Wall Length

[Olimpia Sawaia]

Iam having trouble with what should be extremely easy and feel like an idiot. I am attempting to draw a floor plan of a bathroom with walls that are varied in length and thickness but finally connect at an endpoint. My challenge is, on a few walls, because of wall thickness, tile, or taking the measurements without my glasses on, I entered the initial wall length incorrectly. For a simple example: I draw using the line tool, a straight wall, and enter 51.50 inches and hit enter, and move on to the next point and maybe 2 or 3 more. Then I realize, the 51.50-inch measurement, was actually 58.50 inches and want to go back to change that wall section to the correct length.

Select the geometry that will be affected by the change in the length of the wall and use the Move tool. Move the geometry in the required direction and type 7 to increase the length of the wall from 51.5 to 58.5. Press Enter.

Thank you, that is a massive help! I have been playing with that after your example. I see the logic in having to select & move the additional connected wall segments. A couple of follow-up rookie questions as I have been trying to smoothly accomplish that.

I think two questions may fix this for me. Can I click and enter the measurement I want, vs sliding the wall? The last time I tried, I only needed to move .25", and sliding the mouse in that small increment is brutal and I missed it again. The other question applies to all the tools, once you have moved the wall to the exact right place, how do you release the move tool? Or that question was also from the line tool and all the rest? For the line tool, I know you click where to start and where to finish, not drag the mouse, but the move tool appears to be you drag the measurement to where you want and then click to release it? Is there a simple key entry to disengage a tool? Sorry, you are probably rolling your eyes about now, but I really like the program and after trying Planner 5D first, then Room Sketcher, I love SketchUp and really want to make this work. Unfortunately, I am on a deadline or I would enroll in some of the classes, I hope to do that soon. Thank you for your help!

By the way, in your first post you mentioned you are a DIYer so I presume this is your own bathroom that you are working on. SketchUp Free could be enough for you to get the gist of what you are doing. SketchUp Pro could be a good option, though, particularly if you need to create documentation such as CDs and permit drawings.

The other big help is to be able to upload and build elevation plots and landscaping plans. The aerial shots also, those would be a big help, but also fairly complex. Right now, it takes me more time to sort out how to build the plans, than to do the projects themselves, but that will change with use.

so lets say , um , we just want a wall dimension to be locked , this is very simple , because in a very complex REAL WORLD map , we don't have square walls we have off angle walls we have stuff that controlling them is a little bit hard , and suddenly when an important wall dimension changes anything become destructed it could be better if it was able to do that , like other software , like solidWorks constraint dimension system

You're right, I only use Chief. The way Solidworks or any other Autocrap do it is of no bearing to this software. If you want to adjust the angled wall(s), stop selecting the angled wall(s) and select the adjacent wall(s) moving around your plan counter-clockwise and when you get back to the beginning, everything will be as you want it.

One thing you could do which will help if you accidentally do not follow Joey's instruction on wall moving. Draw a polyline that follows the proper outline of the walls and make it a bright color. If your walls move you'll see and be able to snap it back to the polyline. Needless to say if you do this, you should put the polyline on a special layer.

I have to absolutely agree that the inability to anchor or lock a wall is simply hamstringing the designer, and I don't think that people who have never used engineering tools can appreciate that fact. For example, I currently have a project with a garage and a shop that meet at a wedge-shaped dog trot at some unknown angle. (The main garage on the left, the shop on the right, the wedge dog-trot between them). The shop is constrained by:

So, two constrained corners, one constrained wall length, one constrained wall location, two constrained intersection right angles.... having two unknown length 'remainder walls' with unknown corner angles would be a trivial 1 minute layout in any engineering CAD program with the ability to anchor or lock corners and sides. As near as i can tell it is impossible to do in Chief, but I would welcome someone showing me that i am wrong.

there are three dimensions to the structure as you can see, and another five constraints (two 90 degree corners, one parallel (to setback), on forces the left edge to be aligned with the upper structure left corner, and one on the left and right tips of the structure in the dog trot)

Specifically, the constraints are the 20'2" setback which defines the angle and location of the right (actually the back) wall. the front (left) wall is specified to be a fixed 33'. the gap in the breezeway on the left (front) is 6 feet. The bottom two corners are 90 degrees. the bottom left of the upper structure and top right of the lower structure are constrained to be straight across from one another.

since the length of the bottom, right, and top are unknown, as are the top two corner angles I was unable to get this configured in Chief. since nothing can be locked, all attempts to configure this just resulted in other walls moving. I needed to have the engineering CAD give me the dimensions that i could then put into chief. Once the exterior walls are eventually located in Chief, using dimensions to locate items like doors/windows, additional invisible exterior walls to adjust the roof line, etc., results in walls inadvertently sliding up and down the angled wall or something else changing. Again, it seems that the inability to lock or anchor a feature severely hamstrings the user for no particular reason.

Since there is no info in your post regarding which version of Chief you are using or your experience with the program I don't want to presume anything. I can tell you using the program as it is intended would not pose any problems doing what is shown and described. The walls and all the information contained therein for that part of the program are not intended for working out the geometry and trigonometry of your layout. The CAD tools and all their inherent features would make what you show quite simple. Much along the "lines" of creating a Plat all the information can be fed accurately into the sketch. Then the walls can be drawn. aligned, snapped to etc the CAD to achieve your purpose. Further you can determine if those angles and dimensions should correspond to the framing, sheathing, siding, foundation etc. There are many things, such as bump outs, bays, porches etc. that are far easier to layout in CAD and then "draw" with other appropriate parts of the program. Much like light construction lines to do layout in hand drawing before the actual drawing. There is an incredible amount of articles, videos, classes and tutors on how to best use the program. Again not presuming anything. I've been using Chief for 29 years now and I truly believe I know how to use approximately 75% of its capabilities (and far less in X15)

Here is an example from a plan I did that required CAD to get the walls right. The skew wall has an angle of -82.543935 which matches the CAD segment in the polyline I used to force the wall to the lines. First drawn, Chief makes it -82.5 degrees which matches a plan default allowed angle (7.5 degrees). I forced it to match using the make parallel tool and had to edit with close zooms, but I got it.

The two short dimensions plus the other rectilinear dimensions locate the ends of the skew wall, and I wanted those dimensions no finer than 1/2" increments so the foundation builder can build the formwork for the slab. The length of the skew wall is inconsequential. It is the corners (the ends) that are located.

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