the level it was drawn on. Not a huge deal but it makes for a good bit of editing. For some reason it inserts the new floor and if I start drawing the sub basement I get a odd ceiling height default. Where does this info come from?

 

If I copy and paste the floors in a new plan. I will need to reproduce the exterior elevations, molding and millwork.

 

So I guess there is not a quick way to accomplish it. I was hoping for a quicker solution, but it is what it is.

 

Thanks for the input.

[lbuttery]

you can have all 30 floors below grade

 

Lew

[Caddyman]

If interested here is what I ended up doing. If I were on floor zero and inserted a floor Chief would make floor zero the sub basement. The problem was it was not the correct ceiling height and everything got screwy above. I never did find where the default height was. Unlike creating a new floor where you are prompted for floor heights it would create something automatically no matter what my defaults were for floor or foundation. The work around I used was to create a new floor while on floor 1. That moved all floors up one level and created a blank level on floor one. Doing it this way allowed me to get my new floor ceiling heights correct moving the roof and opening the correct distance. I then copied my existing foundation to the new floor one. That’s it in a nut shell. Hopefully it helps.