LevisL

I know I could do that, but it's a pain in the butt!! In the case of this simple knee brace, I need to make 2 copies of the material. More complex shapes could require several more. Like these timber trusses for example: Now let's say the client decides they don't like that color/wood grain or whatever material you've chosen (because clients are like that!). Now you have to change the main material and make all the copies over again. Exactly! I don't want to explode the solids every time... especially in the early stages of a project where clients might not just want a simple color change... they might say "I like that timber truss, but let's make it 2ft wider". With an exploded shape, that's a real PITA!!

Is there a way to control the orientation/direction of a texture on polyline solids? In this case, I made knee braces out of polyline solids but my wood grain is incorrect of the front and back faces of these. I know I could convert it to a solid and then explode into individual faces, which I could then assign different materials (or really duplicates of the same material, just at different angles), but I was wondering if there is a way to do it so that I could just have 1 material, similar to how framing members always have the correct orientation regardless of angle.

Since you mention the window is in a pony wall, the problem might not be with the mulled unit. Try playing with your pony wall settings, either for that specific wall, or the pony wall defaults (Default settings>Walls>Pony Wall).

No, unfortunately you can't. I've suggested in the past to give us the ability to do so. The best you can do for now is make the sheathing layer in the roof plane dbx the total thickness of your 3/4" sheathing, 3 1/2" rigid and 1/2" sheathing (4 3/4"). Same thing for your ceiling (1 1/4"). Then you'd just add cad lines/boxes on your sections to detail the exact layers. Hope you don't need to use the material list either!! That's the way I did it for a few SIP roofs and flat roofs I've done.

Even if you change the level on the wrong plan, you can just relink to the right file after. And as long as your existing/as-built plans and your proposed/final plans are at the same origin (X and Y location) in the plan file, they will line up nicely from page to page. If they're in different spots though, then you'd need to use Joe's method.

I like to have my floor plans line up from page to page as well, but I take a different approach – First, I send one floor to layout and place/size the layout box as desired. For the other floors, I just copy the layout box and paste hold position to the other pages. Then I just change the 'current floor' in the layout box dbx and, if necessary, the layer set. Not knocking Joe's tip, just offering an alternative.

I just adjusted my line weights recently. I made myself a layout sheet with a bunch of lines from weights 1 to 40, then 50,60,70,80,90,100 and printed it. I found some of my defaults looked too heavy for my printer, so I was able to reduce the weights of a bunch of lines, which will save me a bit of ink every time I print. The national CAD standard might have something on lineweights, but I agree that it's a matter of taste as well. The quality of the printer and whether it's a laser or inkjet will affect the output too.

I was in your exact situation a couple weeks ago Scott. I just turned off the labels and added my own text boxes. It would be nice if we could override the automatic labels for trusses. I understand why Chief automates the labels to coordinate with the truss details, but they should come up with a system that allows us to change the label. Also allowing us to renumber them, similar to how we can do with items in a schedule would be nice. Numbering them in the order we draw them doesn't always work the greatest.

Good idea (and nice out of the box thinking)! I'll have to use that. Won't help for doors with glass, but it's a good start until CA gives us more control over the glass color.

Absolutely! Near the top of my list as well. All views/rendering styles should be able to be sent to layout at a scale... and in color if we want (vector views). Glass color and opacity should be easier to control as well. I can get close to what the OP is after using 'technical illustration', except I can't get the glass to show as black, even adjusting the material color and transparency. Here I adjusted the glass material to be a black general material with 0% transparency, but it did nothing!

Alright. Thanks Joe. That's what I was afraid of. I was even digging around in the program files to see if I could maybe find a file I could open in text editor or something, but I hadn't found anything yet!

Is there a way to see how the Global and Object Specific macros are written? There are a few I'd like to copy and change/enhance for my own personal preference, and rather than starting from scratch with a user-defined macro (because my understanding of the macro language/syntax is limited at best ), if I could start with what's already there, I could probably figure out where I need to make changes.

I used to do almost the same thing. Sometimes I would print the cover page of my con docs in color (it was the only one with renderings), and the rest of the set in b&w to keep the cost reasonable. Now that I bought my own printer, I use more color throughout. Not tons of color, but instead of trying to find different hatch patterns (for a plan with several different wall types for example), now I mix and match with color fills. I use color to highlight certain elements too.

Jon's method works really slick. I discovered it a while back and have been using it ever since. Kudos to Chief for this feature! I input all my site dimensions in metric into my imperial plan and then I have dimension sets for my own site plans that display both units. Then the folks on the job site don't need to convert anything.

Is there a way to change the format of the numbers in a schedule? For example, I have a door schedule and instead of showing the width and height as inches (32" wide, 84"high), I'd like for those to show as 2'-8" and 7'-0". Can this be done?

Same here. My plan was to save and get a Mac Pro last year, but I ended up getting an iMac (upgraded everything I could on it) and I'm quite happy with the performance. Also happy I saved a bunch of money!

I could see it fine on my screen. Not even close to filling up the whole screen.

Thanks for looking into it Larry. I will submit it as a bug. That was the ticket. As soon as I added interior casings, the problem went away. That should be fixed though. I haven't seen too many garage doors with interior casing!

Is there a glitch in the 3D display of garage door jambs or do I need to adjust a setting? Seems like I have this problem on almost every plan. I've tried different dimensions for the casing, the jamb, and the rough opening, but nothing seems to fix the 3D display. It's as if the material on the sides is too thin... I can usually play around with the camera to get an angle that looks decent, but this time it's really bad!

Well said Johnny

Yup! For me this isn't at the very top of the list, but it's not far down. Fix stairs and auto-updating elevations first... oh and polyline labels, then work on that!

In addition to what Larry and Mike have mentioned, that method allows you to change floors as well, not just annosets. Makes it real easy to have the foundation, main floor and second floor (or whatever levels you have) all line up from page to page.

Jon... he has X3. I was going to suggest the same thing though. So my suggestion to the OP: upgrade to X6 and use Jon's method!

For a 20 second clip, the file size is usually in the 30-50MB range (15 to 20 frames per second). And just like you, I send a link and anyone can view it. It's a Dropbox shared link, but the recipient doesn't need Dropbox to view it. I'll see if I can do a video on my method. When Chief asks you where to save the file, it's at the bottom of that dbx (see the image in post #10 above). Is that perhaps something the Mac version has but not the Windows version??? I agree that if you view the video in the Dropbox player, the quality is terrible! Actually, maybe worse than terrible!!! But if you download the file instead (button at the top right), you will get the same crispness as the original recording. Other than their built-in video player, I don't have a single complaint with Dropbox! I do pay the $99/yr and it's worth it to me. My files are all synced between my laptop and desktop (including my Chief Data folder and library). Haven't had a problem yet.

You said it takes you 3 to 4 minutes. That's all it takes me to do a flyaround walkthrough! Draw a circle, convert to walkthrough path, adjust settings and hit record. I have a cheat sheet for the settings beside my computer, and they're the same (or close) every time. Nothing to it!