In this video segment,
I'll cover creating additional floors and building a foundation in Chief
Architect.
If you intend on creating multiple floors or a foundation for your design,
you will want to begin after your first floor is completed.
And then let the program help build the added floors in.
This sample plan that I have open my floor indicator at the top of my toolbar is
on floor one. To create an additional floor, come over into the build menu,
down to floor and build new floor.
The program will prompt you to create a new second floor from the main first
floor plan. You can also create a more free form design,
a blank plan and draw in the walls.
When you drive the second floor from this main floor,
it will create a footprint outline of your exterior walls that you can
use as a basis.
I'm going to go ahead and derive this second floor from the main floor and click
OK. The program will open up the second floor defaults.
You can come in to this diagram and make changes for the floor and
ceiling heights. In this case,
I'm going to accept the default eight foot ceiling and create the new second
floor. As the second floor is created,
notice that my floor indicator is now on floor two,
and let's go ahead and take a 3d overview and see what we have so far.
In this view, you can see the second floor was created.
The automatic roof is on so it automatically is generated on the second floor.
To tile my views,
I'm going to come up underneath the window menu and tile my views.
You can also use shift F6 to tile your views as a shortcut.
On the floor plan side,
I'm going to take the furthermost wall that's above the garage and pull that up
to create a smaller shallower footprint on the second floor.
You'll notice that the roof is still following the gable.
Since there was a different style of roof. There are two different wall types.
I'm going to take the wall type that is actually the hip wall and just drag it
over the top of the other wall to create a simple hip roof.
To create your interior walls for the second story,
one of the tools that you may find helpful is called reference display.
This tool is located on my far right hand side of my screen.
It's called reference display.
You can also press F9 on the keyboard to toggle this on and toggle it off.
Using the interior wall tool,
I'm going to come down and select the interior wall.
And I'm just going to come in here and trace right over the top of the wall.
And let's go ahead and zoom in just a little bit here. As you take a look,
the wall may not be quite aligned.
When you draw a wall and it's very close and you want it to stack over the wall
below, the wall below is in red outline. I can click on this wall.
You'll find a tool when the wall is very close.
That is a tool in the lower edit menu called align with below,
or maybe align with above. This will exactly stack that wall.
One more interior wall tool,
and we'll just click and drag right over the top of the other wall.
And then by pressing F9 on the keyboard, we'll toggle off the reference display.
Over in the 3d view,
if I move over and create the glasshouse rendering technique,
you can now see the second floor and how that was created.
To allow for the stairs that go between floor one and floor two,
to have an open to below room or stairway.
Let me toggle the camera back to the standard camera,
and then I'm going to use the cross-section slider so we can easily peek inside
the house. Using the cross-section slider tool,
I'm going to come over and I'm going to choose the slice that will pull the
house in this direction, and you can easily slide this back and forth.
Once I've created this view,
you'll see that currently the floor platform is solid in the stair area.
The easiest way to create the stair platform hole is to click on the stairs,
use the tool that is create automatic stairwell,
and that will follow those stairs,
and you can see that it's actually cut a hole for the stairway that follow the
stairs.
You can also use the railing tool and then mark the room that is formed as an
open to below room, and that will cut through the platform. With the platform,
as I zoom in, you can see that there is a cavity for the floor platform,
right in this area, right in here. As I get ready to build a new third floor,
let's look at where you can define what the platform thickness is.
Close the 3d view, and I'm going to come back over into the build menu,
down to floor and then build new floor.
I'll choose the same process to derive the third floor from the second floor.
The same dialog opens up for the new third floor.
Down in the bottom of this area for the floor platform.
You'll see the option for the floor finish and the floor structure.
You'll also see a diagram of the floor structure.
Right now it's set up to be 12 and five eighths.
If you click on the edit option for the floor structure,
there are two components that make up the floor structure.
The first one is a three quarter inch sub floor followed by a 2 by
12 framing member.
If you're using trusses or using a different framing size,
come in here and type in the value that you plan to use,
and that way your structure will follow your exact design criteria.
As I built the third floor,
notice my floor indicator has gone up to floor three.
When I press F 9 on my keyboard to show the reference display,
this will show you the floor below. You can also change this.
If I click on the floor indicator,
reference display is an option where you can control it. Currently,
the reference display is set to be automatic.
You can be very specific if you wanted to show the first floor as a reference
display to superimpose over the top of it,
you can then change that in the display settings.
I'll toggle off the reference display by pressing F9 on the keyboard.
With the interior wall tool,
I'm just going to come in here and draw a couple of walls and show you how to
swap floors if you decide that floor two and floor three need
to be swapped.
Underneath the build menu down underneath floor is the option to
exchange with the floor below and the floor above.
If I exchange this with the floor below,
notice that my floor indicator actually changed to floor two,
and when I go up to floor three,
you can see that I now have swapped the two floors.
You see the stairwell that was created and to reverse that process,
I'll just come back into the build menu down to floor,
and I will exchange that with floor below.
Chief Architect automatically creates an attic wall for you.
If I move up into the attic in this saved plan view that we are currently
looking at the saved plan view shell,
it has the layer turned off for attic walls.
If I come and change that to the dimension view,
you might see two walls that would represent the gable end walls.
And let's just take a look in 3d so we can see exactly what these attic walls
are.
The two attic walls that we were looking at would be the two walls at the end
up in the attic on either side.
And that's what you're looking at in this view right here for the attic walls.
These are created automatically by the program and their layer based.
If you want to turn those on and off,
they happen to be off in this particular view for the floor plan shell.
That's what the floor indicator A for attic stands for.
Let's move on and take a look at the process for creating
the foundation. Underneath of your build menu.
Underneath floor is the option to build the foundation.
The build foundation dialog is somewhat different than the build additional
floor dialog. You can build foundations that have walls with footings,
grade beams on peers, as well as on a monolithic slab.
When you're building them with footings,
there is the option to hang the platform inside the foundation walls for
more of a walk-up or roll in platform.
And then for the slab thickness,
it's set up in this default to be four inches.
You can set your stem wall height as well as the type of stem wall that you're
going to use, and a few other options for your garage.
Important to maybe already have your garage defined when the program
builds a foundation, it will take any room that's named as a garage,
apply these defaults and not necessarily put the same type of foundation for the
main house underneath of the garage. I'm going to change the stem wall,
height to 108, press the tab key. As I do that,
you'll see that the basement ceiling height will then be 104 based
on all the other variables.
And remember that when your doing your stem wall height,
the description has a one and a half sill plate that's included
in the height of that stem wall. Let me go ahead and build the foundation.
And just like when building a new floor,
you have the option to derive the foundation from the main floor or to create an
entirely blank foundation. The floor indicator has moved down to floor zero.
I'm going to use the perspective floor overview camera,
and now you can see the foundation that was created with the 108
stem wall height,
as well as the 104 ceiling height inside of the main room.
This foundation can be changed as well.
If I grabbed the wall tool and use the straight foundation wall,
and I'll just come in here and draw one more wall and take this back
section over here by clicking inside of the room, you see the gray outline.
Open up the room on the structure panel I'm just going to set this back down
to 37 and a half, you can see that in the diagram,
the way that would work out.
If you want to remove the floor out of this area,
there is the option to remove the floor out of this room.
I'll go ahead and press OK.
And then you can see the update to the foundation and changes where you can have
multiple foundation styles within the exact same plan.
Notice under the garage that it already created the slab for the garage.
Again, it's important to have your room named a garage.
That way the program will automatically create that style of foundation
directly underneath of the garage for you.
As you're creating multi-story structures,
you may find the back clip and elevation camera's helpful tools.
From the floor plan view,
you'll find these tools underneath of the orthographic view camera.
I like to use the back clip cross-section view,
create a small slice inside of the design.
This can assist you in stacking your walls,
also making sure that your floor cavities and other dimensions are in line
with your design criteria. Well,
that wraps up this video on additional floors and foundations.
Please see our other videos as well as a built-in help file for more
information. Thanks for watching.