patio slab & roof

[elCid72]

I posted this at the chatroom, which may be the wrong place, so I have also posted it here.

I am new to Chief Arch, although I am very good with AutoCad. Bought Chief Home Ed 5.0 for the 3d function.

Trying to draw a stone patio slab behind a house. Texture doesn't have to be stone, but I need to have a grade-level slab. This is for a proposal to a customer who has asked for an enclosure for the existing patio. I plan to propose a knee wall of wood siding, screens above, and a shingle roof. The screens could be windows, so I think that will be the easy part.

How do I draw the slab?
How do I draw half-high walls? The railing function is very close, but I need siding.
How do I draw a roof over the room, with supporting columns?

I have searched through the reference manual, as well as watched the tutorial videos, and can't find what I need.

[Richard Lamoy]

Since I don't have Chief Home 5 (use 8.06 Full) I will speak in generalities of a few things for you to try.

Build the patio as a room using exterior walls. In the room dialog box, check the use slab for room. In the materials tab for it, set the floor to a stone. You may want to create a new one if there isn't one close.

That's the easy part. Now for the split walls - if available use pony walls. This is an advanced feature and may not be available in the home version. The pony wall feature allows you to split the wall and assign different properties to each. If available, it should be explained in the manual, help files and tutorials.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

Richard

[Tim O'Donnell]

Like Richard I am running v8 so I will address this as if it is in v8, don't know what features home5 may have..

If you build the room with a wall type that uses siding, then change the wall to a solid railing in its dbx the wall will have siding on it . After building the walls, select a wall and open the dbx for it>railings tab and change it to a solid railing and check post to over head beam, you can set the ht of the wall and the spacing of the posts here as well. You should be able to select one wall, then hold down the shift key and select all the walls you want to change to rails, then open the dbx change them all at once. The posts will be the thickness of the wall type you use for the siding wall (4" wall makes 4x4 posts, 6"wall-6x6) In the room spec dbx, set the floor level to a negative value to get down to grade, assign the desired material to the floor, in the structure tab, if you check the box for slab foundation for this room you will get a 4" thick floor, regardless of the room name.

You should also be able to use windows, set the min distance between them to the size you want the posts (do this in Window Defaults dbx) set up a fixed window of the desired size

(assuming you have these options in Home5)

then adjust the sash width to desired value ...if you zero these the glass will dissappear, but if you set them to a value over 1/16" you can use divided lites to simulate the screen. (you need the glass for divided lites) If this option is available to you set the lites across and vertically to the max value (possibly 8) then set the muntin width to 1/8", you might also try a diamond pattern for the lites...this will give a reasonable "screen" look