Additions & remodeling

[Charles Butzow]

Most of what I do is additions and remodeling. Is there a way to draw existing walls, and not have them show up on the materials list? Also, is there a way to draw walls to be demolished?

[shanek]

In the "line selection" of the wall dbx has a "demo" that can be used for demo walls ( you'll have to make a NEW WALL TYPE, don't modify the wall your using for the new build ), you can get a material list by clicking tools/materials and select the best method for the project you're on. shane

[Jim Z]

Charles,

Just choose the method for building th ematerials list, you can choose areas of the project or floor etc.

Jim

[WendyWelton]

Charles, I create new wall types. Start by selecting one of the walls that comes with Chief, like Siding 4, and make a copy of it. I call mine "Siding 4 Existing", and I make the fill color different so I can easily tell the difference in a plan view. My favorite is to make the fill color white, and the fill color in my new walls is grey - so the GC can easily tell old from new. I've made a new material called A-Air. (I put an "A" at the beginning of all my new materials so I can find them quickly...). Assign this new non-material to each of the layers in the wall type - replacing the framing material, etc. Try this with a simple plan and then do a take-off, all the wall materials will say 0 for the quantity. I don't use the take-off function for all my moldings and such, just framing, but I assume something similar could be done with everything else. If they can't be made into a no-material material, they could be segregated by copying and renaming.

Hope this helps.

Wendy

[WendyWelton]

Most reliable - Draw your Existing Conditions. Change all your wall types etc. to use dashed lines. Send the plan to a Cad Detail. Import the Cad detail to your plan and order it to stay in back. Change your wall types back to using solid lines. Any lines in the Cad Detail that represent walls that are Existing to Remain are hidden by the Chief Walls that are still in the plan. The others are visible as dashed lines. It works and it keeps a completely undisturbed record of what's there to begin with - that Chief can't do any wall creep on.

You could also do some trickery with yet another wall type, with dashed lines and each wall set to Invisible. But, you get lots of icky collisions and misbehavings. We tried it and don't recommend it.

Wendy

[lbuttery]

This is documented in vid #340

I have been studying this one as I have some remodels coming up as our first job(s).

[Coffcons]

Wendy has some nice ideas there.

There is another way (isn't there always?) on the Material list.
Simply save your plan as "Material List" or whatever you chose and delete all walls etc that are already existing.

[Tim O'Donnell]

you can use a p-line to select only the areas you want included on the material list...these can be edited with line breaks to go around items if you want... or you can use more than one...

there is a molding p-line tool or you can convert any p-line into a material p-line...

an instance where more than one material p-line would be used, for example : front and side additions...create a molding p-line around each addition, and lets say there is also a new window going into the existing...put a small p-line around that window as well...now to calculate a material list that includes all three of these areas, select one of the material p-lines, hold down the shift key and select the other two p-lines..with these three group selected, click the "calculate from area" material icon...

[Charles Butzow]

Thanks Shanek and Jim Z for getting back to me so quickly. Good Help!
WendyWelton, It sound like you've done this a lot. You hit the nail on the head with the invisible wall trick. It was giving me headaches, which is what prompted the question. Thanks for all your help.
Coffcons, Thanks for the advise
Tim O'Donnell, It sounds like you've done this a bit too. Thanks for the help.

[rmhutchins]

I just watched #340 on the Training CDs (as someone else posted); it describes this process completely.

Richard