Calculating Square footage in Chief Home Designer Architectural 2019

[dmcouch1975]

It is possible to calculate total square footage in Chief Home Designer Architectural 2019? I have looked in the help area but it is not listed under calculate square footage or square footage calculator. If it is possible can someone please let me know.  Thank you!

[solver]

Each level will show square feet. You will need to add up the square feet if you have multiple levels. No way to do automatically.

[bddemers]

Where does it show total SF? I'm not seeing it.

 

Also, can I select a room, like an odd shaped garage, and quickly see the area SF?

I did it by creating a poly line around the room to make the same shape, but surely that is the long way.

Thank you.

[solver]

8 minutes ago, bddemers said:

Where does it show total SF? I'm not seeing it.

 

What "total SF" are you looking for? The Living Area Label should be shown on each floor. Run a Plan Check if it's not.

 

9 minutes ago, bddemers said:

Also, can I select a room, like an odd shaped garage, and quickly see the area SF?

I did it by creating a poly line around the room to make the same shape, but surely that is the long way.

 

Each room can show SF as part of the label. See Help for more info.

[davidstvz]

Press the ` key (i.e. the ~ key) to open the layer options and make sure both "Rooms" and "Rooms, Interior Area" are checked (make sure "Rooms, Standard Area" is not checked).  Now you'll see interior footage below each room label (if a room label isn't showing, select the room and press Ctrl+E to open its object properties and make sure that "show room label" is checked).  The footage is rounded up or down to the nearest whole numbers and doorways aren't included (an interior doorway typically has about 1 square foot of flooring in it).

 

If you want the total area for the current floor, you can draw a polyline around the entire house.  This is the safest way to get a final verification of the footage, but for a quick glance at the total footage as you design, you need to hijack the "living area" label.  To hijack the label, you must click and edit each room which is normally NOT part of living area (such as garages and porches) and set their areas to be included into the living area calculation. Do this again with Ctrl+E and choose the first option under "living area" which forces a room to be included in the total even if it would normally be excluded.

 

Be careful using the living area label because by default it does not include the exterior wall siding.  This is probably desirable for anything but brick, but if there's any brick on the house you need to take special steps to include that.  To do that accurately, you also need to know how thick your brick walls are.  The default thickness of a standard exterior brick wall is 8-7/16" but my house has 9-1/2" walls (the brick ledge is bigger to accommodate more of an air gap and some underlayments).  You can set the program to include exterior finishes, but then the sections with non-brick finishes won't be recorded accurately.  You can fix *that* by changing the thickness of sidings that aren't brick to 0" thick (which may have other negative effects; but at least your living area will be accurate).  The other thing to watch out for is that porches, depending on how you define their invisible walls, may not be calculated correctly.

 

This is why it's safer to use a polyline.

 

 

 

[bddemers]

Got it, thanks guys!