Applying Room Moldings

With Chief Architect you can create a variety of moldings. The library contains hundreds of available molding profiles or you can create your own profiles and save them for future use. Moldings can be used in a variety of creative applications. We'll start by applying a crown molding to the master bedroom. Then we'll add a chair rail molding to the dining room. Finally we'll create our own molding profile and use it to create a tray ceiling in the dining room. For more information about moldings, see "Trim & Molding".

To create a crown molding

Press Ctrl + Tab on your keyboard to return to floor plan view without closing the 3D camera view.

Select Window> Tile Vertically

to display floor plan view and the camera view at the same time. The floor plan view is on the left because it was active when the tile command was invoked.

Use the Zoom Window

button to zoom in on the master bedroom in floor plan view.

While the Select Objects

tool is active, select the master bedroom. The room will appear highlighted when selected.

Click the Open Object

edit button to open the Room Specification dialog for the master bedroom.

On the Moldings tab, enter a crown molding Height of 4 inches. Since we lowered the ceiling in this master bedroom to 95 inches in the previous tutorial, we need to change the Distance Above Floor to 95 inches. Click OK to close the Room Specification dialog.

Chair rail moldings are created similarly. Base moldings are on by default in dining rooms.

To create chair rail moldings

Select the dining room and open it for specification.

Go to the Moldings tab of the Room Specification dialog. Specify a Height for a Chair Rail of 2 inches (2") and set the Distance Above Floor to 32 inches. Click OK.

Create a new 3D camera view using the Render Full Camera

tool.

Creating a Tray Ceiling

A tray ceiling is a special kind of stepped ceiling. You may recall in the previous tutorial that we raised the ceiling height to 9 feet before creating rooms. Now we're ready to put in our tray ceiling. There are a few different ways to create a tray ceiling in Chief Architect. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Polyline solids can be used, primitive objects can be used, even soffits can be used to create tray ceilings. Using a molding is a method that works particularly well. It is a simple and powerful technique. First we'll create a profile, then apply that profile to a crown molding.

To create a molding profile

Switch to floor plan view and choose an open place in your plan where you can draw a small CAD polyline. It can be outside the house or within a room.

Select CAD> Lines> Draw Line

(or press W).

Draw a molding profile that will become a tray ceiling. A few things to keep in mind:

The upper left hand corner of the profile will be placed in the corner of the ceiling.

This molding profile must be a closed polyline. See "Editing Closed-Polyline Based Objects".

Keep Grid Snaps

on. See "Grid Snaps".

The distance of each line segment displays in the status bar as it is drawn.

Select the closed polyline and click the Add to Library

edit button.

In the Add to Library dialog, select the My Moldings library, give the profile a name, and click OK. Now that it's saved to the library, you can delete the original polyline.

Select the dining room and open it for specification.

On the Moldings tab of the Room Specification dialog change the Distance Above Floor to 108 inches and click the Library button for a Crown Molding.

In the Select Library Object dialog, find and select your new molding from the My Moldings library and click OK.

Click OK to close the Room Specification dialog.