glennw

Yes, that looks possible without too much trouble. Those louver blades shouldn't be too hard to build with the 3D tools - as long as you are familiar with the 3D tools. Once you have built 1, I would assign it to a Distribution Path which would make it easy to change the spacing, rotation angle, etc., for all the louvers in one go. For a more comprehensive answer, can you post a detail drawing of the blades?

Rob, As far as I know there isn't a minimum wall length. When would you need that feature? There are several ways to control the length of short walls like Grid Snaps, Wall Length, etc.

Rob, I am fairly certain that setting was dropped many versions ago.

I don't even turn it off because I always need it there.

Johnny, That is what I do - i have a terrain in my template plan.

Edward, Did you see this in help?

One thing to be aware of when you are trying to get cladding materials to wrap around the end of a wall is that if the wall is not an internal wall (ie, contained within a room), the cladding will not wrap.

I am running Chief on a new iMac with a 5k 5120x2880 display. It is fantastic with no problems at all.

You can also change it in the Railing Defaults to save editing it after you draw the rail.

Edward, There are ways to report materials differently in the ML. ie, by default, a Concrete material uses the Material Type "Concrete" which is defined as a cubic quantity and that's how it will report in the ML. BUT, you could define the Concrete material (or any material) as an Area material type, which will report to the ML as a square quantity. Using this ability would allow you to automatically generate the correct 2D plan areas for 3D objects. ie, you could have a 10'x10'x10' cube with material assigned to it that is defined as "Area" Type. When you generate a ML, the material for the cube will be displayed as 100 sq ft and not 1,000 cu ft. This means that the process would be automatic in that you would not have to draw a Face or Polyline to generate the areas. Of course, if you wanted to use a method like this, you would have to look at how it effects your general ML reporting. Or, you can use it on the fly to quickly get the areas you want. Just open the material definition, change the Material Type to Area, Generate a ML and then change the Material Type back to a type that returns cubic. That ML won't change as they are not dynamic.

Edward, This can be done quite easily. I use this system to report site calculation areas to the ML. The trick is to create a unique material (using the Areas material type and an appropriate fill pattern) for each different type of area you want to define in the ML and then assign that material to the Face object - you can't use a closed polyline because you can't assign a material to a closed polyline. The Face object is really a 3D object without any depth. They will display in a 3D view - which a polyline won't do. They will display in 2D plan as a filled polyline. The total material count (in square units) for each material will automatically go to the Trim section of the ML. You can move it to wherever you like in the ML and you can end up with something like this: And yes, there are several users who are extremely adept at utilising Ruby to do this, but this is a simple method with no Ruby and using the ML.

Chopsaw, We have narrowed it down to a corrupted units.dat file - the file that contains the unit conversions. And yes, I did have some custom units that look like the culprits. I deleted the units.dat file and let Chief auto create a new one on the next session. I haven't seen the problem for a while now, so maybe all is OK. But I have still to redefine my custom units. My problem seems a bit different from yours. Every numerical value (dimensions, values in dbx's, etc) were displaying as Scientific E Notation values.

You could also utilise the Blank Segment option to not display the segment where the formatting is changed and then place another dimension line over the Blank Segment. This has the advantage of keeping the integrity of the original dimension string, so that all the segments can be edited as one dimension string - ie, moved, formatted, etc.

You can't do that in the one dimension string. You will need to use 2 dimension strings, each with different formatting.

Because, from the help file: • Attic rooms do not receive a ceiling and are ignored by the program’s automatic roof generator.

3D

Ah, I see now Michael. Of course, the easiest way to see the trees similar in both render and vector views is to toggle off textures in the render view. Downside is that it will toggle off ALL the textures in the plan - but if you don't want textures in your render view anyway, it is by far the easiest method. Or, use technical drawing or some other drawing method.

Michael, I think we may be talking about different things here. I have a Bonus Library called 3D Plants - admittedly, I think it migrated forward over several versions. I just checked on line and yes, the library there is called Bonus3Plants, but it only contains .png 2D images as you describe. My library contains the 3D stylistic symbols as in my picture. Barry, Am I guessing that you have the same 3D stylistic library as myself? You can make them look the same in vector view and render view. They use a texture file for the leaves, etc in a render view. All you have to do is delete the texture used. The easiest way to do that is use the rainbow tool to select the leaves, branches, trunks and then delete the associated texture file. Here is a before and after render view - the after have had their textures stripped out. And here is one with transparency applied to the leaves and trunks

Barry, These are from the 3D Tree Bonus library - there are heaps of them in the library. They seem to be similar to what you are asking for. They can be easily tweeked to suit you needs by way of color, transparency, etc.

Christina, I have always thought that the Newels/post spacing was a maximum and that Chief would place as many equal panels in a railings/fences length as it can without exceeding the maximum - that's how it seems to work on my machine. But you are saying that you can get 80" spacings when you set it to 72"? To control the spacings at the ends, you could always place a break in the fence and then drag a Room Divider wall right through the fence at the break point. You have to do it in that sequence for it to work properly. And the Room Divider has to go completely through the fence - it can't be just one side of the fence. You can then control the length of the end panels by moving the room Divider wall.

Edit Area (all Floors) and Copy. Paste into another plan. While the edit area is still selected, you can do a Point To Point Move to locate the copy accurately in the new plan. You may need to set up a reference point in the new plan first, to give you a location to Point To Point move to.

I downloaded the font onto my mac and all seems Ok, although it does't appear to be a narrow or condensed font - quite the opposite, it appears to be stretched out. Why not use Arial Narrow which looks to be identical, only narrower. A stab in the dark as a last resort for Rich Text. Open the Rich Text dbx and go to the options panel. Under Size, make sure Cad Style Font Sizing is unchecked.

Most times I find it easier to use a Terrain Break along with a normal wall or railing. A normal wall or railing is a lot easier to control than a terrain retaining wall.

Your big problem is the the top right hand corner of the Family room where the green wall runs up and down the screen. The roof/ceiling springing off that wall is horizontal at the the ceiling height of 133 9/16". You will need to resolve that conflict. Assuming that you want to leave the roof alone: Maybe have a flat ceiling either side of the room for the length of that green bit of wall - about 3'3" long.

Try going to your Toolbars folder in Chief Architect Premier X9 Data. There is probably a backup file for your customised toolbars that you can resurrect.