glennw

Depending on what you want the shadows for, you can always do a Top View of a Vector View, Technical Illustration, etc. This gives you shadows, but it is not a plan view "drawing" - it is a "plan view 3D view".

Sherry, It is your snap distance that controls the snapping to the wall centre. Turn off you grid snaps. In Preferences...Edit...Snap Properties...Options...Snap Distance - change this to something like 5 and see what happens. I think this will depend on your screen resolution and your zoom level. Have a play with the setting as see what works best for you. Is it presently set to 20? - I don't know what the OOB setting is.

Jonathan, You can do this with one molding poly line. The corners can sometimes get a but screwed because of the fixed spacing of the pickets. All you need to do is draw your deck with only the posts and no railing. You can then draw the poly line and the complete rail will build with toprails, pickets, etc. I forgot to chamfer the bottom of the pickets, but you can get the idea. The moldings look like this:

Defaults...CAD...General Cad...Display Line Angle As...Quadrant Bearing.

Chopsaw, Can you post a plan that demonstrates this behaviour - I can't duplicate it.

Or..if you are talking about something different.... Open the dimensions dbx...Segments panel...check the appropriate segment and the Blank Segment. The beauty of this method is that it maintains the integrity of the dimension line while it appears that the dimension line is broken. Or...delete the whole dimension line and draw shorter individual ones.

In a Cross Section/Elevation view, select the line tool and use a Midpoint snap to find the center of the roof plane.

Just to clarify what Eric said. This only works if the default is being used and none of the room heights have been changed manually from the defaults.

Bill, You can do that easily using a rectangle. In your plan view, use Zoom and drag a rectangle around the area you want to send to layout. Send To Layout and select Current Screen. I can't see how using any polygon shape would work as the layout box is restricted to a rectangle

Chop, No. The 51/2" dimensions are not showing, but the extension lines are. Like the top dimension here:

Chop, I don't think that is it. I probably didn't express the problem properly. She is getting the extension lines to both sides of the exterior walls. But, she isn't getting the dimension text for the external wall thickness. Its the same as having a Blank Segment.

I have a new user who is generating auto exterior dimensions. They are defaulting to Suppress Wall Widths for the exterior walls. I know I can manually open an existing dimension line and check the above. I know I can check Ignore Interior Walls in the Auto Exterior Dimension Defaults. Does anyone know if there is a default for this setting. Every time I do an Auto Exterior Dimension, the exterior wall widths are displayed. Every time she does an Auto Exterior Dimension the exterior wall widths are not displayed. Any ideas?

You don't even have to do the math to work it out. Draw a simple section view with cad and let Chief do the math. Your roof angles are 7.683982 and 4.628138

Michael, Don't forget there is one proviso in relation to the above. The double click to get to the active default dbx for that tool is conditional upon "Edit Active Default on Double Click" being toggled on in Preferences. If that is toggled off, a double click will open the Saved...Defaults dbx instead of the active default dbx for that tool. I am not sure what is the OOB state for that toggle.

....and note my observation in the other thread that the larger the terrain, the worse the shadows get.

Mick, By default, the soffit will build through wall layers outside of the main layer, ie, the soffit will build to the main layer. "The Build Platform to Exterior of Layer" will also determine if external wall layers will stop at the soffit or continue past the soffit up to the top of the wall. Have a play with those two settings with your particular wall definition.

Well Lew, Isn't that a different file? I thought we were talking about opening the SAME file on a different computer - not a different file (even if it contains the exact same data).

Alt+Q and select Inner Surface.

Lew, File Locking prevents another copy of Chief from opening the same plan or layout file at the same time. So...if File Locking is checked, someone else on PC B wouldn't be able to open the plan if you already had it open on PC A.

Joe, Doesn't "Use File Locking" do that?

You don't have a room definition because some of the walls are nominated as Atttic walls or No Room Definition walls. Both of these prevent a room definition. Fix that and then change the ceiling height of that room to zero or something like that. In the Build Roof dbx, uncheck Ignore Top (2nd) Floor. It still needs further work, but that's the basics.

I assume you have auto roofs turned on. Go to the second floor defaults and uncheck Ceiling Over This Room and make the Relative Ceiling Height (E) 4'. Turn off auto rebuild roofs. Open the second floor defaults again and make the Relative Ceiling Height 8' (or whatever) and check Ceiling Over This Room. You should get something like this:

Try Preferences...Appearance...Minimum Display Size...Dimensions...change it to zero.

Thanks Joe, That confirms my suspicion.

In post #10, you are selecting the wrong wall in elevation view. You are selecting the level 2 wall so that when you then select "Hang Floor Platform Above On Wall" it is not being applied to the correct floor platform. You need to select the wall on level 1 (the middle wall in elevation - not the topmost wall) and then check "Hang......." To complicate things a bit more, the horizontal wall in the bottom left hand corner on level 2, does not line up with the wall below.