Michael_Gia

I started with Softplan back in 2006. 

I switched to Chief 2 years ago after stumbling upon this forum and fiddling with the demo. Great support group here. 

Softplan is more confined and less flexible.  That is, there aren’t multiple ways and work arounds as there are in Chief to get virtually anything done or to get you out of a rabbit hole. 

With that said Chief is also a little more “confusing” because of this ability. 

Softplan was more straightforward from drawing to plan sets. It was easier to organize you drawings into a set of plans. However the limitations will inevitably lead to frustration the more adept you become at using the program. This is why most will say Softplan has a shorter learning curve than Chief. That slight advantage is short lived once you become a power user. You will switch.

I also spent 3 months training to use Archicad. I still wish I would’ve kept at it however the cost of the software and the plug-ins I would need to further invest in made me look elsewhere. 

Revit is a mess.  Stay away!

(my opinion)

I just realized I miss understood your question. 

For panning I enable “sticky keys”

I then press CMD button once and then I’m in pan mode and only need one finger. 

Otherwise you have to hold down the CMD button while you pan with the trackpad. 

It’s in

> settings

> accessibility 

> Mouse & Trackpad

> Trackpad Options

• Enable dragging (three finger drag)

The great thing about this is you can use your track pad and draw lines, walls etc and you don’t need to hold down the track pad. Just click to start line, wall and drag freely with three fingers wherever you want and then click a second time to complete draw. 

Saved my life kind of tip. 

Here is an orthographic view and also a water color....

I don't know about you guys but I send my plans to my truss supplier and he produces the floor and roof truss plans for me to accept and then I submit that to the city along with my plans for permit approval. 

It's a free service and removes the responsibility from me and onto that of my supplier. 

I think that was OP's problem. He didn't realize you still need walls under the main staircase, thereby having to reduce the basement stairs' width by the thickness of the walls above it.

The walls that you place under your main floor staircase is what creates the stairwell that you designate "open below".  

The walls could be invisible as well or a railing if you want the basement stairs to be visible from the main floor.  

At least that's my interpretation...

I guess this would be a bad time to say that I love the new format for the training videos?

I usually watch the videos on a sofa or in bed with an iPad, so the format is more suitable. 

The new format also makes it easier to keep track of which videos you've just watched, and what's next. 

This thread reminds me of thanksgiving dinner with that relative who we all have to watch what we say around for fear of him erupting and ruining the event....again

Personally, I always have that "auto rebuild attic walls" turned off.

If I need to close some gap, I'll edit the wall and drag it up to fill in the void rather than have an attic wall auto-rebuild.  It's pure chaos otherwise.

I think the "auto re-build" attic walls is more of a "training wheel" feature for novice users.

On 2017-06-09 at 9:17 PM, yusuf-333 said:

Material regions are not good at corners, applying cladding material directly on wall would give that look in IMO.

Material regions are good at corners so long as you set the depth that they cut into the same thickness as the outer layer of the wall they are drawn on. 

(just a tip)

Believe it or not, making windows "opaque" in the render view settings fixes this. 

It it is a bug that's not been addressed yet as far as I know. 

....and who the hell is down voting this poor gentleman???

I bought a used iMac two years ago having switched from pc for much the same reasons.   

Behold...

21.5 inch, Mid 2011

2.5 Ghz Intel Core i5

16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB

C02HN8T1DHJF

OS X 10.11.3

I'm very happy with it. The number one difference with a pc is that it performs the exact same way today as it did the first day I got it. 

I don't experience any lag or crashing.

I can certainly afford upgrading to a 2017 IMac but I couldn't be bothered. 

I think the main areas to spend money on are a solid state hard drive and as much ram as you can afford. 

Thank you so much!  It is indeed the .bmp format causing the issue.

I really appreciate your help.

Ha Ha. Looks like they could've used a few of those at Woodstock. 

34 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

I bet if this was Tuesday that would not happen.  Is that a custom material of chief default?  Maybe post the material and see if it is reproducible.

It's the first sunny and warm weekend of the year up here, that's why this is happening.

The material is attached in my post above.

It was a stock material that I had modified quite a while ago.  It works great in any render view or raytrace.  The problem is only in HD mode in the 3D Viewer.

See image....

 3D viewer model with red question marks .pdf

Why is the material missing and replaced with some wall paper with question marks?

Here is the offending material that I used. 

3D Viewer Material Cardif Texture .calibz

Ok, I guess I thought I had done this in the past - I guess not. 

However, I wish the error message would perhaps say "hey dummy draw the 2nd p-solid in the same plane as the first one", instead of the ambiguous and lead to nowhere error message that's in place. 

I will chalk that up to user error regardless. 

Thanks Glen. 

Here's the plan.  The offensive p-solid is the the piece I was trying to insert the fire-place into.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9dat9vfn25pnt8/COOPER PLANS MAY 16.plan?dl=0

I created the first p-solid in plan view by drawing a rectangle on the floor and giving it a height of 200 inches.

I then took a wall elevation view of that p-solid. 

Next I drew another p-solid in the wall elevation view on the surface of the first p-solid. 

Then when I attempted to convert the second p-solid to a hole I got that error message. 

Are we not allowed to draw a hold in a different plane from which the first p-solid was drawn?

That seems ridiculous. I'm sure I've done this many times before...

(sorry for responding late. I posted this question just before going to bed last night)

I tried redrawing it. 

Definitely a p-solid. 

On defaullt cad layer. 

1 hour ago, solver said:

Are you sure the outer one is a p-solid? What does look like in a 3D view?

The outer one is definitely a p-solid. 

It looks like a giant slab of concrete. 

- I placed a polyline solid.

- I then placed another polyline solid and

tried to make it a hole in said polyline solid. 

- I get an error "no polyline of the same type found to contain this hole etc..."

I know I've done this a million times what am I doing wrong?

Please help?

....again

Looks like a paper size issue in your layout page setup. Although this still doesn't explain the ghost images in the background. 

Can you explain what the problem in the photo is?

Is it the ghost image of an elevation in the background?

is it the black bars that frame each image?

Your problem is really not clear. 

You are playing with FIRE if you move your user library to a location separate from Chief's default location for this folder.  

Don't do it!

I've done it in the past and have had limited success but inevitably things will get very weird.   It's a Pandora's box I wish I had never opened. 

Months later, and even after reverting to original file/folder structure I still get the odd error message of "can't open plan file or find material" etc...

We have to wait until Chief offers an online storage solution like, oh...., every other program of this sort on the planet.