Ceiling Plane doing crazy things

[Evolution]

(Ceiling Plane Issue Resolved) Thanks to Eric, Steve, Dermot and all other contributors. 

 

 

 

Well, one issue fixed and new one pops up. Needed to get the walls to 12'. Perry's quick response help me resolve it quickly by Selecting roof plane, and raising it to the 12' by means of Transform / replicate.  Took several section views and all looked good.  Then I started lowering the ceiling in each individual space to 9'. Look good to start off but one room so far has a sloped ceiling plane even though I specified flat ceiling in each space (double checked it) so this doesn't make sense?  I attempted to raise the corner that is sloping of that one wall, however; and that worked, but when I pulled another section the section shows the CP is still sloped although in the Perspective Floor overview the wall appears to be level now.

MPD Plan.plan

[SNestor]

I didn't have any problem lowering your ceilings to 9'.  You may have missed one or two of the "chase" areas on your plan.

 

I've attached the corrected plan and a couple pics.  There are some walls that extend to 12'...I didn't mess with those.

 

  

 

MPD Plan - fixed.plan

[Evolution]

14 hours ago, SNestor said:

I didn't have any problem lowering your ceilings to 9'.  You may have missed one or two of the "chase" areas on your plan.

 

I've attached the corrected plan and a couple pics.  There are some walls that extend to 12'...I didn't mess with those.

 

  

 

MPD Plan - fixed.plan

Thanks Steve, not sure how you got it to work? I did go back and check all the column "chases", but they were all set for 144" like all the rest of the rooms. I also went back and checked both rooms (each side of the wall with the quirky angle) they were also set for 144". I noticed a couple things on the "fixed" plan you did, one is the front eve connection with the lower roof over the porch / entry there is a hole in the attic wall? You'd think all I had to do was grab that corner and pull it up and that would fix it? 

Thanks for the great help!

[SNestor]

4 hours ago, Evolution said:

Thanks Steve, not sure how you got it to work? I did go back and check all the column "chases", but they were all set for 144" like all the rest of the rooms. I also went back and checked both rooms (each side of the wall with the quirky angle) they were also set for 144". I noticed a couple things on the "fixed" plan you did, one is the front eve connection with the lower roof over the porch / entry there is a hole in the attic wall? You'd think all I had to do was grab that corner and pull it up and that would fix it? 

Thanks for the great help!

 

I made a quick video about the pony walls in your building.  Not sure if you want the walls the way they are drawn...but the walls don't align.  Hope it helps...

 

 

[Dermot]

The short answer is that you have a custom ceiling plane.  These don't magically appear by themselves so you must have drawn this at some point.  Just delete it and then reset your wall heights back to default.

 

The longer answer would have to include all of other things in your plan that I thought were either strange or wrong.  I see nothing in your plan that requires all of the manual work that you are doing.  The lowered ceiling looks like it could be handled through your room defaults and you could probably even use the automatic roof tools. 

 

I saw a number of problems related to your walls though so I would consider working on getting those right first and then worrying about your ceilings and roofs.  I'm not sure why you painted a brick material onto a Siding 6 wall but this probably is not what you want. You can't change the structure of a wall by painting a material on it.  You should probably reset all of your wall materials back to "use default" first and then fix the wall definitions.  In addition, it looks like you are having some wall alignment issues with the pony walls.  In general, Chief does not really like pony walls that are thicker at the top then the bottom and this is why your interior walls have gaps at the bottom when attached to them.  You should try to model your walls as close to how they will be built in the real world to avoid these issues. 

 

I would then focus on your rooms.  If you ever find yourself trying to change all of your rooms by editing each room in your plan, I would suggest that you are doing it the hard way.  You should probably reset the room structures back to "use default" and change the default room for the floor instead.  You might want to use the "Reset to Defaults" tool as a start.  In general, you should only edit the room structure of an individual room when it is going to be different from all of the rest.

 

Once your walls and rooms are correct, I think the roof will be easy.

 

I would highly recommend that your review some of our training videos and help articles.  You might also want to consider some of our various training options:

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/training/

 

[Evolution]

5 hours ago, Dermot said:

The short answer is that you have a custom ceiling plane.  These don't magically appear by themselves so you must have drawn this at some point.  Just delete it and then reset your wall heights back to default.

 

The longer answer would have to include all of other things in your plan that I thought were either strange or wrong.  I see nothing in your plan that requires all of the manual work that you are doing.  The lowered ceiling looks like it could be handled through your room defaults and you could probably even use the automatic roof tools. 

 

I saw a number of problems related to your walls though so I would consider working on getting those right first and then worrying about your ceilings and roofs.  I'm not sure why you painted a brick material onto a Siding 6 wall but this probably is not what you want. You can't change the structure of a wall by painting a material on it.  You should probably reset all of your wall materials back to "use default" first and then fix the wall definitions.  In addition, it looks like you are having some wall alignment issues with the pony walls.  In general, Chief does not really like pony walls that are thicker at the top then the bottom and this is why your interior walls have gaps at the bottom when attached to them.  You should try to model your walls as close to how they will be built in the real world to avoid these issues. 

 

I would then focus on your rooms.  If you ever find yourself trying to change all of your rooms by editing each room in your plan, I would suggest that you are doing it the hard way.  You should probably reset the room structures back to "use default" and change the default room for the floor instead.  You might want to use the "Reset to Defaults" tool as a start.  In general, you should only edit the room structure of an individual room when it is going to be different from all of the rest.

 

Once your walls and rooms are correct, I think the roof will be easy.

 

I would highly recommend that your review some of our training videos and help articles.  You might also want to consider some of our various training options:

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/training/

 

I have two different color brick as you can see from elevation.  I attempted the pony wall with 6" Brick using Red brick 5 for the upper wall, and Crème Painted brick for the lower, but no matter what I did when I changed the lower wall to the crème the upper wall also changed,  I needed to get it done down and dirty for a quick presentation last night to the City Council and the only way I could figure at the last minute was to change the lower part of the PW to siding making it as thick as I could, then painting the crème brick on it.  I know that's not how you do it, but I still haven't figured it out.  IT worked well enough to show the council to get the go ahead. It's hectic in a one man office when you suddenly have three projects you've been working on suddenly all become Fire cracker hot, because someone else decided they were in a hurry and put me in the hot seat. This is the most I've used the software for a long time.

[Evolution]

14 hours ago, solver said:

Make a copy of the red brick wall and change the brick to the cream. Use the new wall on the bottom of the pony wall.

 

Walls are fixed.  But, Eric, admitting I'm dumb as-a-box-of rocks, how did you do the clip showing the wall section like you have?   I've tried everything and haven't found it yet?

[javatom]

I believe that is the cross section slider tool.

[Evolution]

1 hour ago, javatom said:

I believe that is the cross section slider tool.

Did the CS Slider and that helps me see what is going on.  So Eric I used your suggestion and I believe I've got all my walls fixed the correct way. But, Dermit, I've tried and tried and cannot find a custom ceiling plane I created.  There are only two rooms affected by the crazy ceiling.  I opened both of the rooms dbx toggled through the settings and never found a ceiling plane that was created with that specific tool.  I used KB - 01050 MANUALLY FRAMING A DROPPED CEILING to create the different ceiling heights in the individual rooms that have differing heights. SO, how can I find this custom ceiling you say I must've created?

[Dermot]

Eric's method is a good way to find things.  I happened to find it by creating a full overview and turning off the roof.  You can also see it in plan view if you look for the pink edge lines close to the walls.  It is hard to select unless you click right on an edge line and you probably need to use the tab key to get it.

[Joe_Carrick]

In another thread I gave a simple (and IMO the correct way) to lower a ceiling.  This works for the defaults as well as for individual rooms but I would first use it to set the defaults correctly for each floor:

• Change the Floor/Room Defaults by selecting "Ceiling Finish"
• Note that it is probably just a single 5/8" thick drywall which causes the "Finished Ceiling Elevation" to be 11' 11-3/8"
• Insert additional layers to increase the thickness of the "Ceiling Finish"
  • 32-1/2" Air Gap
  • 3-1/2" Fir Framing (ceiling joists)

Essentially this causes the drywall to be moved down 36" because the "Ceiling Finish" is applied to the bottom of the "Ceiling Framing".  Because this is the default for the entire floor you will only need to modify the "Ceiling Finish" for rooms that need to have a different finished ceiling elevation.

 

So, in Bob's case the Default Floor Ceiling is set at 12' which causes all the walls to be 12' tall.  By having the above settings for the Ceiling Finish the Finished Ceiling Height would be 8' 11-3/8"'.  Adjusting the "Air Gap" dimension to 44-1/2" in an individual room would make the Finished Ceiling Height in that room to be 7' 11-3/8".

 

I think you can get the idea.

[Evolution]

43 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

In another thread I gave a simple (and IMO the correct way) to lower a ceiling.  This works for the defaults as well as for individual rooms but I would first use it to set the defaults correctly for each floor:

• Change the Floor/Room Defaults by selecting "Ceiling Finish"
• Note that it is probably just a single 5/8" thick drywall which causes the "Finished Ceiling Elevation" to be 11' 11-3/8"
• Insert additional layers to increase the thickness of the "Ceiling Finish"
  • 32-1/2" Air Gap
  • 3-1/2" Fir Framing (ceiling joists)

Essentially this causes the drywall to be moved down 36" because the "Ceiling Finish" is applied to the bottom of the "Ceiling Framing".  Because this is the default for the entire floor you will only need to modify the "Ceiling Finish" for rooms that need to have a different finished ceiling elevation.

 

So, in Bob's case the Default Floor Ceiling is set at 12' which causes all the walls to be 12' tall.  By having the above settings for the Ceiling Finish the Finished Ceiling Height would be 8' 11-3/8"'.  Adjusting the "Air Gap" dimension to 44-1/2" in an individual room would make the Finished Ceiling Height in that room to be 7' 11-3/8".

 

I think you can get the idea.

Yoda, that's exactly the way I've been doing it (KB - 01050). Glenn Woodward put me on that about 5 years ago when I was doing a lake house that had umpteen dozen different ceilings, and heights.  I used the CP tool only to create a couple of ceilings in that plan the Owner wanted to be barreled. 

Thanks for your support! I honestly don't know how that other ceiling mysteriously appeared......I swear I didn't use the CP tool in any of those rooms, but I'm determined to get it right!!

[Joe_Carrick]

Bob,

Did you note that I said to do this in the "Floor Defaults" first before anything else.  That eliminates the need to modify every room.

[Evolution]

1 hour ago, solver said:

All Off layer set. Turn on Ceiling Planes.

 

YOU da Man ERIC! Big as life and twice as ugly.  Problem number umphundred fixed!

[Evolution]

7 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Bob,

Did you note that I said to do this in the "Floor Defaults" first before anything else.  That eliminates the need to modify every room.

Yes, I did. Thank you!!!