Haunted House

[rickhead]

Or maybe just neurotic. New neighbor, old friend bought the house next door. GC/Remodeler like me. While he's gutting his house I tell him I can pretty much duplicate existing and remodeled conditions with CA. He's intrigued because he understands the value of boosting sales with pretty before and after pictures, renderings and 3D walk throughs. But he's computer illiterate.

So I start with the exterior. Used a Hilti laser range meter to shoot corners from points on my house then using a little jimmatry and the 'Circle About Center' tool placed his building corners in a plan. As an aside, the next time I do something like this I'm gonna draw everything on grid THEN rotate it for the plot plan. 1st problem: Five (5) different wall types. Must have an opening someplace, the location of which I cannot find, because there's no floor or ceiling. 2nd problem: Plan dimensions and elevation dimensions aren't matching. As in a 3 1/2" discrepancy. Brick wall to siding wall transitions dimension differently. And when I butt a window in a pony wall tight to a brick wall as it's built, it shows correctly in both camera and elevation views but not in plan view. Bizarre.

[rongobong]

Hi Rick,
I took a look at your plan, and I think I have some idea of what is going on.
1. The detached garage floor is not showing because of a setting in the "Structure" tab. If you open the "Room Specification" dialogue box of the detached garage, look at the "Floor" area of the "Structure" tab. Uncheck "Floor Supplied by the Foundation Room Below". This will enable the greyed-out "Floor Under This Room" checkbox, and then the floor will be generated in 3D. Since there is no foundation drawn below the garage, it wasn't generating a floor surface (I think).
2. I believe that the main house/attached garage plan is giving you trouble because the different wall types are butted together end-to-end. It is my experience that butting different wall types together (end-to-end) can cause problems with Chief - the result I usually see is that the room doesn't "close" and therefore you cannot edit the space like a room. You can see what I mean if you do the following: draw invisible walls on the interior of the plan that connect at places where two different exterior walls are butting together. This creates a 3-way intersection, which Chief understands. If you make enough connections, you will see that Chief will create "rooms" that are editable and have a floor & ceiling finish.

I assume that the dimension problem is being caused by the inability of Chief to create a "room" from your floor plan, but that's just a guess.

Good luck with your plan - it looks like you have put a lot of work into it so far. Maybe once you fill in the interior walls you can close up some of the "rooms" and maybe the issue will resolve itself.

Rob

[rickhead]

Thanks for the feedback, Rob.

1. Actually, there is a detached garage floor, just not a foundation. You can see it in camera view.

2. All wall breaks were placed after continuous, fluid walls were drawn, floors present. I then changed individual wall types, inserted/edited windows, moving them into accurate position in plan view. Both camera and elevation views showed windows in pony walls slid behind brick in abutting full height brick walls. Attempting to edit all the different, butting wall types at wall breaks in 2D to get 3D views to generate properly is when trouble started. And that's the most disconcerting issue - why doesn't accurate 2D window placement sync with 3D views? Is it a reportable bug? Anyone?

[rongobong]

Hey Rick,
Sorry I wasn't much help..

For some reason when I pulled a 3D view of the detached garage, no floor surface was generated. I thought that was an issue you were referring to. I'm not an expert on the wall butting issue, but I think the problem is as I mentioned - in my experience, it seems that Chief wasn't designed to work the way you are trying to draw the different wall types butting together. (Of course, you have been using Chief since X2, so maybe you've been drawing that way forever?)
Whenever I am drawing a plan and am unable to right click in an area to select the "room", and the room is not highlighted, I have to troubleshoot to find a wall that isn't connecting correctly. Usually it's caused by walls being butted together end-to-end. I think your dimensioning problems are likely caused by Chief not understanding how to deal with the wall connections that are butted together.

That's just my guess.. perhaps someone with more knowledge wants to sound off?

[rickhead]

Thanks, Rob. I'm finding out Chief is far too buggy to attempt drawing a ranch floor plan with even a few different wall types.