kellyh

Hi Terry, The behavior you're describing is not one I've personally experienced in my 13 years working at the company. I would love to get a copy of the plan you're experiencing this with along with detailed steps you went through that ended with you in this state. If this is truly a problem with Chief, the sooner we can get accurate information to our development team, the sooner they can begin working on a way to resolve your issue. You're welcome to attach the plan here, or send in a copy to our technical support team using the Technical Support Center. If you've not used that before, here is a Knowledge Base article that walks through that process: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00717/using-the-technical-support-center.html

@DBCooperhit the nail on the head. Spacebar is the default hotkey for "Select Objects" mode. The escape key will close an open dialog or cancel out of an open text box (think moving objects with dimensions). If you don't have a dialog open or a text box active, the escape key will then cycle in reverse order through the tools you previously used. So, pretend you had drawn some walls, then placed a window, then placed a base cabinet. If you then pressed the escape key, you would change from the base cabinet tool back to the window tool. If you pressed escape again, you would then go back to the wall tool.

In general, I find adjusting the wall layer connections in plan view is easier than trying to manipulate the walls in elevations/3D Views. Especially in a condition like this where the walls are all meeting correctly but the outside layers aren't joining correctly. The tool I mentioned in my reply, "Edit Wall Intersection" is only available in Plan View. Hope that helps!

In general, we don't recommend manually adjusting the heights of walls unless it's specific situations (Stepped foundations for example). It does look like the wall intersections need to be manually adjusted however. You can do this by clicking on the gable wall then clicking on the "Edit Wall Intersections" edit button. You'll then get a bunch of edit handles for how each of the wall layers connect to the other walls. You'll see the outermost layer (the brick) is stopped before getting to the end of the wall. Dragging that edit handle out to the end of the wall should correct the issue.

Here's a video that covers the process in X15 - https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/728/locating-roof-plane-intersections.html

Looking at your screenshot, my thought is relating to graphics card driver. I would make sure your graphics card driver is up to date. Also make sure you're using the latest update for Chief Architect. Fixes for issues like this get added as part of the program updates. You can do this by going to the Help Menu and clicking on Check for Program Updates and then downloading and installing any relevant updates. If neither of those options resolve your issue, I would recommend contacting our technical support team directly. They can troubleshoot this further.

As mentioned above, whenever you have a roof baseline polyline, it will override the roof settings in the wall; changing the settings of the roof have to be done through the edge of the baseline polyline. In general, you want to use this when the shape of the roof doesn't exclusively follow the shape of your shell, otherwise controlling your roof through your walls is the recommended way to work.

Those are features in Chief Architect Premier. If you're using Home Designer Pro, you won't have access to that functionality unfortunately. You can contact our sales team about upgrading to Chief Architect by calling 208.292.3400 or emailing sales@chiefarchitect.com

This is correct. Once a CAD block has been assigned to a 3D object, the insertion point data is reset to the center of the CAD block and there isn't a way to assign a different one. That's a great feature request for our Suggestion forum.

Yes. That's the exact reason. Essentially Chief is dynamically generating that parametric object whereas with a 3D model, it's just using the existing 3D geometry of that model. The most Chief can do with that geometry is adjust the width, height, and materials, and that's really it.

These dialogs are different because you're on a mac. You do have different control options with the tabs at the top but they're not going to be exactly the same as what people see on Windows.

Look at the Walls, Railing layer and see if that one is turned off

We've got some really good videos that go into specifics with Chief and Ray Tracing in X14. I'd recommend taking a look at them. Lots of really good info there. Here's a link to the Ray Tracing playlist: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/playlists/103/ray-trace.html Hope that helps!

More than likely you'll need to reset the wall types back to use the default material and then create a custom wall type with the correct external material. You can reset the material to default using the material painter and checking the "Use Default Material" checkbox at the bottom of the window and then click on the walls. That should reset them back to their default material for that wall type. Once you've done that, I would then create a new wall type that has the proper material set. This is the most surefire way to make sure the correct materials are generating each time. If you're still having issues, I'd recommend contacting our Technical Support team so they can walk you through that process.

Thanks for supplying your plan. It helped a lot with troubleshooting this issue. First thing I would do is reset your walls back to their default heights. It looks like you've been manually adjusting the heights of those walls and you shouldn't need to do that for this plan. You can do this by going to the Edit Menu->Reset to Defaults. In the window that comes up, check the checkbox for Wall Top Heights and click OK. Second thing is you've got rooms that are at different heights. They're not off by much, but just enough to cause issues. To correct this, open the room I've highlighted below, go to the Structure Panel, and then click on wrench icon next to the Ceiling value. This will reset the plate height back to the default value. Third thing is you have built a second floor in the plan and it looks like this structure doesn't need that. To correct this, go to the second floor in your plan then go to the Build Menu->Floor->Delete Current Floor. This will delete the second floor and will place you on the attic floor. Your end gable walls may be invisible at that point, so you'll want to select them, open then for specification, and uncheck the Invisible checkbox on the General panel.