Michael_Gia

I know this has been discussed before, but is there an easy way to make a table or schedule populated by the labels of a selection of polyslines? All I want are the polyline labels in list form, preferably with the various values separated. ex. name, area, length, width. For some reason I thought there was a schedule for polylines labels, I guess I was dreaming.

I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you're applying to Architectural and Drafting firms, if you use Chief. You're more likely to get work from General Contractors and Private Homeowners looking to build on land that they own.

This has been happening since X12’s release, I believe. For Elevation Views either Vector or Standard. All my window labels are displayed nicely but then when I print to PDF there not there anymore. I go back and update the view but nothing fixes it. It’s random as well. Some Windows fix and others will suddenly vanish. It’s almost as frustrating as the musical toolbars we got going with Chief lately.

If you export a model in *.dae (Collada) format it can be viewed just about anywhere. It can even be viewed in the "Finder" file viewer on Mac, not sure if it shows up as a 3D Model on Windows explorer though. Either way it has a way higher resolution than the Chief 3D Viewer. Not sure what's up with that lately. I'm almost certain it used to be of higher resolution, but I might be mistaken. This is a screenshot from my Macbook file Finder window of a Chief model exported as a *.dae This is not supposed to look better than the Chief 3D Viewer...

look at the floor structure of that balcony/room. You probably have an extra material there you might've added by mistake. Try making the floor structure one thick material to see if that's the problem. If it's not part of the floor then it might be the ceiling below.

Are your trusses not prefabricated? I can’t imagine site-built trusses having any kind of savings in time or money. If they are prefab then why do you need to draw the trusses? I mean, what carpenter is looking at your truss plan instead of the plans that are provided by the truss mfr. Just curious, not trying to be facetious.

When I print to pdf from a vector view I get these faint white lines. I tried searching this forum but couldn't find anything. What's causing this? Thanks!

Looks great to me.

By the downvotes and messages I’ve received it seems that Saved Plan Views are a religious topic on this forum. I won’t comment anymore. How dare I have an opinion. And your collective answer to OP’s original posts should be, “Plan Views or the highway, suck it up, learn them and only work that way”

You are referring to an object’s “bounding box”. here’s an article... https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01048/controlling-a-symbol-s-bounding-box.html

If you don’t understand layer sets and default sets don’t go near Saved Plan Views, is an alternate statement to what I was saying. I came to Chief from Softplan. The main attraction was how flexible Chief was and that it offered more than one way to achieve what I was trying to accomplish. Saved Plan Views are great, but they require more setup and a very firm grip on how default sets and layer sets affect your plan and layout, something which OP clearly doesn’t have yet. Baby steps.

I was just suggesting to OP that he focuses on understanding Layer Sets and Default Sets first. Then once he masters that he can move on to Saved Plan Views. I personally only use them when I really need to reference multiple plans but that’s not often. Saved Plan Views are not required and do impose a level of organization that adds to the workflow. It’s my opinion guys, put the pitch forks away.

You don’t need a Saved Plan View to toggle the Reference Display on or off.

You don’t really need “Saved Plan Views”. Focus on “Default Sets” in conjunction with a unique layer set for each Default Set that you send to Layout. From the Layout you can even control and assign different Reference Sets for each View sent. I personally find Saved Plan Views add clutter to the whole process. By the way, they’re not called AnnonSets anymore. They’re called Default Sets. This was a welcomed simplification introduced in X12. Once you get comfortable with Default Sets you can take a stab at Saved Plan Views if you’re the OCD type... lol

I had opened up a case last year over this. I had 4 phone sessions with 2 different reps at Chief. We tried a few things. Nothing was achieved at least on a permanent basis. I did figure out that if has to do with Chief's difficulty when having to work across multiple monitors. I have Chief on my laptop which I connect another monitor to when I'm in the office. The problem always happens when I go to the site and work with the laptop and then return to the office. As soon as I reconnect the larger monitor my toolbars get messed up. Not always but 3/4 of the time. Chief is the only software I've ever seen exhibit this craziness with toolbars. It would be less frustrating if they at least acknowledged it and we could deal with it and move on. Instead they acted like I was the only one in the universe who ever mentioned this or had this problem. They said they often use laptops and go in and out of the office as I do.

I don't think it's the gpu power you nee for raytracing. Lots of threads in this forum if you search gpu. I would personally like to see Chief handle raytraces for us. Just send it off to them, continue working and let them do the heavy lifting. Why tax my computer and tie it up? I've got work to do...

Good point, I wasn’t really paying attention to the fact that the 3D and plan view openings weren’t the same in both views.

Where is the "blend with texture"? Is it in the Wall Type definition? If so, where?

Ok, I found a better way to show Room Labels and Door indicators. I created a Saved Plan View with only the layers, Walls normal, Rooms interior dimensions, Doors Opening Indicators Room labels. I then overplayed this on top of the Water-Color in Layout. Looks good and easy.

This is the water-colour with line drawing over top. Currently my favorite rendering style.

Ok great, so I went to the "floor/ceiling structure" defaults and changed my plywood to a black colour and that fixed it. by the way is there a more intelligent way to show door swing openings other than drawing little arcs in layout view? Thanks!

When I turn off the "walls normal" layer then all of the walls go from black to sub-floor pattern.

So I like to show a dollhouse view as seen below. (plan also attached). Typically I'll change out the 2x4 main layer to a Black Color in the wall definition so it shows up nicely for clients. Then I'll use the Cross-Section slider to a height below the door frames so the door openings show clearer. (I add arced door-swing lines in layout after) The strange thing is the fill on some walls appear as particle board (red oval indicators in photo). Sometimes I can correct some of them to appear black by reversing the direction of the wall (<> tool). This does not fix all walls though. What am I doing wrong? The photo below is from a saved camera view on the first floor called "Dollhouse", standard render. It's the same issue even when doing Water-Color with Line Drawing, which I also like to use a lot. Here is the plan in X12... https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bmud0ahadletw5/E-6 Test Plan.plan?dl=0 Thanks in advance.

You probably have walls that are defined as "no room definition" Click on a wall and open the Wall Specification dialogue box. Goto-> General -> Options -> Deslect "No Room Definition"

Do you have framing on? Or a large PDF that you’ve imported?