cjanderson66 Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 I have been a stick framer primarily in all my designs but the engineer would like to use trusses. The design I currently have was designed using stick framing and I need to change the roof to trusses. Since I have never done trusses in Chief I went to watch a video but it was for X9. It appears that is has changed since then and I now need to know how do I create trusses for my roof plan? Will I have to draw each plane with a truss or does it do it automatically? This is a fairly complex roof that has stop and start trusses along with attic trusses. Is anyone familiar with using trusses as I am in need of your expertise. Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjanderson66 Posted April 6, 2020 Author Share Posted April 6, 2020 Just now, solver said: Is someone expecting you to place accurate representations of already designed trusses into the plan? I am just trying to get an accurate representation when it comes to the cross sections. The city has a building height requirement and I originally used 2X10's but now that the engineer has specified trusses, I will need to change my cross sections to represent and like I said, I have several areas where there are attic areas for the furnace, storage, vaulted areas and it has become complicated. I know that the truss company will do it as designed but it should show properly in my cross sections and elevations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NRST8TRKR Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 Christopher, If you go back and change the roof plans to 3 1/2 " or 5 1/2" according to what top cord on the truss will be. It will auto correct to show heigth of roof. If you need the truss plans have the truss man do them and have him give you a copy to present with your plan to plan checker. Should work. Have a great week,Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 It's possible to draw the trusses in Chief but without an accurate layout and truss design from the truss company drawing in the correct trusses at this stage is a crap shoot and your sections will most likely not be accurate. One method you could use to get your sections (not for the purists) is to wait for the truss designs and layout. You can then cut your sections, toggle off ceiling joist framing and roof rafter framing and draw in a representation of a truss in the newly cut section. If there's furnace, storage or other unique areas in the truss design you can refer to the truss designs for those areas and draw in the trusses according to those specific truss designs. Again not for the purists, and that has its down sides of course, but it might give you a chance to get the sections accurate enough without getting each truss exactly perfect in Chief. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mborean Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 I routinely draw my trusses in Chief and then send the design to the truss company for the official design. I do this so that I have some control on how the trusses are designed. I want to control ceiling chords, bearing lines, etc. The trusses from the truss company will have different internal web configurations, but the top/bottom chords reflect what I want. The truss feature in Chief is very useful, IMHO. Good Luck roof truss image.pdf 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 29 minutes ago, mborean said: I routinely draw my trusses in Chief and then send the design to the truss company for the official design. I do this so that I have some control on how the trusses are designed. I want to control ceiling chords, bearing lines, etc. The trusses from the truss company will have different internal web configurations, but the top/bottom chords reflect what I want. The truss feature in Chief is very useful, IMHO. Good Luck roof truss image.pdf NICE... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
builtright3 Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 I like to put in a truss when I take my section cut. You just have to adjust your rafters and ceiling joist and take out the birds mouth cut and the truss will lay right over it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robdyck Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 45 minutes ago, builtright3 said: I like to put in a truss when I take my section cut. You just have to adjust your rafters and ceiling joist and take out the birds mouth cut and the truss will lay right over it. 3 hours ago, cjanderson66 said: I now need to know how do I create trusses for my roof plan? A few things to consider for trusses...IF you're showing them at all: -you need to know the regional requirements for the heel height. This could be based on structural requirements, insulation requirements, or a combination -you'll need to know the lumber species used for the trusses, and the max. spans for the loads carried. This will apply to top chords, bottom chords, and stress members. It doesn't make any sense to be showing items that will come with an engineered layout and a specific drawing for each truss, unless you're clearly indicating its for visualization only. -In Chief, you can specify the above mentioned items in the truss dbx and at least your trusses will look quite accurate. For anyone using it out of the box...try adjusting the top chord and bottom chord spans to be the same, and add a king post. Check out the difference: Unfortunately, Chief still doesn't automatically adjust the length of the bottom chord to match the span of the truss and there are 2 ways to deal with that if needed: -edit the truss polyline (stable, these edits will remain unless you force a rebuild) -edit the truss detail (not so stable, this may rebuild if you open the truss dbx) If for some reason you are including a truss plan, or showing them all to provide guidance for the truss supplier, its best to complete your truss layout, THEN build roof framing. Chief will not build a rafter where a truss exists, so its less cleaning up to do. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 1 hour ago, robdyck said: It doesn't make any sense to be showing items that will come with an engineered layout and a specific drawing for each truss, unless you're clearly indicating its for visualization only. That's what I do, and simply refer to the truss(es) as 'per plan' or 'per layout and calcs'. It's made sense and hasn't seemed to confuse anyone for the last 20 or so odd years. Just another way to do things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
builtright3 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 2 hours ago, HumbleChief said: That's what I do, and simply refer to the truss(es) as 'per plan' or 'per layout and calcs'. It's made sense and hasn't seemed to confuse anyone for the last 20 or so odd years. Just another way to do things. Yes, section is just for visualization only (doesn't have to be perfect). This note is all the city requires for me to give them along with a section (visualization only). Or at least before you start framing depending on what the city wants. Depends on the job and city 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 6 hours ago, robdyck said: Unfortunately, Chief still doesn't automatically adjust the length of the bottom chord to match the span of the truss and there are 2 ways to deal with that if needed: I could be misunderstanding, but there is probably a faster way and a way that makes Chief do the lion’s share of the heavy lifting. Here’s a quick power tip from the vault... Build all your trusses as usual setting the appropriate trusses to be Energy Heels... Group select at least all the energy heel trusses, change top and bottom chords to a very small dimension (1" should probably do it), check Force Truss Rebuild, and click Okay... With the trusses still selected, open them right back up, check Lock Truss Envelope, change your top and bottom chord back to what they should be, and click Okay... It would be nice if those shorter energy heels behaved properly on their own, but until they do, I think this is the best we can do. If anyone knows of a more effective solution I'd love to know it. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DzinEye Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 1 hour ago, Alaskan_Son said: It would be nice if those shorter energy heels behaved properly on their own, but until they do, I think this is the best we can do. If anyone knows of a more effective solution I'd love to know it. Very clever work-around Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robdyck Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 8 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said: I could be misunderstanding, but there is probably a faster way and a way that makes Chief do the lion’s share of the heavy lifting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pazzfam Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 I am curious down here in Florida we have to do a truss layout for every job addition ect. The engineer of record has to seal basically it is all about the uplift. and knowing where the girders are. then we match the straps up accordingly. I would never consider doing the truss layout in 3d I do it in cad. Showing the way I think the girders and valley sets ect go all in 2d. To build we need the truss drawing from truss company which has all the cut sheets ect for each truss showing uplift. I always thought this was stupid as we need the engineer of record plan before the truss drawing . some times I would have russ drawing complete before permit submittal when the project was sold and I could bill for the truss company plan usually 10% of contract for trusses but then you are committed to the trusses company. We had another company that would charge 15 cents a foot for truss drawing. . I am still a builder I think if I drew full time, another income stream would be to learn a truss program that would work with a local truss company company. The truss design would then be accurate Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 10 minutes ago, pazzfam said: I would never consider doing the truss layout in 3d I do it in cad. Give it a try. Chief is 3D software. It gives you another confirmation that things are correct. Then you have the 2d plan already done. You should not have any trouble accurately defining the truss envelope with chief with the exception of a few little problems that still need work. If you have issues post them here. I have seen too many 2d plans that have issues. Some can do it but many can not do it with consistency. 3D is just another tool that often show 2d errors quite quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parkwest Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 Here's is an interesting viewpoint on this subject from a few years back by Joe Stoddard: https://forums.jlconline.com/forums/forum/jlc-online-expert-forums/business-technology/57160-mitek-sapphire-build Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pazzfam Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 Thanks for the heads up, I will give it a try old and bad habits hard to break and ift is competitive competing with others where the going rate is a $1.00 per foot plus add the engineer at $.45.00 per ft so it i about getting done as fast as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaneK Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 I always do my own truss design,,, of course truss engineer can over rule me. Trusses are sold by sales persons and therefore they want to always sell you the most expensive type or layout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaneK Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 This was fun, you can see missing trusses from truss company. They refused to design round room truss configurations. 2 rooms 26' wide and 1 56' wide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ridge_Runner Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 2 hours ago, parkwest said: Here's is an interesting viewpoint on this subject from a few years back by Joe Stoddard: https://forums.jlconline.com/forums/forum/jlc-online-expert-forums/business-technology/57160-mitek-sapphire-build Good read, David. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 I personally draw trusses in my plans all the time for various reasons, but if I'm having trusses designed and engineered by others, one of the most important is this... Trusses aren't designed for a project until my job is all but finished and I can't effectively finish my job without having some idea of how the trusses are going to be built. I need to have some idea of HOW trusses will be used, where they will land, where girders might be located, where I need to put beams/point loads, and whether or not trusses will even be possible for certain areas. In addition, I can totally guide the design of trusses if I want to. There are commonly several ways any given job can be done and I want to communicate to my truss designer exactly how I want them done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACADuser Posted April 15, 2020 Share Posted April 15, 2020 We are required to have a truss layout for permitting and the truss company will not release the drawing until they are sure you are buying their trusses. So most of the time I draw trusses & connectors & load paths to get the permit. Once we have the truss drawings I revise the plan if needed for the actual truss layout. On most jobs, there is not enough change to warrant changing the plans. Just make adjustments in the field. The truss company is certifying the trusses & the original drawing engineering is in agreement with the loads so no change needed. If there is a load that does not match up a letter from the engineer explaining the adjustments is all that is needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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