EngelsmaHomes

On 7/10/2023 at 8:43 AM, KilianDrafting said:

Anyone else have an issue where all the room labels on a floor level get turned off?

Yes! Multiple times for me. I haven't been able to consistently reproduce anything either though...

Thanks Chris, I should've tried a few different search terms I guess because I wasn't getting anything with "fill glitch pdf".

Has anyone else noticed extra lines in fills (especially solid fills) after printing to a PDF? I use "Chief Architect Save As PDF" as the printer.

1. Simple polylines drawn in the PLAN file print perfectly fine

2. Garden beds, sidewalks, or driveways with fill patterns glitch

3. Simple polylines drawn in the LAYOUT file glitch

See attached!

test.pdf

On 10/7/2021 at 11:32 PM, SunsetDrafting said:

Windows 10, go to Color Filters,  select "On" at Turn on color filters, Check Allow the short key to toggle filter on or off, next select "Grayscale inverted". Now unselect "Turn on color filters". You will now be able to draw with black screen and all text and dimensions white. This will require NO preferences changes in chief drawings. Use key combination "Windows logo key + Ctrl + C" to toggle between standard white back ground or black background with white text/dimensions. Also when using black screen, all items add will remain the same as if you are using standard white screen.

An alternative 3rd party tool is NegativeScreen. I like this because it has custom filters which can invert blacks and whites, and preserves colors (somewhat). See the screenshot below.

Does anyone else want a dark theme? I posted it as a suggestion because I'm really hoping for one - if you want this feature too, please add your comment to the thread linked below so it can get noticed by the developers.

Awesome! I was hoping someone would find this who needed it. It sure is a lot easier than messing with all your layers and worrying how they will print.

I posted a suggestion regarding this - Chief already has an option to turn color on/off per tabbed view; certainly they could do something that inverts the colors I would think!

On 8/17/2019 at 12:25 AM, para-CAD said:

If someone could post the CA settings to make it operate like autocad that would be sweeet.

I know this is an older post, but I was looking into the same thing and while I haven't found any chief settings, I have found a pretty cool app called "NegativeScreen" for windows (I see you use windows 11, hopefully it works for that). Several different color inversion settings, super fast switching with hotkeys, very cool in my opinion.

https://zerowidthjoiner.net/negativescreen

2 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Where walls are out of square a simple and common practice would be to either have a scribe stile or add a filler so that the final end dimension reads VIF and scribe to wall. 
additionally, any good cabinet guy should be checking the high point in the existing floor condition before install regardless of what documents say.

I'm sure our guys do those things. I think the installers like to have the nice clean dimensions with accurate dimensions to double check themselves, but the main thing is that these are also the elevations the cabinet engineers and shop guys look at when they are programming all the parts and pieces for the CNC and building the cabinets.

3 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Seems you may be spending excess time to prevent something that could easily be circumvented by creating a process document for your installers instead of spending “x” on every next plan trying to recreate precision.

What do you mean by process document?

4 hours ago, HDbyJustin said:

I can tell you there are better options for cabinet drawings

We currently use Chief to visualize and design, then update with field measurements so that we can get the exact height and width of each cabinet. From there it goes on to the cabinet engineers who use Microvellum. I don't know anything about Microvellum, but if it could auto generate elevation views that would be ideal. I'll have to look into that more.

On 3/24/2022 at 12:04 PM, DRAWZILLA said:

i  think it comes from using different resolutions between computers 

We struggled with this at our company when we had multiple users with different setups accessing the same files. I brought this issue up to tech support and they came to the conclusion that it's not so much the different resolutions as the different GUI scaling (at least for Windows 10). Some of our users have 4k monitors and 150% scaling, I have an ultrawide monitor with 100% scaling.

Selecting the text and cutting (ctrl + x) and pasting in place (ctrl + alt + v) was a workaround that we discovered.

Hello everyone,

We're a custom home builder and cabinet shop, and we recently switched our cabinetry department to using Chief architect for their drawings (formally AutoCAD).

Does anyone else update cabinetry drawings after drywall based on someone going out and doing site measurements? We struggle with getting a fully-modeled perfectly square house in Chief to conform to a less-then-perfect house in reality. We've been messing with wall thicknesses and shaving off floor system thicknesses to get them to match actual measurements while still keeping the 3d renders presentable. At the end of the day, we would like our cabinet shop guys and our install guys to have an accurately dimensioned set of elevations, including plumbing rough-in locations etc.

Anyone have hints or tips for this? Should we use the "CAD Detail from View" tool for our elevations? Should we notate actual site measurements as text following the Chief dimensions? Should we use separate .plan files for blueprints and cabinet drawings?

Thanks,

Tom E.

17 hours ago, glennw said:

I haven't been following this thread in detail but do you know you can Shift select a stair flight and set it's parameters independently of the joined flights?

I did not! Thanks!

18 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

See if making the Railing Wall Widths the same as the Newel Posts , moves the newels back onto the Floor?

That works! Thanks Mick.

Thanks Rob. This will have to do for now. I appreciate the thoughts, and would love to know if there are any other ideas out there!

5 minutes ago, EngelsmaHomes said:

One flaw is that the lower stair section takes on that custom 4 1/2"  stringer as well (img6). Any ideas on how to fix that?

I just found the solution to this: open the landing and turn off auto adjust height. This disconnects the two stairway sections and allows you to do completely different settings for each, as far as I can tell.

On 2/2/2022 at 1:34 PM, robdyck said:

I use this type of setup in every home and they are just terrible to deal with in Chief. If you get lucky, the only manual part you'll need to place is the newel post. Most times, the entire railing will need to be modeled manually. The only solution I've found is practice. It doesn't take that long once you know exactly what you need to do.

I use millwork, 3d moldings, p-solids. Also, a separate layer for some components just for 3d display (not plan view con docs). And some CAD work for plan view con docs.

Thanks Rob! Here's the closest I've come for this particular situation - maybe this will help someone.

1. First I overlap the upper section stairway over the center wall (img1)

2. Then I do a custom side stringer (left or right, depending on the stairway direction) at 4 1/2" thick (img2). This gets me 99% of the way to "close enough" (img3)

3. Add a baluster cap and a newel post manually. Plan view is OK (img4, floor level at top of stairs shown), 3D view is pretty decent (img5).

One flaw is that the lower stair section takes on that custom 4 1/2"  stringer as well (img6). Any ideas on how to fix that?

Hi All,

We build U shaped stairways like the attached photo all the time and I can't figure out how to draw it in Chief so that it shows properly in the plan view AND in 3D, at least not without a bunch of  polyline solid work.

Specifically I'm struggling with

- Allowing the center wall to continue up between the two stair sections, putting a railing on top, AND having it follow the stairs (see 2nd/3rd screenshots)

- Having the newel post on the stair landing instead of the stairs or the wall

I can't use the "follow stairs" as shown in the 4th screenshot, because the stairs is drawn on the lower level and the railing on the upper. I can split off the upper stair section, lock the top and bottom heights, and paste it on the upper level, but then it doesn't look good in plan view.

Thanks!

Tom E.

Hi all, 

I noticed small angled lines that are commonly used to indicate glass on drafting drawings on elevations from Chief (see example photo attached). Is there a way to turn those 'ON' with a glass or reflective material? Or are those being added manually? 

Thanks for the help!

Thanks, Lew. I'll post something about it in the suggestions I think.

Tom E.

Hi All,

Does anyone have any good ideas about the best way to present multiple options to clients, and at the end of the day be able to select any combination of those options and continue working? As of now, I'm doing a "save-as" for each option, and trying to name them concisely and keep track of all of them is a pain, not to mention trying to merge all the selected options back into one working file after all is done.

I know about dynamic defaults, and now style palettes, but both seem to just scratch the surface. Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Tom E.

10 minutes ago, Doug_N said:

If you are adding the leaders in the layout file you are in for a rough ride.  One workflow that works well for doing situations is to create these types of drawings in a CAD detail page in the PLAN file.  You can block these, and save them to your library and then you can link them to a layout file with no problems at all.

Thanks Doug. I don't normal do this, but I couldn't find a better way to have a live view with notes. The live view is important because I can easily enter the plan and, for example, change the default room base molding, and all the live views that show base molding will show the new.

2 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

The problems you're alluding to can be largely if not entirely eliminated by changing your Arrow Defaults in Layout so that only the Tail is set to Attach...

Awesome! That will help a lot. I just recently learned about re-sizing a live view with ctrl-x, I used to struggle to find a camera view that wasn't clipped but still was the right size on the layout. Any idea what this is actually doing to the view, and why it doesn't translate over when I copy the template and its files to a new job folder?

Hi All,

I'm trying to set up a template layout file for a set of cabinetry/trim details drawings. In the layout, there are pages with a live views that reference a template plan file. The template plan contains a number of generic rooms and setups so that trim and cabinetry details can be displayed nicely. I took camera views of those areas, sent them as live views to the template layout, and then used ctrl-x to resize the view as I needed.

Everything is great until you try to copy the templates (.layout and .plan) to a new job folder, rename them, and re-link the views - then the view doesn't come in at the same size. Trying to re-size it with ctrl-x messes up all the leader lines - so at that point you might as well not have any live views or leaders or text in your template and start from scratch.

This was a little hard to explain, but maybe some pictures will help.

Thanks,

Tom E.

After some messing around, I think I found the solution - Since the Dining/Kitchen and the Living Room have the same base ceiling height, a tray built-down in the kitchen has nothing to die into. Apparently Chief realizes this and continues the tray ceiling into the other rooms. By swapping the room divider with a full length doorway/opening, the tray stops at the opening header.

Interesting...

Hi All,

I have a two-story home with 8" tray ceilings in the kitchen and dining, built down from the ceiling. I used the "Make Trey Ceiling in Room" tool to create these.

Now, for whatever reason, the ceiling in the rest of the main floor is built down 8". The rooms all seem to be separated properly with full connected walls or room dividers, so that's not the issue as far as I can tell.

I attached a screenshot of the main floor, a cross section through the foyer/living room, and also a shot of the main floor with all layers turned off except for the ceiling planes.

Thanks,

Tom E.

2 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

 

If you want it to show correctly in plan view use a p-solid with solid fill.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Chopsaw.

On 12/11/2020 at 12:58 PM, Kbird1 said:

No, not automatically

Is there a manual way?

On 12/11/2020 at 3:06 PM, NRST8TRKR said:

I set my Corner Boards at 1/4" thick. Looks closer to normal,not that much trouble.

Thanks Ken. I'll have to do this as a workaround - it's inaccurate in a plan view still though so I was wondering if there was a more correct way.

On 12/11/2020 at 3:20 PM, robdyck said:

Sorry Tom, my bad! I assumed you'd know that I meant to use material regions for the battens. Let us know how it turned out!

It works so much better. Soo much easier. I should've searched the forum and found this method a long time ago. Thanks for getting me up to speed everyone!