glennw

Jim, This may well be the solution to your offset problem, and is probably an easier way to offset anyway. Set your Concentric Jump distance to the offset value. Toggle into Concentric edit mode. Select the line, Copy in Place (as a safety measure so you don't slide sideways - this only works if your Primary Movement Method is set to Orthogonal in Preferences). Drag the line. It will jump by your Concentric Jump distance. That should work every time without fail. I would be interested to see if it works on your test plan. The critical thing with any method is to make sure that you have your Primary Movement Method set to Orthogonal and that you use Copy and Paste In Place instead of Copy/Paste. I believe there is a bit of a bug or a quirk here in that the Copy/Paste command seems to override the Orthogonal preference setting (you get a 4 headed move arrow) whereas the Copy and Paste in Place command respects the setting (you get a 2 headed orthogonal move arrow). I would have thought that they should work the same.

You can also override the wall framing material parameters and set different Stud Thickness and Stud Spacing in the Build Framing dbx.

You can create a new material by duplicating the color of the texture directly. Go Tools...Color Chooser. Select the eyedropper in the bottom left hand corner of the Color Chooser dbx. Click on the green siding that you want to match. Click Create Material. This will save a new material to your library named with the RGB values. You can now use this for your windows.

Jim, Yeah, thanks, I get that about the center point. I am still having trouble duplicating what you get unless I slide the line sideways. Can you post your plan?

Yeah d dot, I posted and deleted straight away because I realised what I posted was incorrect. That only moves the corner a specified distance, not a side.

Jim, What is the grip in the middle of the line you are trying to offset? Normally you get a grip at the point that you select the line. Can you post that plan?

What are the criteria for the resize? Ratio, side length, concentric amount...?

Jim, I can only get perpendicular extension if I have Angle Snaps toggled off. As far as I know, a perpendicular extension will not generate anywhere along the line. It will only generate off other snap points like centers or ends. So using the perpendicular extension as a guide is really not working as you think. Try this. Turn off all your snaps except Angle Snaps. Select and drag the line making sure it doesn't slide sideways, hit tab and do that. It should all work. An interesting thing happens when you slide the line sideways as you drag. The sideways snap distance increases the further you drag the copy away from the original. d dot, I know that things can be improved, I am just making an effort to do the best with the tools we have at hand.

What is it that you are trying to accomplish? Are you creating a roof from polyline solid? It seems as soon as you pitch the polyline solids, the edge will no longer be parallel to the bowed wall. But, yes, post the plan.

Edward, Do you want crisp or do you want instant?

Jim, You have to be careful when you initially drag the line to offset it. If you do not drag perpendicular to the line, it will slide sideways and when you type in the distance, that distance is not perpendicular to the line - it is at an angle to the line. So when you drag the line, make sure you are dragging perpendicular. You can double check by checking the angle in the Enter Coordinates dbx that is automatically entered depending on how you dragged the line. Oh yes, and make sure you have Angle Snaps turned on or you can't drag the line perpendicular.

Larry, What is it you want to stretch. There are all sorts of commands that will perform a stretch, depending on what and how you want to stretch things.

You don't really need 2 walls there. Try deleting the wall on the left. The decks still retain their definition and the room selection problem is fixed.

Have you investigated the following settings? 3D View Defaults...Surface Edge Lines. and Send to Layout...Vector View Options.

I do not use Make Copy of New Layerset if that's what you mean.

Joe, I agree with you and work the same way. As much editing as possible in the camera view. The only thing you can't do in a camera view is delete lines. So my mantra is the only thing I do in elevations sent to layout is delete - all adding information is done in the camera view. This works well because if you have to resend or update the camera view to layout, you only use the deletions that you have edited in layout - all the other cad that was added in the camera view is retained.

I haven't got long so I will just do this one for now. I believe that what you say is correct. When you create an elevation view (with cad work or not) you need to save it somehow other than just saving the plan. There are several ways to save a camera: Sending to layout automatically saves that camera view. In the camera's dbx, select Saved. This automatically gets checked once you send the camera view to layout. Selecting Save Camera from the Edit toolbar with a camera selected. Normally when you close a camera view that has cad added and has not been saved, you will be asked if you want to save the camera. This doesn't happen if you haven't added any cad work. So... If you have an unsaved elevation camera with added cad work and have a crash, chances are the camera won't be saved. I think most of that is correct, although I didn't have much time to play.

To update changes to the model, the only way is to close the camera view and update, or resend the view. If it is only cad work drawn in an elevation view that you want to update, you don't have to close the camera view - cad work is updated automatically.

I think we need a "lock floor" tool to prevent this from happening. It, would, of course, have to have an option for those who do want their floors to move.

Lew, What do you mean when you say that "Chief seems to struggle in these areas". I would have thought the opposite - Chief seems to excel in these areas. I have used Chief's sun tools on many occasions (both 2D and 3D, still and animated) to demonstrate shadows to authorities and clients. How many sun studies have you actually done to base your comments on?

What's the big deal? If you really want 0,0 exactly, place a point in your template plan. Or just save your template plan to the zoom and location close to 0,0. This will be close enough to 0,0, when you draw your first wall to not cause any problems. The standard Chief template plans I checked were all close to 0,0. If the plan is in fact a long way from 0,0, it is probably user error. And what if I don't want my first wall at 0,0 - ah, I know, we could make it an option! Who knows? It's only a guessing game without posting a plan.

Done manually. Place the first door. Place the second door next to the first one and then drag it over the first one.

If all you want is to have it look like that in plan, you can use the Swing Both Directions option in the door's dbx. Or, if you really want 2 doors, you can actually drag 2 doors to occupy the same location in a wall.

Lew, Why go to Sketchup when you can easily do animated sun studies in Chief with the Chief model you have already built?

d dot, You may be better off riding the horse back!