glennw

In plan: Preferences...Appearance...Display...Images and Pictures...Display in Color When Possible? In Layout: Open the picture's dbx. General..Display Options...Grayscale?

You should probably ask this question on the Home Designer forum. When you select a layout border and open it's dbx, do you have a setting called Dimension...Number Height? You can change the dimension text size there, but you shouldn't have to if that is the correct size.

Joe, Are you talking about snapping dimensions or snapping generally?

Or... Preferences...Edit...Behaviors...Primary Movement Method...Orthogonal Alt+Q...Resize About...Outer Surface Turn on Reference Display Turn on On Object snap Select wall and drag and snap to outside of referenced wall.

There are also lots of things that can be done with Chiefs tools. Why go to other programs when you can do it directly in Chief? This is done very easily in Chief.

Mick, I don't get the shimmering, but what you describe is Z fighting which occurs when you get 2 materials sharing the same plane. Wall dbx attached.

Mick, All looks good so far. One caveat - v5 may do things differently than v6. If it were me, I would get rid of those zero thickness wall layers unless there is a special reason for them. Now create a very thin wall (3/32") and make it No Room Def and give it the Opening (no Material) material, make it invisible. Draw them in the corner as shown in the pic below - but keep them a bit away from the corners at this stage - you can move them closer to the corners later.. Then use the Break Wall tool and break the main railing at the wall junctions. You can drag the very thin walls and the break in the main railing will follow the walls as you drag them. Select the corner rail sections and make them Open, no bottom rail, The only problem I am now having with your drawing is getting full posts closest to the corners, Chief only wants to do half posts. I need to have another play - I forgot what I did to get the full posts.

Mick, Why don't you do what you can and then post the plan which I will be able to open in X6.

rlackore has it right. Uncheck Automatic Width and manually set the railing width for the top rail and the bottom rail. Start with a Straight Deck Railing. Main layer is layer 2 - the original wall layer.

Mick, Nothing to do with File Locking. It's an X6 plan. You can't open any Chief plan in an earlier version. Ask some questions if you are having trouble.

OK, Easily fixed. In plan, I needed to draw the rails with cad (has everyone noticed the new Intersect/Join 2 Lines tool?) I created a new layer called Walls, HIDDEN RAILINGS and moved all the deck walls to that layer. Hid that layer in plan and displayed it in 3D. A bit of extra work, but tidies things up and only takes a couple of minutes.

Yup, I can confirm this behaviour, but I have only noticed it recently - maybe since the last update? The top of the LB moves up above the top of the screen. I can't grab it by the title bar to drag it back down, but if I grab the bottom of the dbx and resize it downwards, the top of the dbx moves back down onto the screen. It may have happened before, but I can't remember it happening.

I wouldn't purposely tease! - it's a time thing - I'm off to bed now. All done with railings. Briefly...add a layer to the railing wall definition and make it the same thickness as the newels and Insulation Air Gap or no Material. That spaces the railing out from the deck. You can't drag the bottom of a railing wall down. So start with a normal wall (or convert a railing back to a normal wall) and drag the bottom down. Change to a rail. Check Generate on Low Platform. Use invisible thin walls and break the railings near the corner and use a different railing for the corner pieces - which are really just the top rail. Probably better to have a look at the attached plan with the above in mind. My apologies for the metric thing. As usual, maybe not perfect for this or any other situations, but still demonstrates the flexibility and depth of Chief. PS. Ah...I just discovered a problem with this method. The railing in plan does not coincide with it's location in 3D - I will keep playing.

You do not automatically get floor openings just because you draw a stair. You need to create a stair "room" and designate it Open Below. Or you can select the stair and on the Edit toolbar, select Auto Stair, which will do a similar thing.

Is this a bit closer. Still done with railings - but getting harder!

M, Not necessarily so. Is this the sort of thing that you are after? This can be done automatically in Chief with railings.

Uncheck Select Room Before Wall in 3D?

Make sure temp dimensions are toggled on. In a Cross Section/Elevation view, select the wall. Click on the temp dimension and change it. Or, create a solid rail and enter the height in the Railing Height.

CA should work as you expected it to. If you change the material in a wall definition, it should change every instance of that wall in the plan. Can you set out exactly the steps you are going through?

gotchya.

Hey d dot, On your pic with the Scrollable List option checked, is it actually missing the vertical scrollbar on the right hand side of the Selection Panel, or is the scrollbar just cut off in your pic? Or is this a mac thing where it doesn't have a vertical scrollbar? It's hard to tell from your pic, although I assume you have a vertical scrollbar on the Selection panel with the Scrollable List option checked - like on the pic below.

When are you newbies going to learn to post a pic or plan !!!!

d dot, Please post a picture!!!!! How do you have your Library Browser set up - Vetical, Horizontal, Stacked...... Are you talking about the size of the Selection panel, the Preview panel....? Is it your setting in Preferences called Selection Pane View...Tiled To Fit Window (my best guess for better results - this should display all the items in a library folder ) or Scrollable List (are you seeing scroll bars in the Selection Panel - you need to scroll to see all the items in a library folder)? This will probably go on and on without resolution unless you post a pic or explain yourself more clearly!!!

I believe that what you mean by a "tray ceiling" is a flat ceiling with drop panels or bulkheads. What Chief is calling a "tray ceiling" is as pictured under the description in the help file. It is a flat ceiling in the middle of the room with the perimeter ceiling sloping down towards the walls and (more often than not) following the roof slope down. This shouldn't be confused with a TREY ceiling, which is, I believe, what you want. Do a search of the help file for "TREY ceiling" and see what pops up.

Perry, As far as I can tell, this is the only info available for a roof. Maybe Jerry can squeeze more info out.