In this session,
we're going to take a look at how soffits work in Chief Architect. Typically,
you might use a soffit to fill the space between a wall cabinet and the ceiling.
You might also use a soffit to create a coffer ceiling look,
or you may use a soffit in a sloped or vaulted room to make
it look like a faux beam.
You can use the soffit tool found underneath the cabinet tools.
Over on the left-hand side, you'll find the soffit tool.
You can place soffits in a 3D perspective view, in an elevation view,
or in a floor plan view.
As I use the soffit tool and I approach the corner of the room,
notice the ghost outline - it will place a corner soffit.
When I place the soffit against the back wall,
it will then place it as a regular facing soffit.
You might notice when I place this soffit, there is a directional arrow.
You can easily see this in the ghost outline.
I'll go ahead and click and place this.
And when you return to the floor plan view,
you will see the directional arrow in the floor plan view when you click on it.
Oftentimes you want that directional arrow facing away from the wall
into the center of the room. Soffits will bump and merge,
and this allows them to join in an easy manner when the arrow is facing away
from the wall. Soffits can easily be resized - simply click on them,
pull them out. You can also if you're using your temporary dimensions
you can display those.
You can resize them when using your temporary dimension - click on the edges I
have here, move over into the dimension,
and you can type in an exact number to position that soffit
exactly where you need to.
Let's take a look at a few of the settings inside of the soffit dialog.
You'll notice that my soffits have a certain height and a certain color.
That is a default that I have setup.
You can find out what your default settings are for your soffits by clicking on
the cabinet tools, coming down and double-clicking on the soffit tool.
In the soffit dialog, you're going to notice several panels for moldings,
layers, fill styles, as well as on the general panel, the sizing information,
and the setting for floor to top, floor to bottom, the height adjustments,
as well as sloped soffits.
Let's take a look at this first setting with different heights.
And I have two examples of soffits over on the side of the wall over here.
I'm going to open up a wall elevation and let's take a look at the different
settings with respect to the auto height adjustment and the
floor finish information.
I'm going to slide over and open up the existing wall elevation.
And I have two soffits that are already placed.
The one on the left has auto adjust set,
and the one on the right does not have the auto adjustment set inside of the
soffit. The first thing let's take a look at with the soffit on the left.
Let's go ahead and open it up,
and let's use the floor finish and uncheck that.
That means it's going to use the subfloor. When I make that change,
you're going to see the soffit move down and use the subfloor.
Depending in this case, my subfloor's at seven eighths of an inch.
It will adjust it.
The typical setting out of the box for kitchen and bath designers is to use
the floor finish. The next one let me just tile my views here.
Let's come up and let's tile our views here.
Let's take a look at what happens if we change the room height.
I'm going to double-click inside the room.
I'm going to come over and I'm going to add 12 inches to the ceiling,
as well as 12 inches to the floor.
And notice what happens to the soffit.
The one on the left moves up consistently with the auto adjust,
and the soffit on the right does not.
Let me go ahead and press the undo button here. The next thing is,
let's take a look at using moldings with your soffits.
Let's maximize our 3D view.
And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take both of the soffits,
and actually the one on the other side, let's slide these up.
I'm just going to grab that move handle, pull them up to the ceiling.
And let's suppose that I put a crown molding inside of this room,
and let's see how it might wrap around these soffits. So,
inside the room here, I'm just going to double-click,
and I'm going to go into the molding panel and I'm going to add a crown molding.
So, I'm going to come over here, add new,
and I'm going to come over and I'm just going to grab one of these molding profiles.
And let's make sure that it's large enough here that we see it.
So we'll set it at six inches at the top. And once we put that molding in,
you're going to notice that it automatically wraps the soffit.
There's a setting inside of your soffit.
Let's go ahead and open each one of these up.
I'm just holding my Shift key down to grab each one of them.
Let's use the open button here in the left-hand section of my screen.
There's a setting inside of the general panel to ignore room moldings.
When you change that setting,
the molding no longer wraps around your soffit.
Now there is another setting for your soffits that you can apply a molding to.
Let's go ahead and grab one of these soffits.
Let's pull it down a little bit so we can actually see this happen.
Inside the soffit itself - by double-clicking on it - if I come over
to the molding panel, you can add new
just like we did into the room. We'll browse over,
we'll find a molding profile, and we'll just use the same one.
You can see the molding get applied to that. I'll leave it at the default size.
And then you can see that that molding is applied to your soffit.