glennw

Laura, Those things are pretty well covered in the help file.

Greg, It's In the Roof Plane Specification dbx on the Material panel - Soffit/Eave.

Lew, I hope you are not being ironic - I don't think irony should be tolerated here.

Nothing like flogging a dead horse! I reckon that Chief should have a checkbox for "No Workarounds". When checked, Chief won't allow any actions that aren't specifically programmed for.

MickeyToo, To create a new material in the library: Open the Library Browser. Right click on User Catalog...New...Material. General panel...Specifications...Material Type. Choose your poison. You can also get there through the Plan Materials dbx and then Edit existing materials, create new materials, etc.

Alan, It's just too hard and time consuming to do this sort of thing by a message board, one message at a time. I would be happy to do a Skype session if you want.

Yes Please! I'll have what he's having!

The units of reporting depend on your material definition. Specifically wether the Material Type is Area or Sheet.

Ceiling and no walls.

My recommendation is to use Terrain Elevation Lines instead of points - much easier to control.

I agree with Larry. To me, it looks like you haven't selected the Cabinet tool. 4 reasons: 1. The tooltip for the Cabinet Tools is displayed if the cabinet icon was selected, that tooltip would not show. 2. The icon has not changed color, indicating it is not selected. 3. The wall icon is indicating that is selected. 4. The tooltip in the status bar says Display Cabinet Options. Once the tool is actually selected, that tooltip doesn't display any more. Rather than the problem being that the tool palette isn't changing, the problem seems to be that the cabinet icon is not being selected. Are you sure your Edit toolbar isn't displaying on another screen?

The framing problem is caused because you have 2 walls occupying the same space. The lower wall is defined as Balloon Through Ceiling Above. You also have a wall drawn in the same location on the floor above. To see this, have a look at the wall diagrams in the Wall Specification dbx's. I would start by unchecking Balloon Through Ceiling Above. You also have some floor and wall settings on Level 2 that don't look correct which I haven't got time to look at now.

And the author of the article, I. P Freely, would be just a little bit sus. The Autodesk spokesman, Don Keydik is even more sus, even though he is a big man. I think your SSA is safe.

It's already April the 1st here in Oz.

Joey, Yes, you are probably correct - it is probably the anno set that is overriding the setting. I couldn't see the woods for the trees.

Alex, OK, I have had another look. Not only are they zero thickness (which may work OK), but they have a material definition of "Opening (No Material)", which will make them transparent. So...give them a thickness (even if it is very small) and give them a material that you can see.

Todd, I reckon that could be a bug - or it could be by design. As you say: Set the Current Cad Layer in plan view. Switch to 3D view. Come back to plan view. The Current Cad Layer has switched back to the default cad layer. Same thing happens in X6. It's worth a bug report.

Alex, You do have a problem with your MR's. I believe it is because you have made them all zero thickness. I couldn't even see them in a 3D view until I deleted one of the windows, then they appeared. I can't select them in any 3D view. I have no problem deleting them in plan. Go to plan view and turn off the display of all the layers except the Material Region layer. While you are there make that layer red with a 200 line weight. You should now be able to see the MR in the plan view where you can select and delete them. If you are using a MR again, do not make its thickness zero - how is a zero thickness meant to work? One other thing I noticed was that you have a lot of Layout Layer sets created. Unless you really wanted these for a particular reason, I would turn that option off. There is an option in the Send to Layout dbx called Make Copy of Active Layer Set - uncheck it. Oh yes, if you are going to play around with the layer sets, just make a copy of one before you start and use that one. Or in this case, use the All Off set and only turn on the MR layer - easy to go back then.

Not sure about HomeDesigner, but in Chief, you can control what gets included in the materials list by using layers and the Material column option in Layer Display Options.

In the meantime, this may help https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2295-fantastic-new-solution-found-re-how-do-you-show-partial-open-railing-stairs-and-how-to-show-the-door-to-the-basement-stairs-underneath/

Post the plan

Select the Wall Material Region tool. Shift Select the area where the Regions are and Delete. Or...in a plan or 3D view, turn off all other layers, select and delete. Or.....

The icon behaviour occurs because you haven't used the icon in that view yet. The icons only indicate the tool used in the last window they were used in, not the generated window. Make the floor plan window active it the icon displayed will be the last one used in that view.

To control how the foundation walls line up with the floor above, you need to make a setting in the wall definition. Open the wall Type Definition dbx ( for the wall above the foundation wall). There is a section called Wall Settings. Change the "Foundation to Exterior of Layer" setting. Auto build the foundation. As Joe said, you also need to configure your default foundation wall as needed.

Larry, I use the Advanced Search option in the Help file all the time. I particularly like "with exact phrase". I just tried it and it took me straight help for the correct dbx.