Crawl Space - Cmu Foundation With Beams And Piers

[tdroes82]

I need a crawl space foundation plan with CMU exterior walls, 3 member 2x10 Beams set on 12" pier block with footing. piers 8' oc.

 

I can not figure out how to draw this.

 

I place a wall in my foundation. but i cant change it to wall on piers. in settings, then it changes the whole house to "on piers" i am not at the beach.

 

I add a beam, and then try to add square piers under beam. but cant (it will only let me add under exterior wall)

 

I can add post with footing under beam, but this but the footer is round, not rectangle. cant seem to change this either.

 

I am clearly not understanding how this software works. This should not be this difficult to draw a crawl space, or are there setting to make a crawl space?

 

what am I missing?

2Asher - WRS Lots.plan

[joey_martin]

Everything you are describing is set up ahead of any drawing in the preferences and defaults. It can be done after the fact...but then you are chasing your tail. 

 

For the piers...in the defaults you tell Chief that you want an 8"x8" conc. pier (or what ever you are using) with a 24"x24" square footing pad

 

You perhaps need to spend a little more time familiarizing yourself to how Chief Architect work.

[tdroes82]

ok so i go into defaults. set foundation to grade beams on piers, set my piers to square, and all that.

 

then draw foundation. and it draws exterior walls on piers. this is not what i want. i have stem walls set to 8" CMU.

 

when you build new foundation, it never draws my beams on the interior with piers under them. do i need to draw my beams in the foundation floor and add piers seprately?

[DRAWZILLA]

Yes it's manually done by you. Chief does not do it automatically. Draw one and copy paste

[joey_martin]

As Perry said, Chief does not locate your beams and piers for you, you need to do that yourself. And I might add...if Auto foundations is on, you just need to draw the floor plan and the foundation will build itself, then fine tune and add the structural elements.

[TSarantopulos]

IMO I think the "round pier" and "square pad" features should be allowed to be used under any beam that is drawn using the floor/ceiling beam tool.  PITA to have to draw a pad and then having to draw a post on top of that, and adjust both heights and depths of both so its correct.  10 min vs 10 seconds.

[joey_martin]

You can. I honestly can't remember the last time I drew a pier/post or a footing pad. Just set up what you want in the defaults and click under the beam. If it's a basement then you set the defaults to post/pad, if a crawl then go with pier/pad.