For this countertop video I'll review the automatic countertop settings, how to
generate a custom countertop using existing cabinets, manually draw a custom
countertop along with shaping and creating custom shapes, placing holes and
cutouts. adding an edge profile and applying countertop materials. Let's get
started by reviewing the automatic countertop settings. When you place a
base cabinet in chief architect it comes in typically with an automatic
countertop. If you want to adjust the countertop, let's open up the cabinet
dialog and you'll notice one of the things that I want to point out is the
height of the cabinet includes the countertop, this cabinet is set at 36
inches and after you subtract the inch and a half allocated for the countertop
the cabinet box itself is 34 and a half inches.
Now the countertop can be removed if you press a 0 in here and if you want the
cabinet box to be exact you can set it at thirty four and a half inches. That
will remove the countertop from being displayed and also remove the countertop
itself. Additional settings you'll find about the countertop: you can control the
overhang, in this case I have a one inch in my default plan, set to be uniform all
the way around. You can uncheck the uniform option and you can control the
overhang on all of the sides. Could be that you have a cook range on the left
or the right and you want to zero that out. There's also information on your
corner treatment. Currently my corner treatment on the corner of the cabinet
is set to be rounded. You can clip it or you can specify none and then you have
the information on the corner width for that radius. Moving from automatic
countertops to manually created countertops, there's two ways you can do
them. One of the ways is to click on the cabinet, sometimes this is easiest to do
in your floor plan view. While a cabinet is highlighted there is a tool that you'll
find in your lower edit menu saying generate custom countertop. I'm going to
go ahead and click that button and that separates the countertop from the
cabinet itself. You can notice in my screen I have a selection handle on the
countertop. And from here you can click on this and
move that countertop around, so if you want to make it longer, wider you can
click on this and adjust it. I'm gonna take a look at this in more
detail on the island here in a minute if I delete this custom countertop the
cabinet will revert back to having the automatic countertop generated for
itself. Let's look at the process in creating the custom countertop for this
island. I'm going to highlight the existing countertop, I'm going to press
the Delete key, notice that the automatic countertop is
retained on those cabinets. I'm going to return to the plan view and show you the
steps. I'm going to hold my shift key down and I'm gonna select the key
cabinets that I want to use to convert and generate the automatic countertop.
Notice while those cabinets are selected I have the lower edit menu option to
generate the custom countertop. I'm going to go ahead and click that tool, that
will generate a custom countertop. I like to use this approach because it has the
exact overhang that I've already specified, that's likely one inch, and if
I were to manually draw this out as you'll see here in a minute it'll take
me a little bit longer to get that one inch overhang exact, so this is a
time-saving approach that I like to use for generating the custom countertop.
When you've generated a custom countertop and I press the spacebar to
deselect it sometimes it's a little bit difficult to re-select it in your
floorplan view. If you click near the edge it's easy to select, if you happen
to click on the cabinet it may be a little bit more difficult to select but
you can press the Tab key and get to the next closest object, which is what I've
just done here. Now to resize this countertop if you have your temporary
dimensions on you can click on this and if I wanted to pull this back a
predetermined amount, let's say I want to pull it back plus 11 inches I can say
plus 11 while the back edge of is selected I'm going to actually create
the arc on here using the CAD tool in the Edit menu Change Line to Arc and
when I select that it will create an arc on that edge. Notice that there is a
small diamond in here and I can click on that and I can pull it back. If you hold
your ctrl key down you have a little bit more refined control because it will
override the bumping and snapping. Now you'll notice that I have a text
call-out for a specific radius. Let's go ahead and double click on the countertop.
You'll notice on the selected arc I can come in here and I can be very specific
about the radius before I type in a value here I want to make sure what I'm
going to lock. You can think of the start and the end, you can lock one of those two.
You could lock the center, you can lock the arc, and in this case I'm going to
lock the chord, which is the distance between this point and this point, and
they won't move. That will create symmetry on the edge and overhang of the
countertop itself. I can set the radius in here if it's 146 and a half, press the
tab key, the preview will update and then when you close the dialog I now have a
precise radius at 146 and a half inches. As I return back into the 3d view you
may notice that I actually did not have a countertop on the apron sink. You can
click on these edges and you can easily pull these around; again it's more
precise to do this in your floorplan view, and you can then resize this right
over and create the reveal you're after for your countertop. My preferred
approach in generating a custom countertop is to leverage those cabinets
you have in place, they already have an overhang and it makes it easy and
precise to generate that exact overhang and then shape the sides that you need
to. The other method that you can do in creating your countertops is to use the
custom countertop tool. You'll find this tool underneath of our cabinets and it's
called the custom countertop. When you use this tool you can click and drag and
create a countertop. When you highlight the countertop, and you open up the
information about the countertop, a few of the settings that I usually like to
adjust is set thickness from the cabinet. If you want a thicker countertop you can
come in here and specify the number that you're after, height of the cabinet. It's
going to look at your thirty four and a half inch cabinet, this will replace your
automatic countertop and you can specify the height if you need to adjust it
accordingly and you can either adjust it from the top or from
bottom, and there's also a setting from where you're trying to do it. I usually
use the finish floor. There's a few other things that you can control we already
looked at the selected line, there's moldings which is our edge
profile I'll cover that in a minute. For now I've set the thickness at three
inches and the bottom of the countertop will be at thirty four and a half inches.
In the 3d view you can see the countertop that we've drawn. This works
exactly the way the other countertop, if you need to click on it you can resize
it. There's also the change to arc where you can reshape it. While you have the
countertop selected there's a few tools in your lower edit menu that you may
want to use. One of them is a hole tool you can create a hole inside of this
countertop and it will generate a hole right inside of it. If you take a look at
this countertop that I've drawn offset, I created a hole inside of the countertop
and then I put an image in there and crushed glass to create the fire that
comes out of the top of the countertop. When you draw your countertops manually
they will come in with 90-degree corners. When you highlight the countertop you're
gonna find a Fillet and a Chamfer tool. If I look at the Fillet tool I can
specify the Fillet amount by clicking on the tool and specifying the Fillet
amount. In this case I have it to be set to be a half-inch radius. Let's look at
the way this tool works. I can click on one edge, click the Fillet tool, click on
the other edge and that's going to create a half-inch Fillet if you zoom
in and take a look. You can always undo that Fillet with the next tool that
will say remove the intersection between two points. In this case I can come in
here click this edge, come over here and click this edge ,and it's going to remove
that Fillet out by asking of you if you want to join those lines. The other tool
that I like to use is actually to Fillet all four corners in one operation by
selecting the countertop. Remember I already have my Fillet defined at a
half inch. You can click on the Fillet tool and the option to Fillet all
corners, it has the letter A on it in my toolbar. I can click this tool and then
it will generate a Fillet on all four of the edges or on all of the edges of
the countertop for the exterior corners, saving me
quite a bit of time. Waterfall islands are very popular. The way that I draw
these countertops are with the manual countertop tool. Let's go back into our
plan and I'm going to show you how I create this vertical countertop edge for
the waterfall. I find this easiest to do in the
floorplan view and I'm gonna select the Custom Countertop tool. I'm gonna come
over here and I'm just gonna snap on the edge and I'm gonna drag out, snap on the
other edge and we'll just pull that out so that it's exactly the same width. I'm
gonna zoom in here a little bit and let's begin by sizing it. I'm going to
turn on my temporary dimensions and I'm gonna click on this edge and I'm gonna
purposely set this a little bit thicker for the purpose of the video, I'm gonna
specify three inches for the edge of that. Let's go ahead and double click on
the countertop itself. Inside the dialog box let's remove the checkbox from set
thickness from the cabinet. In this case this is going to be a very thick
countertop. You can think of this as going from the top of the existing
countertop all the way down into the floor and on that other countertop the
top of it was set to be thirty seven and a half inches. I'm also going to remove
the set height from the countertop so floor to top, or floor to bottom in this
case, is easy to set it to be zero. Let's go back in and take a look at this
in our 3d view. Now as we return back you can see that we've created the
waterfall by simply taking the countertop itself and making the
thickness go from the top all the way down to the finished floor. That's
the easiest way to create your waterfall style countertops. The next thing I want
to take a look at is creating an edge profile. Right now I don't have an edge
profile on this particular edge of the countertop. If you want to put an edge
profile on your countertop, you'll find this setting underneath the moldings
panel. Select Add New, browse out to the Library. You'll find several of these in
the Core Library of Chief Architect under the moldings and profiles. There is
an edge profile that you can select and choose the profile. These are basic
styles, if you go to the Bonus Catalog and you download these from the 3d
Library on our website, you can then find several
edge profiles and then you can easily select these. Let's go ahead and select
this Ogee Bullnose. When you do this you can specify the height of the
molding and then the width of the molding and then you get a preview of
how that's going to be applied onto the counter top. You typically want your edge
profile to match your countertop thickness; in this case it's one and a
half inches. You may have a thicker countertop and
you want to create a build up you can add new. Typically you want that total to
add up to the thickness of the countertop. Let's go ahead and close our
dialog box. You now have that edge profile on your countertop. You can use
your material eyedropper, pick up the material of the countertop and apply it
onto that edge. You might notice that this edge is a little bit jaggy, I like
these to be very smooth. I'm going to return back into the floorplan view,
select that same edge. You'll find a tool down here that I like to use sometimes
that will allow you to put many segments in there. So I'm going to just add maybe
20 segments in here to smooth it out, it's gonna create a much smoother arc.
You can go back into the 3d view, and you can see that this is a much smoother edge.
Another thing you may want to do on your edge profile- maybe you don't want your
edge profile to come in on your sink or maybe it's on the edge of a cook range,
again you can select this edge and notice in my edit toolbar there is a
remove molding from selected edge. You can click on the edge that you want and
simply remove that edge profile on a per-edge basis and so you have control over
exactly the way you're going to do that. Again, if you've got a cabinet and a cook
range and you've got a custom countertop edge profile you may want to use that
tool and remove the edge on a per-line basis. One last point here at the end of
the countertop video it's a little bit more advanced topic. I want to expose you
and let you know that you can use the CAD tools to create pretty unique
countertops. Notice in this image I have a scalloped cutout of the countertop for
the sink. Let's go into the program, let me show you a couple things so you're
aware of the tools that you can use here. Using the CAD tools you can come in here
and create really any shape that you're after. I've just drawn a box using the
CAD box tool. While you select this item you can
use the break tool and add different break points. You can curve and shape
this item. In this case, if I curve this edge and curve this edge, maybe pull it up a
little bit, you can create pretty unique shapes. Using the circle tool, we could
draw a circle over here and maybe I might take a copy of that circle and
just pull it over to the other side. I can actually convert all three of
these things by holding the shift key down and then converting those into a
custom countertop. Once I've done that it's gonna say, you know how thick do you
want I,t and we'll just go ahead and use the default here. Now I have three unique
pieces of countertops here, two circles one somewhat of a rectangle. You can also
do this operation that will merge all of these, or you can subtract them. You'll
find these tools down here in the bottom. It's called Intersection, Union and
Subtraction. If I create the union of this it's going to go ahead and create
one single countertop, and you can see that countertop in the 3d. If you want to
get your square footage for your countertop you can always come over,
click on the polyline and notice that my area for my countertop is 43, a little
over 43 square feet. If you're interested in learning how to do a countertop plan
you'll find a separate video on this. As I've opened up my library browser you'll
notice that I have Caesar stone and Cambria at the top of my library. You can
select these materials, click and apply them. These are materials that you can
download from the 3d Library. If you want to go into the library, select get
additional content online. That will take you out to our 3d Library. You can pick
and choose those manufacturers. They'll show up in your catalog and then you can
apply them in your 3d views. Well that wraps up the video on countertops.
Remember your automatic countertop settings can control how thick your
countertops are, what your overhang is, you can do that on a per edge basis. I
like to generate custom countertops from existing cabinets, that saves me a little
bit of time. Countertops can be manually drawn, you can create custom
shapes and shape them. You can use the CAD tools, you can create holes and
cutouts. To apply an edge profile in Chief Architect we refer to
that as a molding. Remember to go out to the 3d Library to make sure you
download manufacturer-specific materials, you'll also find those in the Core Library.
Thanks for watching the video!