Gawdzira

When I first bought the software I also bought 4-6 hours of tutoring that I used in the first 2 weeks with the software. I considered that an essential cost.

Dennis is better at reading before I get my coffee.

Even though you have not offered an image or a plan file I am going to be really, really generous and make a guess based on the horribly inadequate information you have presented. Is the segment you are trying to close have a spline that would connect with a straight section? If so, CA does not like to close these.

The hot keys are completely customizable so you can transfer a lot of your habits to the keyboard. I have not used Vectorworks so I have not input regarding your main question. When I chose CA (about 8 years ago) it was based on the price for what it had to offer. I have been very pleased with my choice. For a residential design specific office it is a great program. You will need to some time to get up to speed but you will be able to be very productive once you have your main file set up to your specs.

@ Dermot, thank you for your informative post. @Lew, do you really consider being knowledgeable in how to work the tool at your fingertips a "workaround"?

The project I have up is a fairly simple model but I have no issues viewing in Standard mode with shadows on. Very smooth movement. I have a GTX 660 card. Specs shown in images. I had my hardware edge smoothing setting at none this morning but I don't notice any slow down (with this model) with a better smoothing setting.

You can use the edit area tool to grab what you need and move it all to the correct location. Use the point to point tool for the move. The edit area tool has options for selection criteria. As far as to why this happened it is referred to as a U18. That is a problem with the User about 18" away from the monitor.

These are my results using Open Office. I work almost exclusively with Rich Text so this is the first time I pasted a table in with plain text. I would like to be able to either remove or accentuate the table lines but I have not found that magic pill yet.

I tend to go for the simple approach. Sure, you can make cad blocks with his symbols (Hieroglyphics), or, you could modify his shear wall symbols to look like what you can easily make in CA. My engineer calls out those 4 shear walls as P1, P2, P.... you get the picture.

@Kilgore, I have unique layersets associated with each Anno Set. Therefore, when I sent my site plan it has a layerset called "Site Plan Layerset" and an anno set called "Site Plan Anno". If by copying the layerset you mean allownig cheif to make a new layerset, no.

Larry, yes and no. When I send a plan to layout it defaults to "Using Active Defaults" as the anno set. Clicking back to the plan file from Layout brings up the mysterious "Using Active Layersets". If you go in and set the anno set in the layout box it will work correctly but there is that extra step to get it to recognize the anno set of choice. At least this is what I am experiencing.

I had never investigated the setting "Using Active Defaults". I had assumed it was acting similarly to X5. I will need to take the extra step of opening the layout box to set it to the proper Annotation set.

This is not a new problem (although your exact description is possibly unique). From Layout, double click on the layout box to take you back to the plan file has always put the Anno Sets into a funky setting rather than just taking you back to the Anno Set that you sent to Layout. Always check your current Anno Set when jumping to the plan file in this fashion. Once you reset your Anno set all should be well.

Make the porch railing walls follow the photo. Then place the stairs accordingly.

Is it reproducible? If not it is just a glitch. If it is reproducible than you should probably stop messing with Allen's house and get back to work.

Not at the training but I am hoping to get to PCBC on Wednesday. How is the class?

The arrows will not show in dimensions that are smaller than the arrow size.

Bizarre. Somehow my Min Display Pixel size was changed to 99. I don't even have a cat in my office to jump on the keyboard. Maybe this is an Elves and the Shoemaker sort of thing but the Elf is telling me to go home?

I just opened a new plan from a template and saw these huge fat lines for the camera callout. So I opened an older file to see if it was in there too. Yes. I can view in a perspective camera view but plan, elevation or any other vector view has super fat lines. No changes to my computer recently. I just did a restart to see if something would reset but it is the same after the restart. Possibly my card did an auto update? Is that the driver that is problematic? I am more than a little stumped right now.

I rarely use it but I did recently and got the same behavior in X6. It jumps back to the place it like to call home.

Phil, post the plan. It is all crazy guess work at this point.

How did you color the doors? Was it through the material settings or with the eyedropper tool? If the eyedropper, go back to the cabinet material settings and make the change there.

This is a good habit to develop on any image that you drop in to a CA plan or layout file. "Save in Plan". One day, when things are better and the sun shines all the time (like San Diego) CA will make that a default setting to save the image in the plan. I would much rather need to opt out of saving in the plan than always asking "Ohh snap, what the flip, gardanganaandadataa, where did that image go?

1. No idea but try checking your clipping planes in the camera view. Maybe they could be adjusted and clear that issue. 2. You may need to do 2 passes of the rendering. One with shadows and one without shadows. Then composite the renderings in an image editing program. 3. I can't remember the name of the setting but in Ray Trace there is a button for "Use Tone Mapping" . After you start the render, open the "Adjust Image Properties" and uncheck the button. That will brighten the overall look. But, again, I would refine this in an image editing program since this is a big money rendering.

Dear Graphaphobe, So you posed a question full of words, numbers, relationships and other miscellaneous information and the first response asks you to post some images and the plan file, why? Speaking from personal experience, I am not the best mathematician in most rooms unless we are doing geometry. Geometry is pictures and shapes. I like pictures. Either drawing them or looking at them. When it comes to buildings and architectural elements words don't do a lot for me. When I see a question posted on this forum that is highly detailed with 24" overhang here and truss heel there, with some room elevation change 46" away from zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. This takes me to Algebra class and I am not sure if it is south west style or a train headed south west at 59 miles per hour. In conclusion, when it comes to describing an issue while working with a visual representation tool (Chief Architect) a visual representation of the issue is good. Algebra is bad. Alan ( X * 2/Y = Z+4) Lehman