Can I cut a hole in a vaulted ceiling

[GeneDavis]

The room is under a roof framed with 16" i-joists.  I want to cut some 4" dia. holes, and placed a CAD circle, but it won't convert to ceiling hole.

 

 

[DBCooper]

I tried Eric's method and the hole was converted into a polyline with two half circles.  It did not work until I converted both arcs into faceted polylines.  Might be a little easier to convert the circle into a faceted poly first and then do the subtraction.

 

[GeneDavis]

How does one do this subtraction?  There is no ceiling plane per se.  The room is specified as the roof structure "being" the ceiling, as is common for vaulted roofs with finish applied directly to rafters.

[DBCooper]

It works the same way for ceilings that it does for just about every other poly object in the program.  You select the ceiling plane, you click on the subtract button, and then you click on the hole.  This assumes that you have a custom ceiling plane.  If you are creating a vaulted ceiling by just turning off the ceiling, then you would select the roof plane instead.

 

BTW, if you hover over the tool, the status bar gives you some simple instructions.  If that is not enough, then you can always use the F1 key to bring up the help.

 

[GeneDavis]

But I don't want holes in the roof.  Only the ceiling.

[DBCooper]

I don't think there is an easy way to do that.  You could try putting a custom ceiling plane below the roof plane.

 

[GeneDavis]

My problem stems from too much focus on 3D realism.  Can lights in Chief ceilings appear as paste-on disks, and don't give us a good representation of one when there is a recessed lens, with cone or baffle.

 

I made a symbol for a WAC recessed can light, a model that has a rotating lamp to work with pitched ceilings up to 20 degrees, and rotated the lamp 14 degrees to be right for my 3:12 pitch.  Without a hole, the light has the ceiling cutting through it, and does not look correct.

 

I'll live with it and forego any try for a workaround, but will log a suggestion that flush can recessed ceiling lights need to be able to cut holes in ceilings. 

[mthd97]

Nice demonstration on how to make flush mounted down lights on the rake.

 

Thanks Eric.

[Gawdzira]

Thank @solver. I had no idea that I could type in 8 in 12 for the angle input. I would click 5 times to get the pitch to convert to angle and copy that number and then....

 

Maybe the answer to the big question about why CA does not cut the ceiling hole properly is the lag time you got from a cut up ceiling plane. It would slow the plan to a crawl with a ceiling full of can lights.