glennw

There are a couple of things you can do. 1.Turn on Print Preview in the layout. 2. Look at the print preview in the Print Layout dbx 3. You can set up a default printer and paper size in the Default Printer for View dbx - accessed from the Drawing Sheet Setup dbx..

No, not spline. Select Build... Distributed Objects...Polyline Distribution Path. Draw a single straight line. Convert to a curve (Change Line/Arc on the Edit menu). Open it's dbx and select and configure your seats. Change arc as needed.

Did you use a Distributed Path for the seats?

Maybe, but I am not prepared to spend any more time on this one until the walls are fixed because the roof will build off the walls. Its not just that the walls aren't square - there are also short wall sections. Also, have a look at the external room - something funny going on. And once things are right, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to auto built a roof on that house without Chief choking.

All else is not fine. To start with, many of your walls are not drawn orthogonally (90deg or 0deg). Fix them all up first and then repost the plan.

Or maybe even easier, use the Layer Hider command (LH is my shortcut).

Mike, No. The dimensions will not change their formatting if you switch the annoset back to an annoset with the original or a different dimension default. You are not changing formatting in the current dimension default , you are changing the dimension default itself, so that new dimension formatting will follow that new default. Dimensions inherit the dimension default's formatting when the dimensions are drawn. There are a couple of ways to change the formatting of existing dimension lines: 1. You change a setting for that particular dimension default (through the annoset, through the dim defaults or through the dim line dbx) - in which case all the dimensions that use that default will change, or 2. You can select a dimension (or dimensions) and change the Dimension Default they are using in their dbx, or, in the same dbx, you can also redefine that dimension default (same as #1 above).

Johnny. No. You don't necessarily need a new annoset for every dimension default you want to use - you just need to set up all the dimension defaults that you need. You can then be in any annoset and still select a different dimension default without changing any of the other annoset defaults. Set up your various dimension defaults, switch to a preferred annoset, now, if you want to change to a different dimension default, click the Active Defaults icon (the wrench with the red tick). You can now select any of your saved dimension defaults while all the other defaults for that annoset will remain unchanged. Your annoset will change to Using Active Defaults - but the only thing that has changed is your dimension default. I use this method quite a bit because I don't want a trillion annosets, yet it still gives me lots of flexibility.

Johnny, I find that the biggest problem with Point To Point is that they are not associative. Well.... they are associative, but only to the point, not to the object you are dimensioning. I would very rarely use a PTP dimension. Having dimension defaults controlled by annosets is the way to go.

Johnny, There is no dimension tail in Chief. More importantly, the question has to be asked - why are you using Point To Point dimensions?

Are you looking for something like this?

Rashid, I am not sure I fully understand your question. Are you suggesting that under no circumstances would a user want to alter their layer sets?

How would you want it to work? Here is one way it will work. Assuming your template plan has all your layer sets the way you want them - which is a fairly good asumption. Open your template plan. Export Layer Sets. Now in the plan you are working on with the messed up layer sets. Import Layer Sets. In the Import Layer Sets dbx, you can select a single or multiple layer sets to import. You will be prompted to replace any layer sets with the same name. Click yes. Your layer sets are now back to how they are in your template plan. It's just like having "Template Layer Sets" file that you can restore back to your layer set defaults at any time. You can set up hot keys and toolbar icons for both Import and Export Layer Sets.

Here you go. Glenns hot keys.html

Mark, There is one small feature that allows you to change the dimension text height directly in layout on a per view basis. But it is very basic and limited to dimension text only. Open up the layout box dbx and on the General panel...Dimensions - you can change the dimension height for that layout box.

Hey Chop, In this case, the help file would only be of use AFTER you know what is causing the problem. It wouldn't have been much help to actually FIND the problem. Like Michael, I have played with this setting in the past and it seemed like the direction to head. I just went back and checked with X6 and it works the same as X8. Although I don't remember ever having to check XOR to get the roof lines to display in ref. I guess my memory is failing a little!

Chop, What...you mean there is a help file - is that better than intuition? I am waiting to hear back from support because it seems to not be behaving.

Johnny, Open the Change/Floor Reference dbx. Down at the bottom, uncheck Use XOR Drawing. I am not sure what is going on. I don't know if that has been unchecked as the default in the past, or if it is now working differently. I am sure we didn't need to do anything previously. I will send a ticket to tech support to see if anything has changed. It could be a new bug - or a new "feature".

The gaps in the second floor walls are caused by the ceiling platform height set in the garage dbx (122 3/8"), which is a lot higher than the actual garage ceiling height (104 1/4"). It would appear that a manual roof was drawn over the front part of the garage which overrides the ceiling height set in the garage room dbx, but you still see the cutouts in the second floor walls for the garage room ceiling structure.

First up, try and use auto roofs. Set all your floor/room ceiling defaults to 10'. Build Roof...Make Roof Baselines Polylines. You can now change your room ceiling heights to whatever you want. The roof heights will no longer be controlled by the ceiling height - because they are now controlled by the Roof Baseline Polyline.

Perry, That gives you my first pic. You get the insulation on the foundation wall. but you can't get the insulation on the footing. And you can't reduce the height of the footing to anything less than 100mm (about 4"), which gives you the footing under the insulation.

I can get this: or this: with an auto mono slab. The first one has the footing under the insulation. The second one doesn't have the chamfer.

That's the way it works. When you build auto framing, any manual framing work gets deleted. How would it work if your manual blocking remained while the rest of the wall framing changed - your blocking would not be correct anymore? And you can only auto generate 1 row of blocking at mid wall height.

Michael, Doesn't work on my machine. Wouldn't this be dependant on screen resolution? I know that using a custom line type from the library will muck that up because those line types get added to the bottom of the drop down list.