All ceiling heights change when I try to edit one?

[pattyw]

I have a 3 floor home I am designing.  I'm having an issue with ceiling heights on the 2nd floor.  All floors have 10' ceilings.  I have 16" floor trusses between the 2nd and 3rd floor.   I am now trying to model my MEP.  I had designed my 2nd floor with various closets, etc lined up with the plan to have those with only an 8.5 or 9' ceiling so that I could have a transverse chase under my floor trusses for running hvac. I had entered those as 8.5' but now somewhere along the way they became 10'.

 

Now whenever I try to change the ceiling height of a 'room' on my 2nd floor, every room's ceiling height is changing and the entire 3rd floor moves down.

 

1) I tried a custom ceiling plane but I don't get the desired effect.  While it does draw the ceiling lower, the molding is still at the original height in the space and no automatic walls or anything is being framed in for the sides of the lower ceiling.  Do custom ceiling planes work with a floor above?

 

2) I tried another trick I had read in another thread to set all my 3rd floor walls to "no room definition".  Then I was able to change all the ceiling heights of the needed spaces on my 2nd floor and it looked awesome.  In 3d view, below and just above the ceiling it looked great.  From below, I was able to get the molding all set.  From above, I could see the ceiling plane lower along my transverse chase.  Of course, since my 3rd floor walls had no room definition, my entire 3rd floor was mashed down ontop of the 2nd floor.  So then I went back to my 3rd floor and set all the walls back to having a room definition, and.... all my rooms on the 2nd floor went back to a 10' ceiling height essentially blowing away my changes.

 

Any other ideas on how to have different ceiling heights when there is a floor above?

[rgardner]

7 minutes ago, pattyw said:

I tried a custom ceiling plane but I don't get the desired effect.  While it does draw the ceiling lower, the molding is still at the original height in the space and no automatic walls or anything is being framed in for the sides of the lower ceiling.  Do custom ceiling planes work with a floor above?

I will respond to this as this is the correct method of doing what you want.  your ceiling platform in the defaults is tied to your floor above floor level so if you change one it is going to change the other.  When you want a cavity between the floor above structure and your ceiling you would use a ceiling plane.  

Give more information regarding the "the molding is still at the original height in the space and no automatic walls or anything is being framed in for the sides of the lower ceiling."  a picture or a plan file will help here.  If it is a closet then you will not need to do anything.  If it is a partial room dropped ceiling then you need a non room definition wall at the transition point set to cut by roof above and on a layer that does not show in the plan view.

[HumbleChief]

pattyw, There will be smarter and better informed suggestions for your dilemma but Chief treats floor and ceiling heights in a VERY specific manner and there are videos in Chief's library explaining those specific manners. Perhaps this video will help? 

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/318/dropping-a-floor-and-raising-the-ceiling-of-a-room.html

[Bob-Roraback]

Patty, try using a shelf ceiling in the second floor closets that you want to have a lowered ceiling.

[Alaskan_Son]

Can you possibly post the plan?

[pattyw]

Thank you, I really appreciate the help.

 

I've attached some pics of what I'm seeing right now.  This is where I am trying to lower the ceiling over a doorway to the master bedroom so this falls under partial room ceiling drop.  I had initially created two invisible walls on either side of the door and had tried changing the ceiling heights of those two small spaces.

 

Now in these pics, I've added the custom ceiling plane, but you can clearly see the molding from the room going into the chase space.  I changed the one invisible wall to a visible wall with no room definition but can't get it to just draw in the top part between the two different ceiling heights.

 

The only place I can find a "cut" is in that now visible wall's specification roof tab, there is a "roof cuts wall at bottom", but that didn't help. I treid various options on the structure tab platform intersections, but no matter what I do, so far, I end up with a solid wall there and the molding doesn't stop and follow that wall.

[pattyw]

I continued trying with the custom ceiling plane and extra walls with no room definition set but that seamed a dead end.  I had to make the walls visible but I just couldn't get it to do what I wanted.  I got close, but the ceiling plane kept moving somehow and I had lots of wierd artifacts.

[pattyw]

So then I switched to Solver's idea of putting a doorway in that wall and that helped a lot.  I still have some wierd issues here and there but I guess I can live with them.

 

The main issue with this custom ceiling plane approach seems to be mouldings.  They don't seem to handle custom ceiling planes.  They continue to draw at the original ceiling height, so I then figured out to go in, turn off defaults and change the vertical offset for the molding (figured this out after my pics below).

[pattyw]

One thing I did notice is that it looks like it's framing all my walls as load bearing with a double top plate on all of them.

[pattyw]

1 minute ago, solver said:

 

Is that how framing is done in your area?

To the best of my knowledge, interior non loading bearing walls only need a single top plate.

[Kbird1]

56 minutes ago, pattyw said:

One thing I did notice is that it looks like it's framing all my walls as load bearing with a double top plate on all of them.

 

In X14 you can make a WallType with a Single Top Plate (STP)   but Chief uses the Default of two set in the Framing Defaults.

 

  

 

 

[Doug_N]

Double ceiling plates can serve 2 independent purposes. 

 

1) To spread the load from the structure above over the studs more evenly

2) To act as a fire stop to inhibit the spread of flame in the interior structure of a wall to the assembly above.

 

When a house has more than one dwelling unit, often the simplest way of complying with fire code in a wall assembly is double ceiling plates.

[Bob-Roraback]

Patty, this is how I would create what you are doing using shelf ceilings in the lowered areas. There are many ways to accomplish things in Chief, this is just my way of

creating a chase area for ductwork. Bob

PattyW.zip

[Bob-Roraback]

I forgot to put it in but obviously you would need fire blocking in the walls surrounding the lowered ceiling areas

[HumbleChief]

Also please remember there's more than one way to create the space you're describing using the tools presented in the video linked above. Basically you can lower the ceiling height in that space by lowering and thickening a defined floor space from above. The crown works its way around the space as expected with a tricky return. It may not be the best technique for what you're trying to accomplish but it's a great and very important tool to have in your Cheif tool box. IMO.

1556475170_CLOSETDROP.plan

[Alaskan_Son]

I haven’t watched any of the videos posted in this thread and I haven’t seen the plan for suitability, but has anyone mentioned using the ceiling finish definition to create a dropped ceiling?  

[rgardner]

8 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

I haven’t watched any of the videos posted in this thread and I haven’t seen the plan for suitability, but has anyone mentioned using the ceiling finish definition to create a dropped ceiling?  

Definitely a good and fast way to do it.  I was assuming the OP needed to show some of the framing for a section or other reason but yes what you are talking about would work if its just for rendering.

[Bob-Roraback]

Using the way that Michael suggested works very well. These are the settings I used while trying it out.

[Alaskan_Son]

1 hour ago, rgardner said:

Definitely a good and fast way to do it.  I was assuming the OP needed to show some of the framing for a section or other reason but yes what you are talking about would work if its just for rendering.

No.  Not just for rendering.  You can also generate dropped ceiling framing using the Finish Layers.  

[pattyw]

Great video Solver, thank you.

 

Another approach that partially worked is I had used soffits.  When it comes to accurate renderings from the room's point of view, there are multiple possible solutions if you don't care about what's happening inside the hidden spaces.  In this case, soffits was the easiest. But in my case,now I do care what's going on between floors.  Plus it helps with more accurate material lists.  Even though my county doesn't require any drawings for MEP, the reason I'm trying to do it this way is so that I can accurately draw as much of my MEP stuff as possible to make sure I have no conflicts.

 

Changing the ceiling heights seemed like the best the solution and was easiest UNTIL I had a floor above, then it fell apart.  This custom ceiling plane approach seems to be the next best solution if you care about what's going on and just requires a few extra steps cleaning up loose ends.  Both these approaches appear so far to do the right framing without excess drywall or moulding.

 

CA seems to be severely lacking when it comes to MEP, maybe even non-existent.  I've yet to find an easy way to model the slopes of my pipes.  Everything else I am drawing using basic shapes.

 

 

 

[rgardner]

11 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

No.  Not just for rendering.  You can also generate dropped ceiling framing using the Finish Layers.  

Sorry I misread what you stated. You are absolutely correct within the room dbx you can do the same thing.  I personally didn't mention that method as I understood the OP question to mean they have a large room where the ceiling comes out into that room from an adjacent smaller room. 

 

My solution for that scenario would be to use a dropped ceiling plane across the rooms.

Of course you can also do it as you mention within the ceiling finish layer.  You can do that by dividing the room with a room defining wall but will need to manually adjust the wall but really either way is going to require wall manipulation of one way or another.

 

Even if it was just the adjacent room you will still need to do something with the wall gap at the top as an invisible wall will not build up. 

Of course you can use a no-jamb doorway in a solid wall there set to the ceiling height:

The issue with that is the doorway of course will break the wall in the middle so you have a small ceiling gap in there.

All the ways have their issues though.  For example using the roof cuts wall above and dropped ceiling plane you have to pull it past the edge of the wall as it will snap back to the framing layer (unless your drywall is in your framing layer for that particular wall.  So yo either have to have a small bit of ceiling plane sticking out:

 

Or you have a wall layer intersection issue at the ceiling plane. 

It all depends on your needs and preferences of course.

 

 

[rgardner]

20 minutes ago, pattyw said:

I've yet to find an easy way to model the slopes of my pipes.  Everything else I am drawing using basic shapes.

Use 3d molding polylines instead and you can add your slopes .  It can all be modeled as much as you need.

[Alaskan_Son]

1 minute ago, rgardner said:

It all depends on your needs and preferences of course.

...and on the specifics of the plan file and how things are modeled.  A person could also patch things using solids and can use molding polylines instead of room moldings.  Like I mentioned in another post on this subject, there are a lot of ways to deal with these types of situations but they almost always depend on the specifics of the actual plan and 3D model.