Michael_Gia

Don't try to line up as it is on the field. The important thing is that the exterior of your brick lines up with the exterior of your stemwall to make drawing plans easier. It's more important to line up your framing so that it sits on the stemwall at the proper position. (which is the middle of your stemwall, probably) In the field your brick actually overhangs past the stemwall at least 5/8" but this would be a problem in Chief. Just adjust the brick depth to aline with the stemwall exterior when making your wall composition and life will be simple.

Well this is exactly what I was looking for. It has not been clear in the videos or information up to now so I was apprehensive to try Project Manager. I will give it a go. Thanks, for the explanation! (if it doesn't work I'll be back with my usual petty cynicism. lol )

I always have several excel spreadsheets and pdf's included in my layout files. With the current way of working prior to Project Manager, when I make a change in Excel and re-save the file, all I have to do is open the DBX for that imported spreadsheet or pdf,(so it updates) in the layout page and the recent changes made in excel will be up to date without having to re-import the file. From what I've understood in the new Project Manager. I would have to delete the old excel or pdf file and re-import the changed version.

Project management needs to have a way to link to an outside file like a PDF or spreadsheet that will maintain that link so that when you edit those documents or others in the native program that they were created, the project in Chief will update to reflect those changes without the need to re-import those files. Until that time, project management is only useful for simple projects that don’t require outside documents created in other programs. it’s half baked at this point. It’s a power user feature that isn’t for power users. it was introduced in the pro version but only useful for those at the beginner level. perplexing.

everything works amazing in chief videos. it’s in the real world where it sometimes breaks down. Which is fine if Chief would also admit to that so we don’t all beat our heads against a wall assuming we did something wrong. The furred wall feature will only ever work properly the day Chief allows us to assign “connection priority” values to a given wall. this is the tool we have been missing for the last 20 years.

I just would like to know what the consensus is for finished basements? I always have trouble with furred walls. They don't play well with windows sometimes, and other times they fight with exterior wall connections. I've had more luck simply creating a custom foundation wall with an air gap, 2x3 stud with drywall on the interior side. Is this what most of you do as well? Have you all given up on the "furred wall" approach because of the issues mentioned above? I would love to only use furred walls because I can control where I want them easily, but they're so damn unpredictable. Thoughts?

That’s a good tip. didn’t know we could export macros.

Legacy mode.

If you do "extensive" work in text macro management then X17 will blow up and randomly delete and/or be unable to save. (see below, not that extensive, but obviously too much for X17) Even with a file that I had worked on and saved multiple times in X17, it decided to flash the warning, "if you save this file in X17 then you will not be able to open the file in older versions" When I saw that, I clicked continue only to get the message pop again and again. I decided to quite since I had been saving multiple times as I went and I knew there couldn't be much info missing. When I reopened the file all the text macros that I had used throughout the form I was working on vanished. The Marco list was still in Text Macro Management, although with info from a much earlier version. It even went into the archives for X17 and overwrote prior backups, it seems. Because I tried to at least restore the Text Macro List from an earlier version that was more complete and it wasn't. I'm ready to put my fist through the monitor. Is this a bug in X17? I've never used text macros extensively only a few here and there. Have Text Macros always been wonky and you all have chosen to keep it a secret?

@Alaskan_Son@SHCanada2 Sorry to bother but I did Text Macro Management approach and filled out a form with all the fields. Couple hours of work and saving as I went along but then on the final save, I kept getting a warning "once saved in this version you can not open in older version" which is weird because I was working on the X17 version and saved and opened multiple times. I quite Chief and reopened the file I was woking on and all of the fields with the text macros have disappeared even though the list is stil there in text macro management screen. Have you guys ever experienced the mass deletion of text macros in a file before?

You need to add a floor. Your exterior walls are your parapet walls. Add a wall cap. Control the height of those walls with the rooms ceiling height. Draw your roof plan within those walls. A single sloped roof to one side that sheds the water off that side. Or a four sided roof that converges to a drain in the centre. for the shadow board just add a moulding polyline

If I select just a wall then the dimension string highlights and I can change the dimension. If I select a wall and, in this example, the kitchen cabinets then, the dimension string does not highlight, and therefore I can't change it like I used to be able to do in prior versions. I just want to know if others have had this issue before I report it. Or maybe it's just a Mac thing.

You made me go back and check one more thing... I had accidentally checked the box for "Floor supplied by the foundation room below", in my frantic messing around. Open the DBX, close the DBX, open the DBX, close the DBX. Wish we could affect these parameters and see the changes live rather than the idealized representation in the Dialogue box side window. My fault, but Chief has a pretty arcane way of working this stuff out. my apologies.

What does rebuild foundation mean? I don't use auto rebuild. It should adjust when I adjust the floor or stemwall height? I tried changing the room names from unfinished to living room, but no luck. Thanks for chiming in so quick. I'm cramming to get something out this weekend before I leave on vacation. Looks like I'll be bringing my laptop with me....

Hey, no matter what I set my basement ceiling height or floor level or stemwall height, my stemwall won't budge? Are we not able to affect floor 0 anymore? What am I missing? Cross section: I was hoping the 4'-6" would change to 24" or something close to that? Stemwall doesn't budge in the cross section view no matter how I change ceiling heights, of stemwall height in either floor 1 or 0. Am I missing something obvious, like a check box or do I need to cast a spell and tap my heels 3 times? Either a bug or I suddenly forgot how to change stemwall heights? Floor 1 room dialogue box: Floor 0 room dialogue box:

I’m marking this as the solution only because it’s the most elegant and duplicatable way to make up for Chief’s severe deficiency in this aspect of the program. Even a newbie could use this method, thanks! Pretty sad I couldn’t figure this out myself since X6. It seems like this could take a programmer all of 5 minutes to bake into the client info dialogue box. At least allow us to edit the filed names? come on X18… I realize there’s always a Chief dude coming in and saying that there’s too many requests and topics to follow to keep up, but may I suggest they follow Alaskan Son and René rabbit at the very least? they don’t post that much on a daily basis.

This is exactly it! Even better than I ever dreamed it could be. nice work

Wouldn't it be nice if we could edit the labels of these fields and add to them? Am I the only one? Do you guys just create custom macros for these labels? Or something else? I fill out a lot of forms for each project. It's all the same damn forms. It would be great if all I had to do was fill in this card per project and then all of my forms (which are on layouts) would be filled automatically. Isn't this why we use computers?

Your plan set should include a "foundation plan" that only shows the concrete foundation and footing, ie the lower part of the wall only, since your excavator and concrete forms guy don't care about anything else. Then once the foundation is poured and your rough carpenter starts, he can work from another "finished basement" plan. On that plan page show only the upper wall type, since that's all he cares about. No need for anything else, in my opinion.

Wow now that's some heavy coolaid drinking right there. Mac has it's problems but have you not been on any Windows forums lately? Microsoft and Apple have both become misguided and deaf to their user base lately. They really should just merge at this point. I hate them both equally. I have both a PC and a Mac.

These are absolutely gorgeous! Nice work. Arial all-caps. I don't know why I never thought of that? I switched to Arial a while ago but never thought of all-caps. Very clean and readable. I also like the water colour with lines. It looks more professional than my less than stellar PBR's. I should quite trying to impress with "realistic' renderings. leave that to the pros.

meh, not impressed. I have a detail page that’s standard and follows what the current local construction association dictates and not what ever I dream up that day. If I need to detail something special then I’ll take the time to build the framing properly and take a 3D cut of that and detail it. Try doing framing in Revit out of the box. Good luck with that.

50 samples on M3 took 22 seconds. So, M4 is about twice as fast. (unofficially) Thought it would be faster. Maybe the M24, whenever that drops?….

Just curious, but could you tell us how long this scene takes to render and at how many samples? A few of us on here want to know how the M4 fairs against M3 or older Macs.

….or opt out of X17 file management system.