glennw

I think the problem with the auto interior dimensions is not that Chief is duplicating the dimensions, but rather, Chief is going around the enclosed room and dimensioning each wall. So that in a regular shaped square or rectangular room, you get a dimension for each wall. As it happens, opposite walls are the same length and so you get what looks like duplicate dims, but really, Chief is just dimensioning each wall. Try it with an L shaped room or rooms with more steps and L shapes in the walls and it becomes pretty obvious what is happening. And remember that some of the settings from the current dim style are applied to the Auto interior dims as well. Like formatting, setup, arrow, etc.

Curved roofs are easy to do with Chief using the Curved Roof option in the roof dbx. Read up about it in the manual.

Richard, That is definitely user error. When you raise the floor 6", the stem wall increases in height to 24" (the default 18" + the 6"), because you haven't told Chief to do anything else, the footing stays where it is and the stem wall increases in height to 24". Then, when you change the floor height back to zero, the stem wall height remains at 24", therefore it is lower than originally by 6". ie, the stem wall remains 24" high and drops 6" with the floor. When you change the floor back to zero, you also need to control the stem wall height by manually changing it back to 18", or check default if that is 18". How does Chief know when you do and don't want to actually change the stem wall height? You have to tell Chief what you want.

Joe, Isn't that what Spherical Panoramic Backdrop does?

If you post the plan, it should be very easy to build that roof automatically which would save a lot of time and effort. I see that the roof on the elevation you posted does not match up with what Alan is suggesting. Do you want the roof as per the elevation you posted (which would result from your initial sketch - and not an ideal solution as Alan pointed out), or as per Alan's sketch - which is how you would normally build it if it was a new house.

You can find a summary of the stair requirements here: http://nsw.hia.com.au/documents/2008/1.%20January/9th%20January/NAT%20BCA%2007-10%20Stair%20construction%20for%20class%201%20buildings.pdf Note that you need a landing at the top of the stairs min 750mm deep.

Coralie, Are you talking about no option to create an Auto Stairwell while on level 1 plan and selecting the stair? You don't get that option because there is already a stairwell created - it's the Open Below room above. By the way, you have a very dangerous situation created by that door at the top of the stairs. I think you need a landing in front of the door - it's probably a code requirement anyway.

Lew, No clicks or fussing with roof planes. Just auto build the roof - the cricket is built as part of the auto roof building. No settings to make, nothing to configure - it just happens.

Lew, Chief already does that automatically without a separate tool.

Antoine, I just did a quick run through and it took me about 50 seconds from go to woah. All seemed to work OK and I don't see a problem. I also don't see a change from X7 to X8. You obviously got the rotation (166.12deg) incorrect when you did the rotation. This angle may or may not be correct, depending on your frame of reference. Did you use relative or absolute and where did that angle come from - depending on the circumstances (and maybe in this one), you may need to use the complimentary angle - keeping in mind that Chiefs angles start with zero at 3 o'clock and go anticlockwise.

Chopsaw, With Add To Library unchecked and once the dbx closes, the symbol will be attached to your cursor. If you go to a plan window, you can place the symbol. But we are now getting off subject.

Chopsaw and Michael, It doesn't have to be a symbol - same behaviour with the polysolid - or any object. Chief has always worked like this. eg, if you want floor boards to run at 45deg to the room, you need to create a new material with the boards rotated at 45deg. Rotating the room has never rotated the floor boards. How would Chief know which way to orient the material unless you tell it? - it comes in as the default zero. Rotating a simple rectangle is a simplistic example - imagine you have an very odd shaped room or object that you have rotated and reshaped. How could you expect Chief to know what way to orient the material automatically? PS. OK, I didn't check with the symbol - I thought we were talking about objects and material orientation generally.

Antoine, I think I may know what the problem is. You are rotating the object that has the material applied to it, but the material isn't rotating. What you need to do is open the dbx for the material. Go to the Texture panel and change the angle to match the angle to 166.12 deg. The easiest way to open the material dbx is to use the rainbow tool in a 3D view. This will rotate the picture on the object you have used. I will do a vid. http://screencast.com/t/Fwxy2j2Xk

I'm more confused than before you posted the pics! What is a plan layout? What is a layout plan? What is a layout plan shown in 3D? I don't see any distortion, only different angles.

3D...Camera View Options...Toggle Textures.

They are auto generated walls that connect rooms inside other rooms. You can turn off this behaviour at Defaults...General Wall Defaults...Connect Island Rooms (Alt+Q). You may have room definition problems in certain situations with this setting toggled off.

Adel, Sounds like some sort of memory limit. Tech support is there to help - that's what we pay SSA for.

Or maybe, instead of deleting page 8, just delete the layout boxes (and any other info) and leave page 8 there.

Adel, Just a wild guess. Have you tried Clear Printer Info? I would be surprised if that was it though. Something corrupt on page 8? Save a copy of the layout and delete page 8 and see what happens.

What sort of distortion? A picture might help. A plan would be better.

And if you look in the status bar, you will find a description of what the tool actually does

In plan view, hatch patterns have their origin at 0,0. So...you could create a new hatch pattern or edit a hatch pattern with a different offset origin. This is a real hassle though because you would need a different hatch pattern for each different origin and if your room changes size, you would need to redo the hatch definition.

Antoine, You first need to capture a picture of your floor plan or site plan which you are going to use to sit your 3D model on. You can use Chief's Screen Capture to do this in a plan view. Before you can use this background plan image, you need to convert it to a material and apply it to a polysolid, terrain or whatever you are using for your base picture. There are a couple of ways to make the material. Go 3D...Materials...Plan Materials...New...Texture panel. Find your picture under Texture Source. Make sure you use stretch to fit. Or, you can do it in the Library Browser...User Catalog..right click...New...New Material And make sure Textures are toggled on in your 3D view.

Brian, If you can't use the Join Roof Planes tool because it is removing part of the roofs that you want to retain, you can use Roof Intersection Points to locate where the roofs intersect. You can then manually edit the roof planes by snapping them to the Roof Intersection Points. I assume that you have Roof Intersection Points toggled off. Go Preferences...Architectural...Roofs...check Automatically Place Roof Intersection Points. Now when you click on a roof and then a second roof, you will see a red point auto generated. This is the intersection point of the 2 roofs. You can place the toolbar icon for Delete Temporary Points on a toolbar to clean the points up as you go - otherwise your plans will look like DSH's!

As far as I can remember, we have never been able to reshape a layout box (apart from being able to fillet the corners).