Dept of Sneaky Tricks

[Allen42acj]

To cut out a section of a cad detail or cut framing to add a beam.
Place a cad box around what you want to cut away.
Select the box, and then the cut/trim tool.
Then the fence tool and draw a line inside the box.
That cuts away what is inside the box.

[DougM]

Hi Allen, would be nice if we could creat a macro that will also add break lines.

[Allen42acj]

Hi Doug
With the box, it leaves a place to add a beam.
Example I showed was to lengthen the studs.My detail was made for 92 5/8 pre cuts.
Addition has the 9' studs.

No sure how the macro would work, maybe place it in suggestions.

[ebdesign]

Getting auto dimensions to not locate interior walls.

Ron Ravenscroft convinced me that it's better to not locate interior walls w/ the auto/exterior dimensions.
So I came up w/ this. I put all the interior walls on a layer, "Walls, Interior". I created an "Auto Dimensioning" layer set w/ just Exterior Walls, Dimensions, Automatic, etc displayed. When I need to auto dimension the plan (which I do often), I just get in that layer set & do it.
Hopefully, the next release will make this "workaround" unnecessary.
Jim

[dhowardaia]

Jim-

Just curious- why is it better not to dimension int
erior walls using Auto-dim?

Thx, D

[ebdesign]

Dorothy,
I don't know the answer to that. For me, it's just what I've come to prefer at the moment. I think it gives a cleaner plan & also not dimensioning walls twice. Every interior wall is already located w/ interior dimensions.

I've never been able to come up w/ a CAD "standard" for this. (Haven't looked for one lately.) I have several Architectural drafting textbooks here, numerous sets of Construction Documents from all sorts of architectural firms across the country, etc. Some of 'em do, some of 'em don't.
It seems to be something a lot of Chief-users do/want.
What's your opinion?
Is there a "standard" that you know of?
Jim

[Glenn Woodward]

I'm sure everyone knows this, but in X2 when you go to shoot an
elevation, if you right click and drag, that will give you the "rendered
elevation". If you left click and drag it will give you the standard "vector
view elevation".

I just ran in to that, and thought it was kind of neat...it'll save ya a
click or thrice.

This is controlled by Defaults...Camera Defaults...General...the settings are in the bottom right hand corner of the dbx.

[sherpa_jones]

Here is a way to show live window labels in layout elevations that update with changes to the plan.

1. Make a new layer set, call it something like "window labels only."

2. Next, turn off all layers except windows, window labels, and walls (the ones that contain windows). In order to display window labels, their window must be displayed. In order to display a window, it's wall must be displayed.

3. Now, set the line style for all displayed layers (except window labels) to blank. You now have a plan set that only shows window labels. Send it to layout at the same scale as your elevation and align the labels over your windows. This may require more than one send for each elevation if your building has many offsets.

These labels will update just like the ones in your plan, because they are a different view of the same object.

This was done in X2, but it should work in earlier versions.

Edit May 1, 2010

Make sure in the window and door schedule that you select "don't rotate with plan" in the label tab. This allows you to rotate your labes and keep them upright.

[Allen42acj]

Hi Rod
Can you post pictures or a sample plan and layout?
Not sure I'm getting it..

[sherpa_jones]

Hi Rod
Can you post pictures or a sample plan and layout?
Not sure I'm getting it..

Here you go . .

[Allen42acj]

Thanks Rod
Got it now..

[Adrean]

Clever work-around... I like it!

[WendyWelton]

Stair headroom check - temporarily set your stair railings to 80" plus the lower floor thickness, plus any add for ceiling drywall. Then, in section or 3D, they either touch the ceiling or they don't!

[sherpa_jones]

plus the lower floor thickness, plus any add for ceiling drywall. Then, in section or 3D, they either touch the ceiling or they don't!

I don't get that part . . .

[dimprov]

I'll take a stab at it. I think Wendy means that in Chief, "ceiling height" really means "height of the bottom of the ceiling joists" and not actually "height of the bottom of the ceiling drywall" like most people would normally assume it to mean. That functional definition comes about because in Chief the ceiling is a visible plane that has literally zero thickness--a physical impossibility in the real world. So, to model the thickness of the ceiling drywall, you have to set the "lowered ceiling" height to be 5/8" lower. At least that is what I've ended up doing. If you do these lowered ceilings, then you wouldn't also need to add for the drywall thickness, because you could "see" Wendy's elevated railing hitting the lowered ceiling if it didn't meet the 80" IRC code. Because of her formula, I infer that Wendy isn't doing these lowered ceilings to account for real-world ceiling thickness, and that is why she adds the drywall thickness to the elevated railing height. For the longest time I also didn't bother with lowered ceilings to simulate ceiling thickness, but eventually that approach bit me. I don't remember the circumstances, but I do remember feeling the bite.

Floor height is the same thing but trickier because their is no "raised floor height" that corresponds to "lowered ceiling height". You get the same staircase (rises and runs) regardless of whether you take floor height to mean top of the finish floor or top of the subfloor (with the finish floor having zero thickness, kinda like ceilings have zero thickness in Chief). On the other hand, the platform thickness will be different depending on which interpretation you choose. If you simulate finish floor thickness and tread thickness using polyline solids, the staircase algorithm just ignores them and won't use them to adjust the railing height. Therefore, you have to add the floor thickness to the 80" railing height, because Chief is really measuring the 80" from the top of the subfloor, not the top of the finish floor. By adding in the finish floor thickness, you correct for that.

There are two possible interpretations of "floor height" in Chief, and it sounds like Wendy is using the one that says "floor height" really means "top of subfloor height." It sounds like maybe you guys are using the other interpretation, which also works...most of the time. In that case, you wouldn't need to add the floor thickness to the railing height. I've tried both ways of interpreting it, and I finally settled on Wendy's. I can't remember now why, except there must have been some problem along the way that I couldn't reconcile by using the other, more intuitive interpretation.

Am I reading you correctly, Wendy?

If chief takes "railing height" to mean "height of the top of the railing," then the railing thickness doesn't get in the way of what Wendy is proposing.

Anyway, I put this out there, because this was hardwon knowledge that I pieced together by necessity while trying to make a coherent Chief model while I was under absolutely enormous time pressure to simultaneously learn Chief and use it in production. That time pressure resulted in my making many forced choice interpretations that might have been wrong, and so maybe I'm all twisted around in my inferences about the functional meanings--quite possibly I am. In which case someday I would like to get untwisted. I never found the Rosetta stone for Chief, but if anyone has one, I'd love a peek! Maybe the programmers have a white paper or something so that at least they can all be coding to the same model with the same interpretations for what the variable names mean.

David
X2
Vista-64