Michael_Gia

There’s 3D lettering in a bonus catalogue. Slap those on a p-solid.

This touches on a general program wide problem with Chief. Opening a dbx takes a while, I’m assuming, because there is so many parameters and tabs in a dbx, so I can’t fault the lag on the software for that. However, if Chief had a “status bar” in the toolbar for any object that is selected, and this status bar had just a few parameters, like length, width, height, height off floor and object type, then these main parameters could be changed on the fly without having to open a heavily loaded dbx. It’s not a revolutionary idea.

Maybe when you are completing the room, it’s taking on prior floor elevations, from the previous plan that the current one is based on? Ghost in the machine type of scenario. Which is why Chief recommends using a template, especially when upgrading to a new version. I’m just speculating, of course.

No snark intended. I’m sure my tone probably gave off that impression based on your reaction but that wasn’t my intention. Just my inability to text without sounding snarky, I guess. However, you didn’t answer my question. Do you know what I’m taking about as far as “actual view”? If you do then how is this achieved with print preview in Chief? I don’t think it is but maybe I’m missing something?

-> File -> Print -> Print Preview. This is print preview unless you know of another one. A magical print preview perhaps? This does nothing but show you your page at the zoom level you are at, which is an arbitrary zoom level. Have you ever used adobe acrobat or adobe illustrator or the like? If so, then you are aware of -> View, -> Actual Size. Or simply cntrl or cmd "0" to get the actual print size. This is what I'm talking about.

You are wrong my good sir. Print preview simply shows you the sheet of paper, you will be printing on. It doesn’t zoom to the actual size nor is there any way to zoom to the exact real world size, except if you measure with a ruler against your monitor as you scroll to get somewhat close but not ever exactly to the actual paper size. For the “print preview” to be useful then it should have a view button with a 100% option, for example. Shouldn’t be difficult and it’s insane that we don’t have this.

I rest my case

This is a long standing issue with Chief. First there should be a “view” button even in plan so that we can set our scale and see what our drawings look like at 100%. That is, what would the plan look like if printed? The “line weight” button is pretty useless as you don’t really know at what zoom level you need to scroll to with the middle mouse button to see the printed look of your line weights and character heights. I often use a ruler and measure the plan on my monitor using a known measurement in order to approximate real world view. That’s really sad. We should have a “scaled view” with a toggle to make text magnification bigger on screen for when we work in scales when, depending at what zoom level we’re at, the text will always be visible. The other modification I’d like to see is “printed size” per scale. Example, I should just specify, in the text dbx, that I want 1/4” or 3/32” or 1/8” high characters regardless of scale. The printed text should be independent of scale. Let the software do the conversion whether I print at 1/8 or 1/4 or 1/2 inch scale. In the meantime you have to do the math and be aware of which scale you will ultimately be printing in, in order to adjust your formula. So a 1/8” high printed text needs to be set to “8” character height in order to print at 1/8” and 4” if printing at 1/4”, I think? I often get it wrong even though the arithmetic is elementary. Which is why the software should be doing the math. Cue, the downvote brigade militia of Chiefers who mostly disagree with me on this even though every other software of this type uses this alternative system for text height and zoom magnification. It’s so basic and it baffles me how this software was designed this way from the beginning and has gone unnoticed and almost never discussed.

I’ve had this in X14 and just assumed it was a Mac issue. I usually just hit “zoom extent” and the camera readjusts to centre on the view. No big deal.

I think nobody watched Rene’s video.

After typing your search item, just hit return, and the search results will display. Seems to work as expected. Now if I can only figure out how to reduce the icons to the size they were in X14. I liked being able to click on a folder and have all of the folders contents display as little icons.

I think Chief just needs to put out a video on how to use the library, real quick. Like yesterday. I’m sure it’s great but we’re all a little too dumb to figure it out.

Stair sections connect. You can Alt+click to adjust just the one set, if you want. (Also there is a matching wood material for the plank flooring. Not sure if you know this or you like the look of plank on your steps. I personally use the wood and not the plank on stairs so that there's a better distinction between floors and stairs.)

I don't know of any work around. You could build framing and carefully place and drag various studs and floor joists so they are positioned in such a way that your section is just in front of those framing members. So floor joists would have to be parallel to the section cut, etc...

Is that a grass area? I bet it has something to do with that.

Compare the grass in Standard render vs Raytrace. Is this a setting or a bug? Anyone else experience this? Love the grass region tool, by the way.

Especially the terrain. Would be nice. At the moment you will only see the terrain cut fill if the camera is outside the terrain in an elevation. Maybe, I’m wrong but Chief does not have a proper “cutfill” feature like other softwares do. What we have is the almost useless, Autodetail tool.

Don’t just tease us, post a pic or something…

Really nice work! Much better looking than what was presented by Chief in the X15 video. When I saw their grass, I laughed. It was horrible. And I assumed this was the best they could do with the new grass tool. Thanks for posting.

Hey what is this new feature, “Customize Toolbars for Dashboard View. Set up custom toolbars for the Dashboard View.”? Of all the new features in the pdf, this is the one that most intrigued me. I’m too chicken to download X15, so any insight on this new feature would be appreciated.

How’s X15? any bugs? X14 was pretty stable from the getgo. I hope X15 is as well.

He said, he wants to fix the gap between the post and the handrail…. nobody gonna click on a pdf around here. post a png or jpeg directly if you want to benefit from our all inclusive service plan.

When you copy your terrain it will then paste as a polyline in the new plan. You then need to convert it to a terrain perimeter. (You’ll have to first delete any existing terrain in the new plan if there is one) Then you can go back to copy all of your elevation data etc and they will now paste properly in the new plan, since you’ve just created a terrain perimeter from the previous step.

Were you able to animate the door?

Nice work! I actually prefer the first image. Seems more natural. Although, it’s a daytime shot, a little glow on the wall mount garage fixtures would be a nice touch. Grass and all vegetation looks great. Nice perspective to illustrate the home. Maybe a vehicle or something for scale would be helpful? I’m certain using this TM file as a template would allow you to produce similar results in minutes for other projects.