Lowered ceiling doesn't look right from the sides

[mgianzero]

I have a few areas in this house that have dropped ceilings which contain some of the HVAC ducting and lights.

 

When I try to drop these ceiling areas as suggested in the tutorial, by editing the ceiling finish dbx, the ceiling looks fine from below, but not from the sides.  See these two areas where I have a lowered ceiling, one in the hallway here:

 

and another in the kitchen area with a trey ceiling:

 

The other way to do this, I guess, would be to create soffits spanning these areas.  But a soffit has the same material on all sides.  So then, how would I "paint" just the bottom of the soffit the same texture as the ceiling?

 

Attached is my plan with angled hash markings on plan view designating the two areas that have lowered ceilings.

HAB (ceilings, stairs).zip

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

Not certain there is any proper solution for this situation other than using a thin Polyline Solid or possibly a wall material region to cover it up. This seems to also happen when ceilings are normal height, the 1/2" edge of the ceiling drywall always shows. Has been doing this for as long as I can remember, unfortunate that something so oblivious has never been fixed. 

[dshall]

5 hours ago, mgianzero said:

I have a few areas in this house that have dropped ceilings which contain some of the HVAC ducting and lights.

 

When I try to drop these ceiling areas as suggested in the tutorial, by editing the ceiling finish dbx, the ceiling looks fine from below, but not from the sides.  See these two areas where I have a lowered ceiling, one in the hallway here:

 

and another in the kitchen area with a trey ceiling:

 

The other way to do this, I guess, would be to create soffits spanning these areas.  But a soffit has the same material on all sides.  So then, how would I "paint" just the bottom of the soffit the same texture as the ceiling?

 

Attached is my plan with angled hash markings on plan view designating the two areas that have lowered ceilings.

HAB (ceilings, stairs).zip

 

 

Do not use invisible wall,  use a door opening set to the ceiling height.

 

 

[rgardner]

Use of Ceiling planes also works a little better there.

[TheKitchenAbode]

17 minutes ago, dshall said:

use a door opening set to the ceiling height

 

The only thing with this is that the problem has now moved to the ceiling, the wall finish extends into the ceiling the thickness of the wall, the ceiling texture should extend right out to the vertical edge. Still need some kind of workaround.

[TheKitchenAbode]

37 minutes ago, solver said:

Higher ceiling is 9'. Tray ceiling used in the lowered ceiling. Invisible wall dividing the rooms.

 

The vertical thickness(edge) of the ceiling drywall is still showing, certainly less than the original posting but nevertheless it is not correct. It's just not in this particular situation where it happens, also occurs in stairwell openings. It's extremely frustrating to have to go around and cover these up with thin Polyline Solids, wall material regions do not work, things get more frustrating if later on the opening size changes as Polyline Solids are independent of the wall so now you have to go and adjust each and everyone of them. It's stuff like this that really frustrates me about Chief, a real time waster for something that seems so basic.

[Kbird1]

I still use the old polyline Solid method for many Trey (Tray) Ceilings as Chief's new (x12) Trey Ceiling Tool does NOT play well with Invisible Walls ( Room Dividers ) eg between a Kitchen and Family Room Area.

 

Chief has Updated (Feb.2020) the the KB Article (KB201) on Trey Ceilings and no longer mentions the Old method ...but basically it

is just a P.Solid with a Hole cut in it for the Trey , here is the Old PDF: 

 

Ceiling_Creating-a-trey-or-coffered-ceiling-using-polyline-solids.pdf

[DRAWZILLA]

5 hours ago, dshall said:

 

Do not use invisible wall,  use a door opening set to the ceiling height.

 

 

I do just as Scott does also

 

 

[mgianzero]

Sorry that I have not responded sooner as I was the original poster, but didn't have time to explore all what was said in this thread until now.

 

So I tried what has been suggested here.  It seemed to work great in the first lowered ceiling area (hallway) but not in the second.  See below.

 

1). In the 1st example, I have a hallway with a lowered ceiling entering a sunken living room.  The ORIGINAL plans (from 1967) call for the ceiling to be 7' 6" in the hallway, so since the tile flooring is 1/2", I am assuming I need to lower the ceiling by 6 1/2".  In the plan I provided, the hallway opening is already using a door opening to separate the hallway from the adjacent room.  If I lower this wall opening to the level of the newly lowered ceiling in hallway as suggested (I believe it is 90 1/2"), I seem to now experience some z-fighting at the top of the doorway as it seems as though two materials are attempting to occupy the same space.  So that didn't work for me.  So what am I doing wrong here?

 

What DID work for me was to use Graham's (TheKitchenAbode) suggestion above and remove the ceiling textured finish from the lowered ceiling (6 1/2") and then create a CAD polyline that follows the perimeter of the room and convert that to a polyline solid very thin (I chose 1/8") and then used my ceiling texture on that surface and extended the ceiling to include the doorway jam on the top surface.  The doorway opening height can be anywhere between 90 1/2" and 96" and it still looks the same.

 

Not ideal as you still see some of the texture's thickness on the edges, but looks pretty good.

See my pic here:

 

2). In my 2nd example (the trey ceiling) an acceptable solution appears to be more complicated.  I first converted my invisible wall to a doorway like many had suggested.  But now my ceiling seems to intersect the doorway in the middle of the jam, like here:

 

So what's strange is that I did almost the exact same thing to two different areas of the house and I can't seem reproduce the same results.  Even if I delete this trey ceiling and just do a lowered ceiling, I still have the same issue with the ceiling surface not completely covering the doorway.

 

So what am I doing wrong here?  If I could guess as to the cause, it appears that I'm having more issues with the auto-building of attics wall that are not aligning again.  Perhaps someone can take my plans and modify them to do what I'd like and I can review it.

 

 

[mgianzero]

Okay, I think I got a little too wordy in my last reply and it makes it hard to follow.  I think I still have a problem here.  So I'll be more concise.

 

Look at my plan here at both lowered ceiling doorways and tell me why one looks correct and the other does not and all settings, to my knowledge, are identical?

lowered ceilings not working.zip

 

In "Camera 1", you'll see the lowered ceiling looks perfect, but in "Camera 2" you'll see that the ceiling does not protrude all the way into the head jam.

 

Why is this?

 

And to further complicate the picture, if I put just an exterior casing on the second doorway (Camera 2) the problem is fixed, but I don't want to use any casing.

[DzinEye]

19 hours ago, mgianzero said:

Why is this?

Well...I can fix it two different ways, but one of the Chief brainiacs here would have to explain what's going on to cause it.   It may be partly to do with the fact that the section of wall you have the door opening in has 'no locate' checked.  But simply unchecking it doesn't fix it.  I think it has something to do with the way attic walls are working...but I really can't say for sure. 

I assume you have that wall separated into two pieces because part is existing?  In any regard...the easiest method that worked for me was to not use a door opening there, but instead make that section of wall a room divider.  For some reason the attic wall pulls back a bit from the outside wall when doing this but that can be easily remedied.

The other fix is to redraw those walls.  You need the short segment that forms that little corner in the adjacent room with beam ceiling to be it's own wall.  In order to keep the new wall that the door opening goes in from rejoining that wall you need to reverse the orientation of that short segment or create another wall definition for it, but simply reversing it works to keep it from re-joining.  Draw the new wall and add in the door opening.   You may notice that the attic wall in the vaulted ceiling room acts up and will show misaligned (recessed), but force it auto-rebuild (To do this I change the room to flat ceiling then back to vaulted) and you should be good to go.  You can then re-break the wall at the location you have dimensioned.

[mgianzero]

3 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

Well...I can fix it two different ways, but one of the Chief brainiacs here would have to explain what's going on to cause it.   It may be partly to do with the fact that the section of wall you have the door opening in has 'no locate' checked.  But simply unchecking it doesn't fix it.  I think it has something to do with the way attic walls are working...but I really can't say for sure. 

 

No, I thought about the no locate too as a possible "bug" to this problem too.  But it didn't change anything either.

 

3 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

I assume you have that wall separated into two pieces because part is existing?  In any regard...the easiest method that worked for me was to not use a door opening there, but instead make that section of wall a room divider.  For some reason the attic wall pulls back a bit from the outside wall when doing this but that can be easily remedied.

 

Well, I had it as an invisible wall, and several told me not to use one as it doesn't work well with lowered and trey ceilings.  I'm also guessing that invisible walls vs room dividers are considered pretty much the same thing and not recommended here. 

 

3 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

The other fix is to redraw those walls.  You need the short segment that forms that little corner in the adjacent room with beam ceiling to be it's own wall.  In order to keep the new wall that the door opening goes in from rejoining that wall you need to reverse the orientation of that short segment or create another wall definition for it, but simply reversing it works to keep it from re-joining.  Draw the new wall and add in the door opening.   You may notice that the attic wall in the vaulted ceiling room acts up and will show misaligned (recessed), but force it auto-rebuild (To do this I change the room to flat ceiling then back to vaulted) and you should be good to go.  You can then re-break the wall at the location you have dimensioned.

 

I guess I can play with it again.  But I also tried using a doorway in the two other adjacent walls to the kitchen and I had the same problem with those walls too - the dropped ceiling does not align properly with the head jam of the doorway.

 

Frustrating.  I'll continue to play with it.

[Alaskan_Son]

I didn't read through this whole thread very well so I may have missed something , but you have some goofy things going on.  Your problem is caused almost entirely by the fact you dropped the ceiling by increasing the thickness of your drywall.  Just return the ceiling finish to the default and drop the ceiling by...actually dropping the ceiling height.

[DzinEye]

40 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Your problem is caused almost entirely by the fact you dropped the ceiling by increasing the thickness of your drywall.

Oh Jeez...Nice catch!  So that's what I was seeing... I thought I was seeing the drywall wrapping upward, but it was actually showing a 5-1/2" thickness of drywall.   Considering that's the case I'm surprised I was able to get it to work at all.

[mgianzero]

24 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

I didn't read through this whole thread very well so I may have missed something , but you have some goofy things going on.  Your problem is caused almost entirely by the fact you dropped the ceiling by increasing the thickness of your drywall.  Just return the ceiling finish to the default and drop the ceiling by...actually dropping the ceiling height.

 

 

Okay, I did it your way and it appears to work! 

 

But the reason I did it the other way, using ceiling definition, is because CA actually mentions that in both their Tutorial Guide here:

 

and they also describe it in their Reference manual here:

 

 So maybe I should just ignore their recommendations?  I don't know.  This could just be a novice's mistake here.

 

I was also thinking about using soffits as part of my lowered ceiling, but then I would have to create another surface under the soffit to show the ceiling texture.  And I also didn't know if the framing for this structure would look correct.

[Alaskan_Son]

12 minutes ago, mgianzero said:

But the reason I did it the other way, using ceiling definition, is because CA actually mentions that...

 

First off, you didn't actually follow the instructions properly.  Those instructions never say to increase the thickness of the drywall.  Secondly, the best method depends entirely on what you're trying to show.  Chief's instructions are for a true dropped/lowered ceiling where you have a framing layer below another framing layer.  Commonly this isn't the case at all and all we really need to do is set a lower ceiling height.  Also, there's no point in drawing a dropped ceiling if all you need it for is for some interior renderings or if you're not actually drawing up several framing layers.  It really depends on the specifics.  No matter what though, you aren't using 6-1/2" thick drywall, so that approach is wrong on all counts.

[mgianzero]

11 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

First off, you didn't actually follow the instructions properly.  Those instructions never say to increase the thickness of the drywall.  Secondly, the best method depends entirely on what you're trying to show.  Chief's instructions are for a true dropped/lowered ceiling where you have a framing layer below another framing layer.  Commonly this isn't the case at all and all we really need to do is set a lower ceiling height.  Also, there's no point in drawing a dropped ceiling if all you need it for is for some interior renderings or if you're not actually drawing up several framing layers.  It really depends on the specifics.  No matter what though, you aren't using 6-1/2" thick drywall, so that approach is wrong on all counts.

 

Okay.  My bad. 

 

However, this is not just for interior renderings.  One of these ceilings, the one in hallway seen in Camera 1, is most likely going to at least partially come out.  It is a 7-inch "soffit" like area with lighting and one HVAC duct inside.  We are wanting to display the actual framing underneath so as to know what needs to change inside this lowered ceiling.  Probably end up moving the HVAC system altogether.

 

Obviously there'll be a structural engineer on the project, but the county wants blueprints, specifics of what is there and what needs to come out.

[mgianzero]

I guess I spoke too quickly here.  Now I remember reading somewhere where CA mentioned that lowering a ceiling can effect the floors above and below and I believe I had tried it this way and this what happened ...

 

As we see here, my roof planes are now not looking correct.

 

So what do I do to fix this?