Nicinus

Yes, that's what I meant, thanks. These are more of suggestions nature, but I thought I would run it here before creating a post in the suggestions forum in case I've completely misunderstood the work flow. - There seems to be a bit of inconsistent behavior between the display options on camera, and how they show up in layout. The line weight button affects both camera view and layout, which I guess is fine, but it would seem more logical to me that this is a work mode and layout always show line weight the way it will be printed. - In camera, if I change the roof material it will only show in color mode and not in black and white, which is inconsistent with the way the elevation turns out in layout. The first image is what shows up in camera view, and the second after it has been sent to layout. In general I think the line work sometimes lacks cleanliness and there are some weird differences if you compare the above camera and layout screen grabs. The graphics engine also seems to lack a proper line end capping and cornering. In camera view most lines are just truncated creating unclean corners, whereas in layout corners are rounded, also creating an undesirable look. See this magnification from a pdf. I think this is one are where Chief's drawings could look so much better with hopefully relatively small improvements.

Glenn, so what does that mean in terms of the layerset? Do you copy it to a new layerset to avoid the risk of altering the layout, or use the same in order to push changes downstream? I would think the latter, but I can also see some advantages in not being surprised. I personally do some stuff differently in elevations compared to sections (for example, I show soil in sections but not elevations so have the basement dotted in elevations).

Thanks Glenn, I will try more later, but you helped me a lot. I knew that I had saved the view to Layout as that was why I wanted to find an easier way to update the elevation after making changes on the original. After some tweaking of materials and CAD work, Chief then crashed and when I opened it up again the layout file was empty. But it since you say cameras are saved when sent to layout I checked the project browser and there it was. But is there no auto save on Layout? I understand most is saved in Plan, and from my limited understanding that seems to be the way I'd like to work, but what about editing done directly in Layout?

I think I could use some help here understanding the workflow. - If I do detail/cad line work on an elevation view and the program crashes, all my work is lost unless I saved the camera/view? Even if I saved the main plan continuously? - If I send a section/elevation view to layout and create a copy of the layerset, I can then only edit that layout view by double clicking it? All changes to that layerset will only affect that particular view? If I want to adjust my line weight as much as I can in plan to have all my elevations and sections similar, I should then avoid creating a local copy, right?

Thanks, but isn't there a command version to get that Update View to Layout dbx? A refresh without having to go through the hoopla of closing and opening my elevation view?

How do I update a semi-dynamic view in Layout such as an elevation without closing the original elevation window? So far if I wanted to update the elevation in layout I've closed the window to get the 'Update View to Layout' dbx because I couldn't seem to find a similar function in the menus, but I'm getting tired of it.

Thanks for the advice, that did the trick. So one can't copy bay windows. Lesson learned.

I've meticulously crafted a boxed bay window to exact specifications and need to copy it to a twin position on the same wall, but for some reason I just can't seem to do it? When I select it the copy symbol doesn't appear and in the transform box the copy option is greyed out. What gives? I'm not allowed to copy a bay window or what am I doing wrong?

Interesting and fun to see other users and I've picked up some great tidbits and learned some good stuff. I must say though that the pace is quite frankly horrible at times. The knowledge range among the people of course varies, but if this is intermediate level training I would hate to go to a basic class (and I've only used it for 6 months). Hopefully there will be more 'meat' tomorrow.

So I jumped the gun and went for it, at the training in San Francisco right now! Anyone else?

I'm unfortunately a too new user to be able to tell, but if you want to send me a file I can upload a screen shot of how it looks on my screen.

Mobile? I can reproduce it on my system by for example open a room specification (doesn't matter if plan or camera), go to materials and select a material and then open the Library Material dbx. After that it is enough to just hoover over a choice for a couple of seconds and the whole dbx disappears. If I click the mouse somewhere it comes right back. In fact it only appears to be an issue with the "Select Library Object" dbx...

Yes, really odd. I don't have any issues with any other apps so it doesn't seem to be the card. I'm more thinking that Chief may have an issue with multiple screens or something. I can reproduce it fairly easy. Seems to happen a lot when I'm in materials looking in the library dbx.

This is obviously a technical problem but I am curious to hear if anyone else is suffering from something similar. My dbx windows sometimes disappears behind my main window. If I then click in the main window it comes back briefly until I try to select something else, and it goes on like this, flickering back and forth while I'm trying to make my choices. My solution has been to pull the dbx over to my second screen. I have a GTX780 with latest drivers under Win 8.1, but I have no issues in any other software including 3ds Max and Adobe CS6 so I'm inclined to believe this is somehow a Chief related issue.

I've quite frankly had some trouble exporting to 3ds Max and couldn't get the 3ds nor Collada format to work, but this was a relatively large model. DWG worked well though and gives layers but not materials. However, if I remember correctly Unity needs its own materials so it shouldn't matter. The Collada format worked for me when testing with Blender, but I think I lost the layers if remembering correctly. Chief's web site outlines the difference between Home Designer versions and Chief Architect versions (although I'm not sure between CA and HD), and I would assume Home Designer would be enough to create interiors since you won't make drawings.

But then I wouldn't know about these options, would I?

But do this one include all available wall types that Chief has defined? I'm starting to feel it would make more sense if wall types resided in the library like materials. According to the reference manual a template defines units of measurement and predefined default settings, layer settings, wall definitions, and page setup information. I wouldn't mind having a common repository for different paper sizes as well for layout.

So does anyone know which one is the most complete one and a good starting point?