glennw

Draw the tower as an internal room. Give the room a very high ceiling. Draw a polyline around the room and convert it to a Hole In Roof. Roof the tower. I would have let Chief auto build all the roofs and then there is no roof work to do manually. Chief will even build the cricket that you will need on he upslope side of the tower. Your toilet floor is at 0" whilst the rest of your floors are at 4". The doors show through to the stairs because they are too high (higher than the stairs). Why is the ceiling height over the stairs different from the rest of floor 2?

Terry, Open the door's dbx. General panel...Interior doors...check "Separate Trim and Materials on Each Side"

Preferences...General...New Plans...Imperial Units.

No, you can't rotate the crosshairs. But you can get the same functionality by using Additional Angles and then turning on Display Angle Snap grid. This will add the Additional Angle to the 7.5 degree increments. You can then also see the angle you are dragging in the status bar as a check. The only drawback is that you have to have the 7.5deg increments as well as your additional angle, which gets a bit confusing as to what the angle is, but a quick check on the status bar will confirm the angle and it is easy to dynamically drag the line around to the correct angle.

I don't think you can snap a line to the centre of a wall thickness. . You could draw your line snapping to one of the wall layers and then use the Centre Object tool and select the wall to centre on.

Door headers do not represent the actual framing, they are just dotted cad lines that denote that there is head over the door (as opposed to a full height wall opening). That is why they can display when no framing has been built. To see the door header framing, you will still need to build the wall framing.

Click the handle in the centre of the Number column (for the row you want to move) and drag it up or down and the rows should renumber automatically.

Shelby, The default thickness of the backsplash is set to zero - hence, no backsplash. The default thickness can be changed at Base Cabinets Defaults...General...Backsplash...Thickness.

Rich, This behavior can be helped by stretching out the dbx as wide as you like. Although this helps a lot for the mouse drag adjustment, it doesn't help with the keyboard arrow adjustment method or mouse click method in 10% increments. Same things apply to other dbx's like the Cross Section Slider. I really think that this is an improvement. Previously the mouse click or keyboard arrow methods were way too fine as they only moved the sliders 1% or unit each time. If you check Save Dialog Size and Position in Preferences...General, the dbx will remember it's width and you won't have to resize it every time.

You know, it's really weird how simple things can be and how easily tools and features are overlooked. I am sure that Remove 3D has been there since I started using Chief way back in the Dark Ages. Michael, that's just Australian sarcasm - terrible, isn't it.

The problem is that Chief is bending down the lower section (before it meets the landing) of the upper stair rail to make it meet (the height) the lower stair railing. You can see this bending easily if you do an elevation of the upper stair rail, although, it is visible in the 3D views. The only way I can clean up the junction and get rid of the auto rail bending is to increase the height of the lower stair rail. In this pic, I made the lower stair rail 37 1/4" high, which is the minimum difference (upper rail is 36") that I could get the junction to auto heal. You would still need to place a newel at the junction. Keep in mind that even if both rails were the same height above the stairs, they would still join like the attached pic, and there would still have to be a newel. The top rails would not meet at the same height because of the number of risers at the inside corner.

Place a window in a wall. Configure the window with lites, etc, to match what you want. Use the delete surfaces tool to delete the wall. In a 3D view use Convert to Symbol. Rotate and place in a ceiling hole.

Joe, That all looks great and obviously you have invested a lot of time and effort on this. BUT, just do me one favour though before you finalise it all and package it up. Could you please explain the meaning of HABITAL. I am guessing you don't mean HABITUAL. I am being a smart arse - I think you mean HABITABLE. Or is HABITAL some sort of new American word that hasn't reached our shores yet?

Thanks for the kind words guys, that is everyone except Michael who just wants to punch me out!

Brian, Try this nifty command, I think it is exactly what you are looking for. In plan view, 3D...Remove 3D. It will delete any unsaved cameras and close (but not delete) any saved cameras.

If that were the case, you should get a warning.

As Michael says, post the plan. Also, VERY bad practice to have a stair starting at the door. The door would have to be higher than normal to get headroom. Also dangerous and awkward without a landing.

The terrain modifiers are just that - you really don't have a lot of control - I don't think I have ever used them. The terrain features are the ones to use if you want control.

Perry, I just reread this post of yours. Can you really make a blank segment AND add dimension text to the blank segment. Ahh, I reread your post again. I think you are saying that you can make a blank segment and then add the dimension text by using the text tool - not the Dimension Line Specification dbx?

Perry (or anyone else), When you specify a Blank Segment, does the dimension line still display, or do you loose the dimension text AND the dimension line? In the attached pic, I loose the dimension text AND the dimension line - I'm not sure that we are meant to loose the dim line? And another thing while we are at it. In the help file, the Dimension Line Specification dbx is a small box with no wasted space. Compare it to my dbx, which has a lot of wasted space. I can't resize any smaller to get rid of the wasted space. Why is it so?

You are using the wrong tool. You need to be using a Terrain Feature for which you can specify a height.

Perry, I am pretty sure that if you open a plan or layout from an older version and save it in a newer version, Chief will automatically save an archived copy in the older version format.

Michael, i's particularly good for times when you need to enter something like a surveyors information that comes to you in a different format than your defaults.... Or in a case like this!! It doesn't affect the plan at all as it only applies to the dbx's.

Yes, you can do that. Open the wall dbx. Down in the bottom left hand corner, click Number Style. In the Angle Style section, check Pitch, OK. Back in the Wall Specification dbx you can enter the wall angle as rise/run.

Keep in mind that archive files are only created each time you save a plan - archives are not created if you don't save. I use Previous save.