Why Does Foundation Dbx Change Floor Height?


Richard_Morrison
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I am unable to understand the logic behind why the foundation DBX moves floors up and down. Once I set the floor height in one location, I do NOT want playing around with stem wall heights and footing heights to change this. Currently, if you are not really, really careful, raising the footing too high will take the floor level up with it. Then you have to lower it and then lower the floor. I find myself going up and down with footings and slabs and ceilings. Is this really useful to anyone? Seems to me that floor heights ought to be pretty stable with everything else revolving around those. I went back to chieftutor.com to watch dshall's videos, thinking that I had missed something. The first two videos were pretty much him blundering around with all of this. (I'm not criticizing you, Scott. Not your fault.) This isn't good.

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The structure dbx, which I refer to as the He11 Box, has many many pitfalls and land mines, all of which I fall into, and land on top of, constantly. Some people actually understand it, I think, although whenever I watch a video no one seems exactly sure how it works but we're all able to GET it to work - not the same thing of course.

 

I was working on a simple 2 story plan the other day and my roof kept drawing on what looked like the first floor instead of the second floor. I looked everywhere and finally discovered that somehow my first floor had changed to 1" high. For real, not making that up. User error? I'll always cop to that but it's happened way too many times to be just user error.

 

The problem is that the structure dbx drives the ENTIRE model from top to bottom and from start to finish. If it's not set up in a clear, straightforward manner then what chance do you have of creating a stable model? 

 

It needs work to put it mildly, and IMO it needs a complete re-work.

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Joey,

There are a couple of good tips here. However, the DBX does NOT work anymore the way DAN explains it. It is helpful to know that ceiling height controls the floor height in the basement. (Yeah, and how intuitive is THAT?), but in his video, reducing the stem wall height to 0" only makes the footing rise as far as the floor structure, and it goes no further. Now, if you set it to 0", it takes the floor with it, and screws everything up.

 

I'm not sure in which version this got changed, but it is not a good change IMO and should be changed back, unless someone can point out a good reason for the current system.

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Michael,

It's a good video, but doesn't really get down to the basement level. I'd love to see the next one in the series. A lot of the videos on the US side have been taken off, and it's hard to find something exactly on point. A search for "foundations" doesn't bring up that many videos. I'd love to view all of the latest monoslab & foundation videos, but not sure they are all there.

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I am finding with X7 the floor heights are not as stable as they were. I am forever fighting this lately.

 

good to hear ( or not) I thought it was just me , the Structure DBX was designed to drive most crazy I think....

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Running into similar issues as well...much more temperamental then before.  In fact I opened up a plan in Chief 9 the other day and it was so simple and smooth.  Not as many options, but it worked as you would expect it to.

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