glennw

Needs a bit of a cleanup and clarification, that's for sure.

Does everyone else get this dbx?

You can probably do that in Chief with Preferences>Reset Options>Reset Side Windows.

Gene, That's a bit of a funny one that I can't fully figure out. Open the 2 windows that run up and down the page, go to the Casing panel and uncheck Use Interior Casing. You also have an invisible wall running into the external corner. Pull that back or delete it. That seems to get things looking OK on the outside. There are definitely some weird things happening though.

Try unchecking Allow Low Roof Planes on the Roof panel of the Build Roof dbx.

Have you tried playing with the Details and XOR options? Otherwise, post the plan.

For framing, you can use Lineal Length for Structural Member Reporting. This will report total Lineal Length for each size framing member in the Count column. What sort of total do you want for drywall - total square footage, total number for each sheet size...?

David, I don't know if the main cause was arson, but last I heard there were 28 people arrested or charged with lighting fires. One case was a guy who started a backburn to protect his dope crop! A lot were started by lightening strikes. Certainly the drought has contributed to the ferocity of the fires.

David, We are well away from the fires, but are affected by smoke and ash - visibility is very low some days. Over 1000 houses burnt and many people perished in the fires - not a good situation, but has probably got a bit better in the last few days due to cooler weather.

File>Import>Import Default Settings>choose a plan>Room Types

There are a couple of methods that spring to mind depending on what sort of objects you want to select and what you want to do with them once selected. You can use a polygon marquee in association with Edit Area on both cad and architectural objects. You can use Fence Select on cad objects (the polygon has to intersect the cad object.

When possible,I try not to use Retaining Walls. If you have any slope in the terrain, the retaining wall top will follow the terrain and you can end up with a multitude of break points along the top of the wall, which are hard to shape. I always try and use a Terrain Break to shape the terrain and then place a normal wall on which I can control the breaks in the top more easily. In your case, if you have a simple terrain, there may not be a problem.

I think you need to select the wall in elevation - not cross section. The camera is called a Cross Section/Elevation camera - the one camera does both.

Strangely, if you toggle on Angle Snaps when dragging an off angle wall, it will help maintain the walls angle - even though it is off angle.

Millwork>Cabinet Feet>Straight Feet?

Not true. Chief will always join walls main layer to main layer, no matter what wall layer you try and snap another wall to - unless you use a Partition Wall.

Open the foundation "room" and go to the This is caused by the way Chief has chosen to implement mono slabs. There is a foundation room that is enclosed by walls that really don't have any height, but they define where the footing (thickened slab edge) goes. When you break the walls, you break the room definition. It is no longer a mono slab and so the walls show as normal walls not mono slab footing walls. I think that because there is really no wall displaying in plan, there is nothing to hatch. Try this to solve your hatch problem. Open the dbx for the foundation room. On the Structure panel, go to the Relative Heights section and change the Floor To SWT to 1mm (or the smallest that will take). This will show the hatch for the foundation wall, but it will also probably cause some other problems like drop your floor by 1mm, increase your ceiling heights by 1mm....... It cannot be seen in cross section. In my opinion, forget the hatching, or use cad.

Another great advantage with using Saved Plan Views is that you can have as many Saved Plan Views open at once as you like. One example, you can tile the plan views of different floors displaying in different tabs. This means that as you are editing, say floor one, (with auto build foundation toggled on) you can dynamically see the foundation rebuild and change in another tab - no need to change floors and zoom, etc, to see the changes to (and to work on) the foundation.

Most of this discussion has revolved around the relationship between the Plan View and the Layout. But Plan Views have another benefit that go beyond this function. They provide a very efficient way to navigate around your drawing. eg, a Saved Plan View can navigate to a specific part of your drawing like a kitchen or bathroom area and include parameters (as Michael points out) like floor, zoom level, color on/off, watermark, link to layout, reference display, etc. You don't even have to use the Saved Plan Views linked to your layout if you don't want to, you can use them to only navigate around your floor plans. A bit like Aerial View on steroids.

This is not a tool as such, it is a setting. ie, you can rotate objects about the current point, object centre or absolute point. So, if you want to rotate around a point, you have to place a point first, and then rotate.

They could be shadow boards connected with the main roof. Turn them off and report back after trying that. The tall ones in the centre of the dormers are ridge caps.

2017 iMac running Catalina.

Doesn't seem to be any problems here.

Casey, At some stage, did you select the "exterior room" and change the material of the external walls - that could explain why the internal Porch walls are different - because, for the purposes of the "External Room", they are internal walls. The External Room goes around the Porch and includes the railing wall. This would also explain why the external wall material in the wall that houses the garage hinged door is a different material for the garage door part and the part inside the porch, even though it is only one wall - changing the External Room wall material is the only way I know this can happen (having two materials on the one wall). Select the External Room and set it's material back to default. That should sort out all the external walls. I also think this is connected to the internal wall problem as well - I can get the internal walls to behave by pulling back the wall edge from the left hand side of the garage door and then dragging it back to it's original position. One other thing I noticed is that you have 4 materials all called Herringbone?

For ortho movements , you can also use the Snap Grid/Snap Units setting. Then, once you have made your selection (with Edit Area or one of the other selection methods), just drag it and the selection will jump in accordance with the Snap Grid/Snap units setting. Or, what I find easier once the selection is made, is to use 1 click of the arrow key to move the selection in the direction you want to move.