glennw

Graham, I am not sure that is a solution - I would probably add too much salt and burn it anyway. Easy to order take out and get it home delivered - unless I wanted something really simple like toasted cheese. And if I wait long enough and expose that piece of timber to enough pressure, I may get a diamond.

That doesn't look like a very comfortable lounge! And...also...why can't Chief cook my dinner?

I wouldn't contemplate it either. Lets not forget that Chief wasn't designed or developed to draw free form furniture. It was developed to design and document buildings. I think that we should be thankful that we can at least draw basic furniture pieces as illustrated in the previous posts. If you want to draw complex free form furniture, buy the appropriate software to do that and don't complain that Chief won't do something that it was never intended to do.

Yusuf, Some oft those settings have been changed in X9.

I think that using Terrain Regions to do that is just plain daft.

Or you can do a Backup Entire Plan which will save all the associated files (including textures). With this option you can also create a zip file for sending to another user or for archiving.

Brown Tiger, What sort of rebuild are you talking about. Moving a door or window label in an elevation view does not force an Auto Rebuild Walls/Floors/Ceilings for me. It does however cause a rebuild of a mono slab if I have one. You can check this by turning off Auto Rebuild Walls/Floors/Ceilings and then moving the label. I do not get a "need to rebuild icon" next to the cursor and no rebuild takes place - except for the mono slab rebuild which happens even if I turn off auto rebuild foundation.

Griffin, I opened your plan and there was no terrain information let alone a terrain. I also didn't see a .pdf of the levels. I am happy to help if I can, but it would be good if you could at least make a start on the terrain and give us something to work off. Once you get something more, I could do a Skype session and try and help you.

Scott, Post the plan

...or a glass wall with a molding polyline in each direction with multiple moldings. These can be broken and have no molding where doors are needed. Or individual molding polylines multiple copied in each direction which can be broken and have no molding where doors are needed. A bit hard to put doors in that.

Or .....Chief has it's own Screen Capture tool.

Without a plan being posted, it is hard to say what the solution is as we don't know what you have already done. My best guess is that you can achieve what you want very easily by using Elevation Regions (with or without Terrain Breaks) in combination with the other terrain tools - DO NOT use Elevation Points.. Is this so? Where did this information come from?

That's what Undo is for.

Richard, Yes, I grew up with Generic CADD - an absolutely fantastic program until Autodesk purchased it and killed it off. I have tried to base my hotkeys on the 2 letter CG shortcuts and it seems to work pretty well. The easiest way to share the hotkeys is share either Create Hotkey List (.html file) or Export Hotkeys (.xml file). I am happy to share mine. Glenns hotkeys.html

Joe, One of my favorite topics! The OOB Chief hotkeys are absolutely useless as they use the simultaneous hotkeys and not the sequential ones. Several big problems with these - they are simultaneous (I only have 2 hands, 8 fingers and 2 thumbs - lets leave the feet and toes out of this) which makes them extremely hard to use and they are almost impossible to remember. The sequential ones (particularly the 2 letter ones) are easy to remember, can be very logical and easy to physically use. I have many 2 letter hot keys like: ZI zoom in PA pan window ZA zoom all (fill window) ZW zoom window ZO zoom out RS render standard RV render vector RW render watercolor BR build roof BT build terrain TS terrain specification CF full height cabinet I already use CB for base cabinet So...I think you are exactly on the right track. I would love to see Chief ditch the OOB simultaneous hotkeys and replace them all with sequential hotkeys. By the way, just to complicate things, you can have a combination of simultaneous and sequential hot keys (for the one tool).

I think that you must be confusing those 2 dbx's with the Roof Defaults dbx which DOES have a Gutter tab where you can specify the profile for the auto drawn gutters.

Cheryl, If I understand you correctly. You want the scale of the layout box to display for each layout box. To do that you need to open the layout box dbx and use %box_scale% Using %scale% in a text box on the layout sheet will display the visual zoom level for that layout page - probably not what you want.

My last guess without seeing a plan is that you have your rooms defined as Unconditioned areas. Or if you have Use Default set for Conditioned Room, you are using a room type that defaults to Unconditioned (like a Balcony, Attic, Deck, etc). Unconditioned areas are not counted as part of the thermal envelope and thus do not show up as such in the General section of the ML. Otherwise, post the plan.

Scott, You may need to take that class in terrain building. The Subfloor Height Above Terrain setting has nothing to do with the shaping of the terrain (apart from the Flatten Pad setting). Subfloor Height Above Terrain only allows the user to set the relationship (the relativity) between Chief's zero floor level and the terrain level. I don't think it is a bug, I think the terrain just needs more elevation data. I never use Elevation Points - I always use Elevation Lines/Splines or Elevation Regions, etc. If you read the manual: Chief Architect requires many points to make an accurate approximation of your site. Even small sites may require over a hundred points to generate an accurate model of the terrain if it is sloped Elevation Points are most effective when they are imported. When adding elevation data manually, use Elevation Lines and Splines instead. See Importing Elevation Data. PS. There were 4 elevation points in the original file, not 3 - one in each corner. I was just having another look at the terrain pic you posted. It is a bit hard to tell because the elevation points are small and feint, but it looks like you have deleted 3 of the elevation points and only left the one in the top left hand corner. Or you may have reduced the size of the terrain so as to exclude the elevation points - I think I can just see the bottom 2 down below the terrain. But I can definitely only see the top left one inside the terrain perimeter. Guess what - if you only have 1 elevation point - you get a flat terrain.

Do you actually have a General section displaying in the ML - or is the whole General section missing? If the whole General section is missing, go up to the toolbar and select Display Options. Make sure the General section is checked.

You should be able to grab the grip that the extension line references on the elevation and drag it off the elevation - the same way you delete an extension line in plan.

You need to supply more elevation data to enable the terrain to build correctly - the 4 elevation points are not enough. You will find it easier to use Elevation Lines or Splines than Elevation Points. An Elevation Line is really just elevation points at about 2'0" centres. Or, you could change the Terrrain Surface Smoothing to Linear - this will smooth out the peaks and troughs..

I opened it in X6 and could not duplicate your problem. I would send it into support - that's what we pay SSA for.

What version of Chief are you using. Does your version do curved roofs. Can you post a pic of the General panel of the Roof Plane Specification dbx.

I don't think this is correct. You can always change the material back to Use Default and then you can change the material in the Wall Definition dbx if needed (or repaint it if you want).