In this video,
I'll cover the basics of how doors and windows work in Chief Architect.
The door window tool is located in the upper menu.
These items are considered openings in the program.
This also includes doorways and wall niches.
Door and windows work very similar to one another.
Let me begin by using the hinge door tool.
As I come down in the floor plan view and hover over the wall,
you'll see a ghost outline of where the door will be placed when you click.
You can slide your cursor to either side of the wall and then when you
click, it will place the door in that orientation.
I'll press the spacebar to get out of the door placement mode.
Click on the door,
you'll see a couple of tools to change the hinge side direction.
Down in the bottom, you'll find the change opening and hinge side.
You can simply click and flip the door around.
There is also the tool next to this,
change swing side that will adjust the door on either side of the wall.
I have my temporary dimensions on to exactly position this door.
You can come up and type in an exact dimension to position the
door. You will also find,
while the door is selected a center tool that you can come in
and use to exactly center this inside of your room.
This door can easily be resized in both the 2D view as well as the
3D view. Notice when the door resizes,
it becomes a double door and this happens when the door becomes 48 inches
or wider.
You can force the door to be a single door inside of the door dialog.
If I double-clicked to open up this dialog,
there are a number of properties you can change.
Notice the panels down the left-hand side for various control.
On the general panel, you can choose the style of the door,
I'm currently using the default that came out of the template for this plan.
There are several styles you can choose from as well as an entire library of
doors that you can choose either custom or manufacturer.
The type of the door,
if you want to change this after the fact you can come in here and choose from
the selection list. The swing angle,
this predominantly refers to the swing angle in your floor plan view.
If you want to make adjustments, you can change that angle, the width,
the height, the thickness, elevation reference.
If you want to change where this door is in reference
to floor to top, floor to bottom, a number of other changes.
You might notice that I have a frame panel door.
The bottom is set at 24 inches and that's why I have a solid door at
the bottom. On the options panel for the door,
there are a number of settings you can choose from.
If you want to change the door swing,
maybe it swings in both directions maybe nice for a large shower.
Tempered glass, also for a shower or other doors.
You can choose the casing as well as choosing the casing from the
library for both the interior and the exterior casing.
You can rotate around inside of this dialog and easily preview
all of the changes that you're making to it. Lintel setting. Lites,
you might notice in this case,
I have a set of grids or lites as I referred to in the program.
And then a number of other settings that allow you to come in and very much
customize this door to your exact needs.
Once I've customized this door, as I go to place other exterior doors,
you can set this door as a default.
You'll find this setting in the lower edit menu.
It's called set as default.
And that means that when I've set my door and in this case,
the exterior door, I can use that as a default. When I place another door,
in this case in the back of the room,
it will have the exact same attributes as the other door.
If I rotate around, you'll see the same properties on the backside of this door.
And if I want to make changes to this door,
just double-click and I'm going to change this door on the back side to be a
slider door.
I'll set the width at 14 feet or 168
inches. You can change the height on the options panel.
I'll come in and set it up to be a four panel slider door.
As I press the tab key inside of the dialog,
the preview will update to show you the changes before you actually make them.
There is an option for 3D display.
If you want to show that open in your 3D views,
you'll be able to see the door open in the 3D view and in the floor plan
view, it will show up as the typical slider door.
When you place doors on interior walls,
those walls that aren't facing the outside, they have different defaults.
As I place a hinge door for the bedroom in this area,
it will be different than the exterior door.
You can set defaults just like you did for the exterior door.
As I rotate around and look inside the bathroom,
you can place different styles of doors.
I might choose the barn door tool.
Click in the area for the barn door,
resize this and again once you exceed 48 inches the door will
become a double door. Let's take a look at placing the shower doors.
As I rotate around here and make this a little bit easier to see,
I'm going to toggle on the vector style camera.
That way we can easily see the glass. Underneath the door tool,
is a specific tool called the shower door tool. As you place the shower door,
in my case, I have four hinges and different hardware.
These doors can be modified. Let me double-click to open this up.
On the options panel for this door,
is control to show the door swinging both directions. Typically,
the shower door is required to swing out. In this case. it's a very large door,
I've got the swing in both directions.
You can easily toggle that on and toggle it off and control it.
Right below that, is the safety option I mentioned earlier for tempered glass.
There is hardware settings. As you come over into the hardware component,
you can choose the interior and exterior handle.
You can also use the match interior and you can rotate around and
choose those. There is a library of hardware you can choose from,
in our core library as well as going out and downloading from the 3D library
from our program. Doors will bump to walls, as I click and drag this,
it will bump to the far wall. When there is casing on the door,
it will also bump with the casing information and
control and intelligently bump to the wall.
Windows work in a very similar way to doors.
As I slide over into the closet and using the window tool,
you'll see the different styles of windows that are available.
Using the basic window tool, click and place.
The default window for this template plan has a lintel, has different casing,
has grids. As you double-click on this window, very similar to the door tool,
you'll find the different types of windows that you can choose from.
In addition to these windows,
there's also a library of manufacturer windows that you can place directly from
the library. Sizing information from the window,
as well as your elevation reference,
maybe you're doing remodeling and you want to use it from the finished floor
versus from the floor which would be the subfloor or even an absolute maybe have
an open to below room in a stairwell.
Under the options panel similar to the doors but slightly different casing,
lintel,
sill and a number of other options that you can set for all of your window
attributes including energy values,
if you're going to be creating a solar heat gain or
exporting this out to a energy check application.
Door and windows can be mulled and blocked in the program.
As I kind of rotate around to the side of the house and I place a window in
the wall over here,
I'll press the space bar to get out of the window placement mode.
Double-click on the window.
And as I come into the general panel and I resize the width at 30
inches and the height at 30 inches also changing the window type
to a fixed glass and then probably making an adjustment inside of the
lites to just have a couple of lites in either direction.
Once I'm happy with this window, go ahead and close the dialog.
I'll make a couple of copies of this window by using the multiple copy tool.
And I like to use this to be very precise.
You'll find this in the lower edit menu.
As I click on the multiple copy I'm then going to click on the interval and just
set this to be, every 32 inches.
Then as I moved my cursor over there and slide the windows
across, you'll see that I've created a series of windows. Press the space bar,
and then I'm going to hold my shift key down, click, click,
click to get all three windows.
In the bottom of my toolbar is a option to make a
mulled unit.
This will create a singular window unit and then be available as a
object that will frame correctly. In fact,
let's just click on this wall and open up the framing detail for the wall.
If you're using Chief Architect Premier, we have automatic wall framing.
You'll see how it frames the wall and includes the header at the top of the
plate, in this case. This window can easily be copied.
If I grab this window,
use the copy tool and then paste (control+ V on my keyboard) on a
PC or (command+ V) on a Mac and paste the window over into the other wall,
very easy to move these objects around. Plus if you've done any customization,
you can easily save this into your library for further use.
You can also easily block windows,
such as side lites with doors to create mulled units.
Let me close this view and take a 3D overview to look at a view
with the roof on. So I'm going to use the camera tool,
and I'm going to use the perspective full overview camera.
Doors and windows can be shaped. As you notice,
I have a circular window over the bedroom.
To place shaped doors or windows using the window tool,
I'm gonna use the window tool.
I'm going to place it above the doorway and lets zoom in just a little bit and
take a look. First thing I'm going to do,
is resize this down and then double-click to open up the window.
On the general panel,
the first thing I'll probably do is make this a fixed glass window.
Come down to the lintel,
remove the exterior and interior lintel out,
and then also remove out the lites to make this just a typical
window without any lites. On the shape panel,
is an option to match the roof.
This will match the pitch of the roof for this particular style of house.
Close the dialog. You can then resize this window down,
make copies of this.
If I slide a copy and reflect this to the other side, flip it over,
it's very easy to make adjustments to these windows.
If I rotate around to the front and we take a look at how to place a
circular window, pretty similar process using the window tool.
Come in here, click to place the window. And again,
we'll make a few adjustments in here.
We'll set the width of this to 48 as well as the height.
I'm going to go in and also remove out the lites out of the window.
So we'll set that at no lites. Also,
adjust the window to just be fixed. And then on the lintel and sill,
I'll remove both of those options to replace those.
On the arch panel for the window,
there's an option to create a number of arches,
same is true for doors. I'm going to select the round top option.
And then at the bottom under the options,
is the option to reflect this vertically,
allowing you to create shaped windows.
You'll also find a number of shaped windows available in the library.
For the doors and windows,
you can create schedules that have lists of each of the objects.
You'll find the information in the doors and windows.
As I open up the door dialog and I come over into the schedule information,
this is included automatically in the schedule.
You can choose to include this in a specific schedule,
could be your side lites you want to include those in the door schedule.
This would be an option. On the object information,
you can also change the information about that.
And in my schedule that I have for doors and windows,
as I open up the project browser over on the right-hand side of my screen,
I typically will save my schedules underneath of CAD details.
And you'll see these underneath the door schedule. And then the window schedule.
If I open up the door schedule here,
I've been able to save this into my template plan and then it's formatted
exactly the way that I want to have on my doors.
Same thing with the window schedule.
My window schedule is already formatted and available in my template plan.
Again, I've saved that as part of my project.
And then as I placed doors and windows, it automatically populates a schedule.
I can then send it out to a layout sheet.
Here's an example of one of them for this project that shows the doors and
windows laid out on a single sheet for this layout page.
Opening indicators can be displayed for your projects.
As I moved back into the floor plan view and I use my elevation camera and shoot
an elevation of the design,
the opening indicators for your doors and windows is set up to be as a layer.
If I tap on the window and open up the active layer display options,
you see my window is highlighted. I can also turn on opening indicators.
When this layer is turned on, as I zoom in,
you can see the opening indicator for this window.
As I place another window off to the side,
I can change the opening indicator on a per object basis.
Double-click on the window,
and inside of the dialog is a specific panel for opening
indicators. At the top, you can see in this case,
it's using the default for the plan.
You can always hide this or show it for this specific object. For this window,
you can see that I have my temporary label turned on.
You can control your labels for doors and windows through the schedule.
Let me go back over into the window schedule and show you where this setting is
located. I placed the schedule.
You can find the schedules and learn more about it in a separate video,
but you can easily place these schedules underneath the tools> schedules menu.
And again, I placed this in a CAD detail to keep my work space nice and clean.
For this schedule that I've already placed, if I double-click on it,
on the label panel itself is to use a callout label.
If you turn on the callout label,
you have some options on what the label shape will be as well as if
you want a prefix on this.
I'll go ahead and leave this on and let's return back into our floor
plan view, and I'll go ahead and zoom in.
You can see the label has now changed to use the nomenclature from
the schedule itself. If I slide over into the door,
I don't have any label turned on, could be that layer is turned off.
I'll click on the door, turn on the label. And in this case,
it's just using standard nomenclature.
If you want to change it just like in the window,
come back into the schedule for the doors,
double-click on it on label panel. Check the option to use label,
change the prefix,
make the adjustment on the shape you'd like to use and then we go back into the
floor plan. You can see that that label has been adjusted.
You can change the offset of these labels. I'll zoom in a little bit closer.
You'll see a little small move handle. You can pull it in. Also,
if you double-click on the door,
on the label panel itself is an offset for your label and
orientation for this. Well,
that wraps up this video on the door and window basics in Chief Architect.
To learn more, please see our other videos as well as the built-in help file.
Thanks for watching.