glennw

Draw the roof plane at the correct pitch (say...25deg?) - this will be fixed by the bottom and top heights of the roof. Ignore angle at eave and ridge. Use a negative value for the Radius and start with a value of about 6' and see how that looks

Chopsaw, This is how we handle the lowest or starting tile course: This causes the starter course to be at the same angle as the rest of the tiles - otherwise it is noticeable and doesn't look particularly good. The tilting batten is taller than all the other battens - or as the quote says, the fascia is often used for the same purpose.

If you draw a floor beam it will auto cut a pocket in the wall. In this pic the "Framing, Floor Beams" layer has been toggled off. You will probably have to draw the plate and grout manually. To make the pocket deeper to accommodate the plate and grout, place a second beam at the lower height, place it on it's own layer, and hide the layer.

What format are the files you posted? Why can't you use them directly in Chief without redrawing them?

Jerry, Preferences...General...Folders...My Data Folder...Browse.

No problem here with Safari on an iMac.

No, not flaming, far from it, just pointing out that it probably user error. Usually the best way to get help with this sort of problem is to post a plan, but I appreciate that in your case that is difficult to do with the demo version. A .pdf really isn't much help. It is a minor display problem or setting that should not stop you from purchasing Chief.

Oh, you mean user error buggy?

Yes, that looks possible without too much trouble. Those louver blades shouldn't be too hard to build with the 3D tools - as long as you are familiar with the 3D tools. Once you have built 1, I would assign it to a Distribution Path which would make it easy to change the spacing, rotation angle, etc., for all the louvers in one go. For a more comprehensive answer, can you post a detail drawing of the blades?

Rob, As far as I know there isn't a minimum wall length. When would you need that feature? There are several ways to control the length of short walls like Grid Snaps, Wall Length, etc.

Rob, I am fairly certain that setting was dropped many versions ago.

I don't even turn it off because I always need it there.

Johnny, That is what I do - i have a terrain in my template plan.

Edward, Did you see this in help?

One thing to be aware of when you are trying to get cladding materials to wrap around the end of a wall is that if the wall is not an internal wall (ie, contained within a room), the cladding will not wrap.

I am running Chief on a new iMac with a 5k 5120x2880 display. It is fantastic with no problems at all.

You can also change it in the Railing Defaults to save editing it after you draw the rail.

Edward, There are ways to report materials differently in the ML. ie, by default, a Concrete material uses the Material Type "Concrete" which is defined as a cubic quantity and that's how it will report in the ML. BUT, you could define the Concrete material (or any material) as an Area material type, which will report to the ML as a square quantity. Using this ability would allow you to automatically generate the correct 2D plan areas for 3D objects. ie, you could have a 10'x10'x10' cube with material assigned to it that is defined as "Area" Type. When you generate a ML, the material for the cube will be displayed as 100 sq ft and not 1,000 cu ft. This means that the process would be automatic in that you would not have to draw a Face or Polyline to generate the areas. Of course, if you wanted to use a method like this, you would have to look at how it effects your general ML reporting. Or, you can use it on the fly to quickly get the areas you want. Just open the material definition, change the Material Type to Area, Generate a ML and then change the Material Type back to a type that returns cubic. That ML won't change as they are not dynamic.

Edward, This can be done quite easily. I use this system to report site calculation areas to the ML. The trick is to create a unique material (using the Areas material type and an appropriate fill pattern) for each different type of area you want to define in the ML and then assign that material to the Face object - you can't use a closed polyline because you can't assign a material to a closed polyline. The Face object is really a 3D object without any depth. They will display in a 3D view - which a polyline won't do. They will display in 2D plan as a filled polyline. The total material count (in square units) for each material will automatically go to the Trim section of the ML. You can move it to wherever you like in the ML and you can end up with something like this: And yes, there are several users who are extremely adept at utilising Ruby to do this, but this is a simple method with no Ruby and using the ML.

Chopsaw, We have narrowed it down to a corrupted units.dat file - the file that contains the unit conversions. And yes, I did have some custom units that look like the culprits. I deleted the units.dat file and let Chief auto create a new one on the next session. I haven't seen the problem for a while now, so maybe all is OK. But I have still to redefine my custom units. My problem seems a bit different from yours. Every numerical value (dimensions, values in dbx's, etc) were displaying as Scientific E Notation values.

You could also utilise the Blank Segment option to not display the segment where the formatting is changed and then place another dimension line over the Blank Segment. This has the advantage of keeping the integrity of the original dimension string, so that all the segments can be edited as one dimension string - ie, moved, formatted, etc.

You can't do that in the one dimension string. You will need to use 2 dimension strings, each with different formatting.

Because, from the help file: • Attic rooms do not receive a ceiling and are ignored by the program’s automatic roof generator.

3D

Ah, I see now Michael. Of course, the easiest way to see the trees similar in both render and vector views is to toggle off textures in the render view. Downside is that it will toggle off ALL the textures in the plan - but if you don't want textures in your render view anyway, it is by far the easiest method. Or, use technical drawing or some other drawing method.