https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/discover/ChiefTalk Forum - All ActivityenI think you have the wrong layers displayed for that function. If you have Walls, Layers turned off and if you do NOT have Walls, Main Layer Only turned ON, you cannot manually hit the wall main layer. That's what I think is going on there, but I could be wrong. Changing the layer display will not affect the extension of existing dimensions but it does affect the interaction of new dimensions.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:59:09 +0000Hard to tell from just a video, but a couple possibilities: You have several things in that area and Chief is just having a hard time snapping to the one you want. The reason this isn't true for new dimensions in that the new dimensions know exactly what they are supposed to be snapping to. Editing after the fact allows you to snap to almost anything. You aren't releasing you mouse button far enough from other object. To snap to your wall's main layer when there are other potentially conflicting snap point nearby, I often find the need to release the mouse button much further down the wall. It will still ultimately measure from the end of the wall, but you release the mouse button in an area where there are no conflicts.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:55:06 +0000I figured out what was going on; I built the roofs manually and I had to open up the roof properties and change it from trusses to rafters, which changed the birds mouth to 0" and displays just fine.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:24:14 +0000I have an idea that it might be in the overhang of the roof that is stretching it... I will post if that was it.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:50:45 +0000A picture of what you are trying to model would help. Have you played with the tray ceiling tool yet? You should be able to set the material on the top and sides to anything you want. Here are some things that might help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/99/automatic-trey-ceilings.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00201/creating-a-tray-ceiling.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00738/creating-a-coffered-ceiling.htmlFri, 10 Apr 2026 16:34:45 +0000This does look like strange behavior. If you send your project in to Technical Support we can take a closer look into what's going on. Technical Support Center. CarrieFri, 10 Apr 2026 16:17:27 +0000Been there bro. Glad I could help out.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:49:32 +0000Exactly what I needed, thank you for the quick answer.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:35:27 +0000I’m not sure if I want a basement or a second story but this is already bigger than I initially wanted. The water heater (and possibly furnace) will have to live in the basement or second floor (attic). The cut out for the stairs isn’t final yet since I don’t know what the basement depth might be. The rectangular outside dimensions is 28’x40’, which already puts me at 1,120 sqft for the main level. The bedrooms are quite large, but I prefer larger bedrooms than smaller ones. Its good for me to use my own plugins once in a while, it helps me find the weak spots or should I say the annoying things about it. One of those things is the placement of doors along a wall when there are other walls that tee into the wall you are trying to place the door into. I need to have some mechanism for snapping or measuring from these other walls. Once can always go back in and adjust or move the doors to fine tune the placement (which is what I had to do) but it does burn too much time. I guess I learn something new everyday. Most of my time was actually spent trying to space plan and figure out what made sense, its kind of like playing Tetris. For this sort of thing a rough layout tool might be useful, but just the native tools at this stage is adequate for most of it. The biggest aid was using the grid to help me find my way. Once my initial layout was more or less final, I popped in the walls in less than two minutes. Fussing over the windows and doors probably took another hour, and then another hour grabbing fixtures from another model and placing them and then mocking up the kitchen cabinet layout (counters, sink, range, dishwasher and fridge). At this stage I’m not too worried about rendering or making my fixtures all that amazing, so mostly they were added just to make sure my space planning was still logical. I don’t design houses professionally (I’ve only ever really designed three actual residences and a few detached garages) so if this design is a bit of a cludge please forgive my lack of experience and designer feng shui. Most of my professional work was as an engineer and to be honest that type of work is less about creativity and more about the numbers. I find this type of work far more challenging and invigorating.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:29:32 +0000I understand what you mean. I ocasionally get asked to provider DWG's for various resions. TurboCAD allows me to save in DWG format. If I ever need to further refine a DWG export from Chief Architect I do it in TurboCAD. It seems though exported DWG's from Chief Architect has sufficed most of time.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:04:44 +0000I send my engineer dwg exports from Chief. It's been seamless. No complaints from them. I learning Revit right now. (Just for fun. I have no plans to switch.) Maybe I'd like it more if I had as much time invested in Revit as I do in Chief but my honest evaluation is it sucks! Every lesson makes me grateful I use CA.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:03:10 +0000I have run into this before. See if this is what you need. Go to "preferences" .... may be called something else on PC.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:53:25 +0000Hi, so originally on chief I would be able to rotate an outlet in camera view for putting it on a backsplash and then a pop up would show that said do you want this change to show in plan view and I would hit no, so it's still showing like normal on the plan but rotated in 3D but I was showing my coworker who was learning chief and she hit the don't show again notification which I never click and now it rotates both in 3D and 2D and I don't know how to change it to where either that notification pops up again and so I can just keep clicking no or to exclusively rotate it in 3D. any tips?Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:47:13 +0000That makes sense—if this is the condition I was trying to describe. This is definitely one of those situations where a photo would’ve helped, so that’s on me. That said, your example really helps clarify what you were referring to above, and it all clicks now. I appreciate the different perspectives in how we approach things—thanks for sharing. In my condition the entire garage ceiling would be dropped 12" or so and stairs would come up from the living area that is 10' or 9'. The attached is the plan where adding the bonus above the garage gave me fits. When I added the bonus, the whole left side of the house dropped to 8' like the garage, even tho its the only space I changed. In this case I caught it and corrected it.... twice. haha. Thinking back on it I believe the cause was my haphazard approach to accomplishing this, even though I have done it several times before. This is because sometimes things are in flux as you figure out how to add and access the space.... After seeing @Joe_Carrick 's post it made me think more critically about what needs to be done for chief to behave. Before I am pretty sure I didn't create a room for the stair. setting it at the ceiling height needed for the bonus above to work. in this case 8'. My takeaway from everyone's comments is to be more deliberate and aware when adding a space above where the ceilings change ht from default....Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:26:54 +0000I’m talking from the perspective of sharing and/or collaborating. Like it or not it’s an autocad world. And even when I tell those same acad jockeys to simply import my pdf construction documents and scale them they either don’t know how, are too lazy or as a policy feel this is over reaching. Which I can’t blame them for.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:45:50 +0000I pay for and keep an up to date version (Perpetual License) of TurboCAD on my system. TurboCAD has been a great affordable alternative to AutoCAD for me. About the only thing I ever use TurboCAD for these days is to draw up something that is quite a bit outside the realm architecture. Maybe a part drawing or some fabrication drawing. Occasionally, I will open up DWG's that people supply me in TurboCAD for editing / viewing. For condocs and design work, I am not really needing AutoCAD / TurboCAD no more. If I could get Chief to "Come See the Light" on some dimension stuff and some more 2D capabilities, I would need TurboCAD / AutoCAD even less.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:56:04 +0000also related: watch the levels carefully, or you will go crazy changing on floor, which then changed another floor, so you go to that floor to change it, and then it changes the other floor. CA also has no concept (that I know of) of a split ceiling in a room, such as: so you need to make an room using invisible walls (shown as walls below)in the garage that matches the room above:Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:39:18 +0000I think it is the wall definition. The horizontal width of the birds mouth cut is dictated by the width of the main layers in the wall definition.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:18:11 +0000See this response for one of the most common causes of "faded" lines in PDFs. Live views can exhibit issues even more strongly because the lines get drawn into a bitmap image, so PDF viewers are very likely to make them look faded when the PDF is scaled down to fit on the screen.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:19:21 +0000In general, build framing should correct that, but best to post plan.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:55:01 +0000I find it easier to set the floor elevation for the room above. That will lower the ceilings below that room. IOW, work from the top down. Also, if you can do this in a 3D view it will be easier to see what's happening,Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:46:54 +0000dimensions also come out really screwy from Chief into AutoCAD. I’m really considering the workflow of designing the home with my clients in Chief, but once the 3-D model is complete, I export the plans, elevations and sections into AutoCAD to do my construction documents. I’ll collaborate easier with the engineers and other architects. It might be a little more work but I’ll have universally accepted plans with proper annotations and dimensions.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:42:20 +0000Feel free to send it over or post it here and I bet you’ll get a quick answer to your problem.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:37:59 +0000yes, it happens. as rosco mentions usually because there is another room or the rooms do not line up exactly. For instance for a bonus room on top of part of the garage, you would draw invisible room in the garage that matches the room aboveThu, 09 Apr 2026 21:33:19 +0000Please read my post again. A few key points regarding your specific plan though: Your foundation wall's Main Layer is "Grey-Blocks Running Bond". Your wall above is set to Foundation to Exterior of Layer "White Brick" with a Foundation Offset of 0" What you are telling Chief to do is to align your "Gray-Blocks..." to your "White Brick" with no offset and that is exactly what Chief is doing. If I were you, I would probably address this by just adding the appropriate Foundation Offset to your upper walls. This is exactly what does happen with the default Siding-6 wall and the default 8" CMU wall.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:03:45 +0000