MoeGia

I didn't download your plan but be sure the exterior walls of the deck is set to railing. If it's not, Chief will think it's not the edge of the deck but against a building. HTH,

Exactly. As Jason said, be sure Terrain Perimeter is set to display.

Steve, I modify the terrain elevation using area regions in the terrain dropdown menu (I have two in my template plans with heights already assigned since we do a lot of basement walkouts). In plan view place a region along to the front of the building extending from side to side of the perimeter. Assign a high height (assuming the front is high). Draw another region along the back (or copy/ paste the front region to the back). Assign you walkout height. Build terrain. You should now have a consistently sloped terrain on the two side elevations. I use terrain regions where ever possible as opposed to elevation lines. For simple modeling is is quick and more reliable (no spiking of terrain).

This thread should help:

If you select the layout box/viewport, the edit toolbar will show a pan and a zoom option. They allow you to reposition the view in the layout box. It helps with the 3D cameras that aren't in the correct position for the new plan. I relocate the camera in plan and use the pan/zoom to reposition as needed.

Make sure your OneDrive CA files are all set to 'Keep on this device' so you have a physical copy on your computer. That said, I found it frustrating to work on OneDrive and moved my client files back to my C drive. I do keep my Chief Data folder on OneDrive with all files on my local computer. I'm sure that not what you want to hear but I agree with your findings. OneDrive is a slug.

Layer sets do not control text defaults. It's more of a view, rather than a control. Default sets control layers. Saved Plan Views control the text defaults and layer sets, similar to Defaults sets, but give you more control of all of your defaults. It's worth trying to understand the Saved Plan Views. It can be a simple set up or a complex set up. Saved Plan Views also control what you see on your layout pages, which simplifies layouts too.

If you need to have both 1/4 and 1/2 scales available for the elevations, I change the scale when sending to layout (your capture above) and check Use Layout Line Scaling. You can do it after the fact in the layout by selecting the view port, go to the pop up edit menu and pick the little scale. A dialog will open to change the scale.

1. I'm not sure you can build the exterior soffit automatically but you might be able to get close with a molding polyline. 2. You can use a molding polyline for this skirt molding. For both, draw it in elevation as you have. Convert each to a separate molding so you have better control for each. Next, go to plan and right click just outside of the exterior walls. You'll see the building outline as selected. On the popup edit toolbar, choose make molding. Assign your molding and set the height to where you need it. You can add both molding to the same line or use separate ones. It'll be more difficult if you heights vary per building section, but this should get you headed in the right direction.

Switch to plain text. Rich text is known to do this when using multiple computers with different screen resolutions. I only use rich text when I need something formated.

Look at your folder paths in Preferences. Make sure they all point to your new install location. Be sure to expand the list as there are a number of folder paths not shown on the main screen. Once you have everything pointing to the correct folder(s), relaunch Chief. If you created new icons, be sure the icons are in the new folder location.

You might have something in the plan located way off in space. If so, the model is there but tiny since the view is including the errant object. In plan view, hit F8 which should zoom you out to the full extent. Is your model tiny? If so, something got places far from the model. You'll need to marquis select the outer regions to try to find the object. The other thing it might be is a video card driver. Did you computer receive any updates? You might need to roll back the update. My guess is it's the first issue.

I agree and would like to turn those angled alignments off. For most of my work, they are unnecessary and take longer to get past. Horizontal and vertical alignments is all I really need. A setting to turn them ON/OFF would work better for me.

Yes, by finding the template which originally came with the program. Open that clean template and export the layer sets to a file (good to have a backup of in any case). The from within the plan you want to reset, import that backed up layers file you created. This won't get rid of any new layers you have created. And you will probably need to clean up any layers that you renamed. To do this, use the merge function from within the layers display dialog box. If you have tweaked that template, you'll need the original shipped template. You can get that by temporarily renaming the Chief Data Folder. When you relaunch the program, Chief will create a new Data Folder with a clean template in it.

You can also change the plan font globally, rather than changing each each text style. In the drop down edit menu toward the bottom is 'change font'. Works great to all font in the plan or layout. It does not change the font height/style, only the font itself.

Hi Suzanne, Another way to selection something in a congested area is with the Tab key. The Tab key will cycle through selections in a tight area. In the case above, when you try to click the light but get the cabinet, hit Tab and the next item will be selected, hit Tab again until you get the light. You should be able to select it if the layer isn't locked. HTH

I reported the issue and it was confirmed by tech support. As Jason noted, it's caused when dimensions are included in the copy selection.

It's a known issue as it's been reported. I hope a fix is coming soon. In the meantime, I'm blocking the entire detail before copying.

Steve, thank you for sharing your time and knowledge. Your work is beautiful and inspiring! Looks like I'll be spending some time on rendering today. Thanks to everyone else too! Lots of good information here.

I would call that a bug; the order should be the same as in any other dialog. I just submitted it.

It should work. My guess is the railing wall is not connecting with your dormer wall properly. Try a short perpendicular invisible wall where the two wall types meet. That should give you your room definition.

Plus one. I would prefer to set my arrow attachments to the first line as well.

You can back into the correct size pattern and texture by trial an error. In an elevation view, draw a brick the size you want. In vector view, modify your pattern to be the size of the brick. Then change to standard view and modify the texture to fit your CAD brick. It's fiddly but works and will help with figuring offsets.

Create a second floor. Set the default ceiling height at 1.5". create rooms over the garage and for the large dormer to 24" or whatever height you think the knee walls are. Mark your gables and let auto-roofs do it's thing. Tinker with the heights until you get what close to what you want. You'll have to do some manual editing. Turn off auto-roofs and adjust. Set the default ceiling height to full ceiling height. The front dormer roof eaves will have to be manually pulled down. .

In X15 you can fade elevations and sections so things in the distance appear lighter. Click on the camera symbol in plan and look for a faint (very faint) duplicate camera line which starts and stops the fade. You can pull it back and forth in the direction of the camera to change how the elevation appears. I'm not at my computer so may not be giving you the proper directions. Try the help files for proper instructions. PS. I'm not sure the fade is automatically set with cameras in plans brought forward, but it's a good feature to understand.