glennw

As Chopsaw said, use standard text. On the Attributes panel, use Tab Stops to create the columns and check Display Border and Display Grid Lines.

The differences you are seeing could be controlled by different window settings in each version. The Recessed Into Wall setting affects whether the sill builds on the outside skin of the wall, or cuts the outer wall layers back to the main or layer or sheathing layer. The Apron setting can also affect things. Eric, It looks like you have Recessed checked for both those windows. If you uncheck Recessed, the sill will sit on the outside surface of the wall. Chad, The Recessed option should do what you want. Can you post a simple plan (even though you don't think it is a plan issue)?

Why do it outside Chief? To make sure, best to find the location through Chief. Preferences>General>Folders>All Program Paths>Show>select Archives Folder>Show In Finder. This will take you right to the location where you can select and open an archive file. The above is for a mac, but Windows should be similar. Once you have the path, you can then go to that location outside Chief if you really need to.

Ah..... I thought we were trying to create a circular window.

Am I missing something? You can reflect several of the arch types (round top, hexagonal...) with the Reflect Vertically option. This makes it very easy to create a circular window from an arched window.

Curt, You need to do 2 things. 1. In the Note Specification dbx>Note panel>Schedule>Type - select a type. 2, In the Note Schedule Specification dbx>General panel>Objects to Include, select the appropriate type of note that matches your selection 1. above.

Rob, That sounds like unusual behaviour, but if works for you, all is good. Oh, by the way, the photo is not of myself. I am a little older, that is my grandson.

Rob, Try Defaults>Plan>Ignore Casing For Opening Resize

It is possible to do something like this using Recessed into wall, a 2 layer wall and external casing. You would need to clean up the openings in plan to show the angled reveal instead of the square casing (a shortcoming with Chief), but the 3D view looks OK.

Using a mac, Mouse -Orbit Camera is the default move camera mode when I open a 3D view. That means I can rotate the model using the left mouse button and select objects with the right button without escaping or selecting any tools. Is that the functionality you are after, or do you absolutely need to use the centre button?

Larry, I am in Sydney and the big swells are in southern Queensland - further north than us. On the Structure dbx....I agree with the others....I think you have found a bug, which is not good when you are already struggling.

Curt, The layers only apply to a plan view, not a 3D view.

Richard, It IS possible to use real word heights in Chief so that all heights (floors, roofs, terrain, etc), relate directly to each other and the real world. I have done this in several plans. Although you can't change Chiefs default first floor level from zero, you can specify real world heights on a room by room basis. You can change the defaults for floors other than level 1. I like working this way on some projects because all heights are relative to each other and are returned in real world heights.

Larry, Turn on auto roofs. Now make the foundation room larger than the floor above. If Roof Over This Room is checked, a roof will build over the "sticky out" bit of the foundation - nothing lost by leaving it checked even if it doesn't do anything and there is no "sticky out" bit. If Roof Over This Room is unchecked, a roof will not build over the "sticky out" bit. This is a very simple example just to demonstrate that sometimes that setting could be used.

Whilst using a molding polyline may not be the preferred method for this case, it is probably worth a heads up on the fact that the moldings intrude into the interior. The end shape of the molding can be customised so that it is parallel to the wall and doesn't intrude into the interior. The trick is to use a 3D Molding Polyline (as opposed to a Molding Polyline. Add an extra line segment at each end and uncheck Molding On Selected Edge. Now, by rotating the last (no molding) line segment, you can shape the moldings end angle to make it parallel to the wall. The end angle of the molding will bisect the angle between the last 2 lines. This does not work with a Molding Polyline - in that case, the ends of the molding are always perpendicular to the molding.

I used a molding polyline using a CA-35 crown molding which I grabbed out of the library pretty quickly. Not too hard to make any shaped molding you want, to better suit. No shortage of way to do that.

Chad, Not so... I think that you will find that before she curved the roof, she turned off auto roofs. She was actually curving the roof and trimming it to the adjacent roof plane manually. If you try and curve the roof without turning off auto roofs, you get a message asking if you want to turn auto roofs off. She didn't get the message, therefore I assume she turned auto roofs off and then manually edited the curved roof.

Rod, I am confused. Aren't the system layers the ones with a big red S in them?

Larry, This could get complicated. How would you cover the situation where a layer is used in more than 1 layerset? Oh, on your comment regarding Modify All Layer Sets. When this is checked, Chief will apply any changes to a layers properties to all layer sets. If it is unchecked (default), Chief only applies any changes to a layers properties to the current layer set - which is what is needed in most cases. This allows us to display objects with different appearances in different layersets.

Ben, I would like to see a hierarchical "folder" structure for the layers. Much the same as the traditional file folder setup. ie, we could have a layer folder called Dimensions. This dimensions layer folder would then have dimension layer subfolders called Dimensions, Automatic, Dimensions Manual, Dimensions Electrical, etc. This would allow for grouping of various layer groups and finer editing control. ie, we could turn off all the dimension layers by only selecting the head Dimension layer folder. Or we could change all the dimension layer properties in one go instead of having to group select all the dimension layers as we do now.

Chad, I did it manually. You could probably build that whole roof auto and then just add the curved bit at the end. That way you can get all your other roofs at the correct heights and slopes and then it is just a matter of fitting the curved one in to fit by changing the radius, slope, heights, etc.

Briefly...Use a curved roof with a negative radius and join it to a normally pitched roof.

Barry, One at a time. 1. The balcony fascia disappeared because the wall definition for the railing consists of only 1 framing layer. The balcony fascia gets it's material from the wall definition. So...you can add an external cladding layer to the Deck Railing/Fence_2 and it will fill in the balcony fascia with that material (Soft Green?). Or, if you already had an external cladding layer in the wall definition, you could open the wall dbx and on the Materials panel, change the External Wall Material to Soft Green. This is what happened to the deck on the front house which uses an Interior Railing_3 wall type with Drywall as it's external layer, but the Exterior Wall Material has been changed to Soft Green in the Materials panel. Make sense? I will have a look at the other problems a bit later.

Can you post a plan with a couple of different linestyles in it?

Barry, Are you trying to do this in only plan view? My advice is to tile a plan and a section view (with some vertical dimensions), or even a 3D view using the Cross Section Slider. This makes it a lot easier to see what is going on with the various levels. You can even do the editing in the section/3D view. Toggle on Select Room Before Wall in 3D to make it a lot easier - especially to see what happens when you drag a floor down, for instance. You can use drag/Tab to move floors a fixed distance.