LevisL

Good to hear!

If you need 3 or more different fills, you can also check 'Use Layer Color' under Pattern Appearance in the Wall Definition dbx. Then change the layer color in your different layer sets. Here's an example of my set up. In my working layer set, I have the attic walls layer set to blue so I can quickly distinguish between attic walls and normal walls (on my print set, both layers are set to black). Then on my floor and roof framing layer sets, I change the walls to a light grey. In my case, I have the line colors of each wall layer also set to 'By Layer', but you could also uncheck that and just have the fill change color when you change layer sets.

I'm in the same boat, but as Mark said, the new Macs don't support Real-Time Raytracing yet, so you might be better off waiting a bit until Apple comes with their line of graphics cards that can support it. That's my plan. Then I can get a machine that will be useful for a longer period. Hopefully the folks at Apple don't make us hold out for too long!

Perfect. Thanks Eric. That's exactly what I needed!

Here's a simple plan showing the same problem. Post to Beam Example.plan

The layer is on. The problem is the doorways that are automatically created at the top of the stairs. They span from corner to corner. In doing so, Chief seems to make the whole wall invisible. If I make the doorways narrower, then I get posts and beams. Problem is I just want one post on each corner. I'll post a simple plan shortly.

Wondering if there's an easy way to get the posts and beams to show up in camera views in this case where I have a deck with wraparound stairs and post-to-beam railings? The automatic doorways are making the railing walls invisible and I can't delete these doorways, just resize them. Am I missing something?! I know I could manually add the posts and beams, but if I can get this to work, it would be easier... especially if the client decides to change the deck size later on.

Easy peasy! Make a new layer. Call it ‘Doors, Future’ and give it a dashed line type.

You can't. I find this really annoying too. I've made the suggestion to separate those directly to Chief. Send in a suggestion as well.

You would need to set up different layer sets and/or saved plan views. Some for viewing on screen with layer colors that can be viewed against a dark background, and some for printing with these same layers set to black (or whatever color you want printed).

Yup. Exterior Roof Attachments, in the skylights folder You could also just resize a recessed light and adjust the lighting properties. And you could also change the CAD block for the symbol

Very clever Robert! I’ve complained to Chief about this and I hope they give us the option to run the floor structure over the door opening at some point in the near future, but until then, at least now I have a workable solution. Well played!!

For the record, it’s not just Chief’s PDF’s that have that problem... I ran into the same thing printing some of my daughter’s school assignments when schools shut down last spring. The problem is in Preview. I print PDF’s from either Bluebeam or Acrobat Reader now.

I know. This project is giving me grief! It's for a relative and trying to work with the existing shop height is challenging. We're still in the design phase though, so I'll address it before we get to con docs. I've got a couple options. Either inset the stairs a bit more, play with the roof slope/wall height/truss depth for the open to below area, or worst case, detail some sort of angled ceiling in the roof framing for that area.

Beauty. Thanks Steve!

Thanks! I didn't realize I hadn't made the foundation room a garage.

But I need that wall on the second floor to close up the 'open to below' room. I'm starting to think this file is corrupt. I just noticed that it's showing hardwood floor in the existing shop and I can't get rid of it either!

I'm pulling my hair out with this one! I have a small portion of the north wall above the trapezoid windows that pokes through the roof (plan attached), as these screenshots show. I can't figure out why or how to fix it! I've tried: - dragging that small portion down in section view, but it pulls the rest of the wall down too. - checking/unchecking 'Default wall top height'... doesn't change anything. - checking/unchecking 'Stop at ceiling above'... also doesn't change anything. - I also checked for errand attic walls or mis-aligned roof planes, but all seems good there. Living Quarter Addition to Shop.plan

If you change your general wall defaults, you can manually move the walls into place and have them snap to the reference walls below. The 'Align with wall below' tool still won't work like you want though. Not quite automatic like you requested, but it'll be accurate.

It's this toolbar icon It's also under the '3D' menu

If you send your view to layout using plot lines with color fill, there's another trick you can use. Use the 'Delete Surface' tool in your vector view to delete the screens/glass panels. When you send it to layout, the color fill will remain even though the surface has been deleted. I think it's a bug, but I use it to my advantage!

Good point. I didn’t think of shared blocks and those in the core catalog, etc.

Perhaps the solution could be a setting that would be stored with the specific cad blocks in the library. When adding it to the library, we could have a radio button to choose either ‘Insert on current CAD layer’ or ‘Insert on specific layer’ with a layer chooser pull-down.

I was wondering the same thing. I’d just use general framing members in a case like that. No need to mess with different materials.

I've had it happen twice when way from my office using my MacBook with my iPad as the second monitor (Sidecar feature). I sent it in to tech. support and they weren't able to replicate it either. Haven't tried it again in quite a while to investigate further