Richard_Morrison

You know it's a bogus quote by a Chief Expert because macros weren't even mentioned.

X9 removed the "Legacy Shadows" option in Preferences and the shadow style is now "soft" for elevations. I have already complained loudly about this. It is not acceptable to me for construction documents. I have been told that they are working on this, but who knows? You can get a slight improvement by bumping up the hardware edge smoothing.

You can also drag and drop any library files from X8 onto an X9 plan and it will import. (i.e. directly from the downloaded file onto a plan.)

It's not clear what you mean about "place to store." Are these 100 details actually being used in the project, or simply unused and might be used on future projects?

While the autosave file (and undo's) are supposed to be deleted when you exit Chief normally, I don't think that's supposed to be the case in crash. This sounds like a bug, and I hope you will report it.

Joe, It also requires an additional ability from Chief to identify WHERE on the Layout page the detail is residing. Most people use annotation references like "6/S-2" to refer to a specific detail. Getting the "S-2" part is pretty easy, I think, but the specific detail number is going to be more work. In ArchiCAD, for example, you can designate a certain area on a Layout page to always be "6" (or "A" or "6A") based on a user-defined grid module, or just assign the number 6 to particular detail if you are uncomfortable with non-sequentially numbered details on a page. Once an annotation reference is linked to a specific detail, the plan reference updates automatically whether you move the detail to a different page or move it within the page, and incorrect references are eliminated. No more, "Do you feel lucky, Punk?" when submitting plans to a building department. I'm apparently never that lucky.

I know what a CAD Detail Window is, and where the List of them is found. How does a callout in a plan (or section or elevation, for that matter) know which one of these details you are referencing? It doesn't. Until you can link a specific Detail from a list of many to a specific Callout, the dynamic referencing isn't a simple matter of activating %Layout.page% or whatever.

CAD Details have no reference to any particular view in a Plan, because they are not generated from a Plan. In fact, they may even come from a CAD Detail that is in Layout only. So what information, exactly, is going to be in that purported link, and how is a standard callout even going to find that link? Also, while there is only one view per camera, a callout reference for a framing detail, say, might be placed several times but only reference a single detail.

No, it's not that simple. Chief has no way of knowing (at least right now) which view in Layout an unlinked callout should reference. Until we get the capability of selecting a single placed view from the list of views already placed, and generating that layout location as a macro value, a callout is just a dumb 2D object. I'm not sure how hard that would be to program, but we have more important priorities, like ambient occlusion and bloom. It's worth mentioning that other CAD programs have had dynamic referencing for years, so I would hope Chief gets on the ball. Moving/inserting/deleting a layout sheet can screw up many detail references at once, and I wish that I could say I haven't been embarrassed by a plan checker pointing out that a particular structural detail reference is wrong because of that. But I can't.

Joe, I would love to know how to do this. While cameras can be displayed as a callout, and linked to Layouts, I have not found a way to link plain old callouts to Layouts. How do you do that?

What percentage is actually "In Use"? If small, you could purge unused blocks.

It would be great if Chief folks knew the difference between a trellis and a pergola. http://www.finehomebuilding.com/2009/05/01/whats-the-difference-between-a-trellis-an-arbor-and-a-pergola At least the library is labeled correctly so you can find things.

About the best you can do now is to create a CAD Detail from View, snap your line there, and then copy and "paste/hold position" back onto the 3D elevation.

Wow, I've never heard of a framer who wanted center dimensions They all seem to want dimensions to faces so they don't have to do any math.

Why is this annoying? You need a gap for expansion.

I think a better way is to use the "Save In Plan" checkbox. The layout is a slightly larger file, but you don't have worry about missing files.

This is only true for the original placement. If you change a 2x4 rafter to a 2x12 after it's already been generated, the walls will get shorter, and you will get a sloped ceiling next to the wall. The roof bottom gets lowered, not the top raised.Then you need to do a manual calculation to figure out exactly how much to raise the roof. While the effect is less, if you change the roof pitch, the birdsmouth will be wrongly placed relative to the wall. The wall height should be the stable dimension, not the baseline height. This is all because the "pivot point" is on top of the roof, rather than at the bottom.

Gene, This has been a long-standing irritation. I don't know why it doesn't get fixed. The baseline SHOULD be at the inside face of framing at plate line for conventional construction so that the birdsmouth is cut correctly and that resizing the rafter members keeps the rafters at the correct height. Keep putting it in "Suggestions" and maybe it will get fixed.

Rob, If you have SSA, it should be in your digital locker.

My opinion is that it is at least as stable as X8, and has many bug fixes for X8 issues, to boot. It's great now, and the final release should be even better.

Once the panorama is rendered, you will need to upload to your Chief Architect "cloud storage" account. If you open the file from there, Google Cardboard is one of the options to view it. Many people sell the Cardboard glasses, which are not a Google product, per se. (They just came up with the spec's. heheh) I use some that I got for $10 from Best Buy, but there are many places online, too.

Stop. Just stop.

Any "legal" discussion was in response to YOUR post #71, which was touting "double asset protection," a topic that YOU came up with. People come here for a variety of reasons, and you learn to take the good with the bad, and learn not to fan the flames if you don't want them to blaze out of control. You also should learn better manners and not insult people who have been here far, far longer than you. I am perfectly willing to stand behind any statement I've made, and don't insult people from the shadows of an anonymous user name and location, I think the mods SHOULD review the posts here.

The main issue here is that I believe very bad information is being handed out regarding the extent of protection that incorporation is able to offer. I would be delighted if people investigate for themselves whether paying $160/yr. for incorporation is going to shield them from negligence claims, as you seem to believe. [BTW, as far as having attorneys in the family, my father was an attorney, and my wife is an attorney. I probably spend more time with attorneys than I do with designers and architects. Not very persuasive to my mind.] In addition to almost 40 years of professional architectural practice which has paid VERY close attention to legal issues in architecture, I also have a judgment enforcement business, and spend a fair amount of time writing legal briefs and appearing in court enforcing these judgments, some of which are against contractors and involve negligence claims. These are judgments which have been assigned to me for enforcement, so I am actually representing myself pro se for these; not representing clients. I spend more time in court arguing case law than many of my attorney clients. I also have appeared in both federal and state appellate courts. So, not exactly a dilettante surfing the 'net. However, I would not presume to offer legal advice. But I would hope that those reading this thread would educate themselves. I have offered independent articles by attorneys and would suggest that anyone considering incorporation seek excellent legal advice. You have offered nothing except an attitude of "my attorney is smarter than you." Maybe, maybe not. I've prevailed in court against some very smart attorneys.

The reason that corporations offer no protection against negligence claims is that these will be brought against you as an individual (at least for most designers on this forum), so there is no corporate veil to pierce. While corporations offer protections against many types of claims, corporations offer no protection against tortious conduct by an officer or director of a corporation. Here are a few examples from a quick Google search. http://www.hbsb.com/individual-tort-liability-of-officers-and-directors/ for examples of California law. http://www.greenbergglusker.com/news/articles/When-Corporate-Officers-Are-Personally-Liable-, or http://www.centurycitybar.com/newslettertemplate/April11/article3.htm. http://www.centurycitybar.com/newslettertemplate/April11/article3.htm for case law in NJ, or http://www.wolfbaldwin.com/Small-Business-Articles/Liability-of-Officers-and-Directors.shtml for Pennsylvania. The holdings have been consistent across most states. ICTHOMES, if you'd like to state your location, I would be happy to provide you with some case law from your state. (I have another business which involves a great deal of legal research, and I have subscriptions to a number of legal databases.) I suspect you have misunderstood the advice you were given. Lew, if you think you are correct, then provide some case citations.