Need help with Chief Architect

[ckissick]

I'm designing my own house, using Chief Architect Pro. I'm a civil engineer who uses CAD, but I wanted a better program for home design. Chief architect is great and very easy and all, until I get to the stairs and the roofs. For those, the program sucks.

I know you can't tell me how to fix things right here, but perhaps someone can point me to a resource I might be able to use. Chief architect can supply an expert on line for $200 for an hour. Any other, cheaper ideas?

[silverwhaletail]

You should be able to figure it out, you just have to keep after it.

I successfully used Chief Architect Pro to design my house and I am a stupid policeman with zero experience/training in design/planning/engineering...

The stairs are affected by the ceiling height. Is your problem with the stairs that they won't reach all of the way to the second floor? The default is 8 feet for the ground floor ceiling height, IIRC, so if you are using 9' or 10' ceilings on the ground floor, then your stairs won't reach all of the way up to the second floor. You have to go back to the beginning and enter the correct ceiling height in order to get stairs to "go all of the way up."

Our ground floor ceiling height is 10' and the second floor ceiling height is 9'. However, the truss design gave us another 2', making the living room and dining room ceiling height 21'. Adding to my problem (in Chief Architect Pro) was that the stairs go up to a bridge that is a 27' unsupported span across the living room.

You just have to keep at it, and you will eventually figure it out.

As for the roof, are you trying to use a parapet roof in your design? I don't believe that Chief Architect Pro has that capability, or at least it didn't in 2007 when I used the software. I had to make a third floor and then make the "walls" on that floor only 3' high. I can't remember how I figured that out, but somehow I did...

Keep in mind that you are going to need a Structural Engineer anyway, so he will "clean up" any loose ends that may arise.

Good luck on your project.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Stairs and roofs are always a pain with any 3D modeling program (as is topo, but I won't get into that - plus you're a CE so you probably know ways to handle that...). I haven't used this one personally but if you're having difficulty possibly consider using Google SketchUp and exporting the model & importing into this program if you can. SU is the most user-friendly modeler I've come across and we use it professionally, then build our technical Revit-based models off of the SU schematic models.

Good luck.

[kach22i]

Find a forum about your program, sometimes they have a good Q&A section too.