glennw

Kevin, I am not sure. If I toggle colors off I still get the wall fills. Maybe something to do with your wall definition colors. There is a setting in Preferences - Color Off is or Greyscale or Black and White, but that shouldn't make any difference. Probably best to post a plan. Color Off, Greyscale: Color Off, Black and white:

This way springs to mind. A bit messy, but doable. Have one layerset that displays your normal walls with layers, colored hatching etc. Turn Walls, Hatching off. Have a another layerset with Walls, Layers turned off and Walls, Hatching turned on. Use the Wall Hatch tool to hatch the walls, open the dbx for the hatches and change them to solid with transparency and select a color, etc. Now when you change between the 2 layer sets you will see the difference.

The only thing that I know is that if you make the arrow size at least half as big as the dimension value, the arrows will not display. That doesn't look like it will help you though because you only have a single dimension.

Dialogue box. Double click on objects to open their dbx - most dbx's have the Number Style button. As a quick check, have a look at your status bar (the bar at the bottom of the Chief window), I am assuming the XYZ coordinates are showing feet? Ps, looks like you were too fast for me.

It could be this: Try opening a dbx and down at the bottom click Number Style. Just for your information, even with the Number Style set, you can still enter a number and then the units to overide the Number Style setting.

External room build from invisible walls and open below - not my favourite. View to CAD will not interfere with the 3D model as the above might - this will give a similar result to a reference display which I think is probably the best method.

Three off the top of my head..... Open below room, Reference Display, (the normal way - or even referencing an external plan file) View To Cad, Paste Hold Position A bit depends on wether you want to show the stair on a floor above or a floor below.

I don't get why you are measuring off the monitor. I would have thought that using Drawing Sheet Setup and Print Preview would give you everything that you need. I have never heard of anyone measuring off the monitor. That would not give you an accurate idea of how things would look when printed anyway, because the screen and the printer use different resolutions.

I will run through one way to get there. Open the roof plane's dbx>Object Layer Properties (Edit toolbar)>scroll down to Roofs, Labels>Text Style (it will probably be CAD Text Style>Define. The dbx will probably open with the CAD Text Style hilighted>Edit>Character Height. This will change the text size for all objects that use that particular text style. You may want to create a new text style and assign the new one to the Roof, Labels layer. There are many different ways to do this, but the above may give you a better understanding. If the above doesn't work, post back as your settings may be different from the above. You answered the second question yourself.

The Ruby boys may be able to do something for you. The main problem is the materials list is not dynamic and needs to be regenerate after a change in the model. You may get some of the functionality you want by using shedules, but I don't think there is a schedule that will include roof sheeting.

Bob, Now compare the selected diagonal's length and angle with the other diagonal. Also have a look at how the selected diagonal meets the bottom left hand corner of the room - zoom right in.

Ideally your dimensions should be sized appropriately in your plan view. There is one option that you can use to change all the dimensions in a layout view though. Open the dbx for the layout box and go to the Plan View panel, Dimensions. Change the Number Height.

Rotate Plan View is not a friendly tool to use - I would not use it. It only appears to rotate the plan. What it actually does is rotate the "drawing sheet" - this includes rotating things like the co-ordinate system (zero will be at 12 o'clock instead of 3 o'clock). If you have rotated the plan 90deg, the up arrow key will move an object to the left - or top of the "drawing sheet" - not up as expected. You should use Edit Area All Floors and then rotate the drawing.

This could be caused by the fact that you have zoomed or scrolled the camera with Perspective Crop Mode toggled off. Under these conditions, you are actually moving the camera to change the view. Tile a plan and a 3D view and scroll or zoom the 3D view and watch the camera move in the plan view. If you toggle Perspective Crop Mode on and do the same, the camera will not move, but the view will. From the help file: When Perspective Crop Mode is active, panning and zooming do not adjust the position of the camera. As such, using it can result in inconsistencies between a camera’s position and what is actually shown in the view. For this reason, it should only be used to zoom in closely on small objects or details. Perspective Crop Mode is not used when a view is sent to layout. This means that a view on the layout page may not look the same as the original view. See Layout.

Chad, I am not sure how Chopsaw did it, but it's easy to do using a window and a barn door. Same technique as I described above.

Chad, You can place 2 doors in the same location. This is a pair of standard Glass Panel, Hinged doors. I copied them to another part of the wall and changed them to Library door B02, Barn doors. Selected and dragged the barn doors back over the french doors.

Steve, Great video - you have obviously spent a lot of time on this. I am loath to criticise you work so please don't think I am being too picky. But...How is the brickwork on level 3 supported? ie, the brick for the chimneys and the inside skin of the parapet walls. There is nothing, or only stud walls supporting the brick?

Thanks Mick, I usually hesitate to specify a particular tool button because they can be customised, moved, deleted, etc. I usually just go straight to the menu item which can't be edited. I just saves a reply like "I can't find that tool button".

Eric, I think he is referring to Dermot - either trying to be funny, or a spell check error.

I don't get any errors when I work on the plan or generate a 3D view.

If you go to Preferences>Materials List, are all the categories checked? Or, when in a Materials List view, go to Tools>Materials List Display Options and make sure all categories are checked.

One picture showed the light spilling down the wall - you will obviously need a light to get that effect. The other picture (without the light spilling down the wall) could be simulated with just a Molding Polyline with a high Emissive property.

Looks like they are there when I do a Calculate Materials For All Floors.

I would try cranking up the Emissive property of the of the light's material.

Place the outlet on a wall. Select it and Convert Selected To Symbol (on the Edit toolbar). You can now place it anywhere in the plan - it doesn't need to snap to any object.