4hotshoez

I sorry Alan, I must be dense. I have tried all the railings I can see. If you wouldn't mind, could you point it out in a snap-shot? Thank you for your help.

Which wall at the base of the stairs? There is no "railing" wall of the first floor.

Thanks

Drawing a straight line cut cross section is best most of the time, however, some situations require a stepped line cut to avoid strange cuts. How can I make Chief do a stepped cut?

I think my current set up is goofed up. I have tried a few things but the top floor rail ends up on the first floor and stair rail is not changing. Here is a link, but be warned, the file is very slow. https://www.dropbox.com/s/g00wravs5i9nuec/Pinto04.plan?dl=0

Awesome! Thanks

I have seen a recent post about this, but I must be missing a step to get the cable to run with the stair slope. Please help.

I have a standing seam roof pattern that is 12" seam centers but the drawing looks like 6" on center. I have tried adjusting the scale of the pattern and other numbers that have no effect. What am I missing? The texture in a rendering looks like 12" but not the pattern. I know they are separate.

It is actually an exposed valley timber where a 6:12 and 8:12 roof meet. I am not sure how to created it and match the valley slope. It will be seen from below on the front entry porch. So I was wondering if Chief has a way to do this for me or do I need to do all the calculations myself?

Photoshop keeps a list of operations in its History. You can bring it up in a tool box and choose where you want to go back to. A visual undo and redo would be cool.

That method dod not work for me. I had to make separate segments between the doors. Then offset it the thickness of the trim so it would not be flush with the wall surface.

Thanks for your help.

I thought I knew what I was doing, but I messed up, so I am looking for advice on the proper way to edit. I wanted the roof over the garage doors to have the bottom soffit to match the ceiling of the first floor, so I selected the "room" or sliver of space in front of the garage doors and changed the room structure height. Then going to the 3D view I saw the windows move up while the second floor roof stayed in place. I do not want either to move. I am not sure what else I messed up trying to fix what I thought was a simple problem. The first floor clg should be 9'-6". The second floor clg should be 8'-0. But if you look at the second floor from the inside, the roof sets low and can be seen inside. Not what I want. I did see a second floor window sitting lower than the rest, which I do not want either. I hope there is an easy fix and some simple advice to avoid this problem next time. Thanks HarrisonGarage01.plan

I want to put a 8" horizontal band around the base of the second floor. Is that just molding or is there a better way?

How do I export or share my library? I can see how to import, but not export.

What is the recommended way to keep libraries on different computers the same? So if I move from my desktop to the conference computer on the same network, I wont need to manually download libraries again and all user libraries need to be available too. Is there a central location that would not be too slow that multiple users could access?

The sales department probably hates this thread as we tend to be a bit more open than they. The remarks here are honest and from experience and most users have a strong background in other cad programs, which is a testimony to their choice. Only a few use Chief only. The rest of us love Chief, but find it necessary to supplement with other 2D or 3D apps depending on what we do or know. Plunging into Chief should not mean forsaking what you know, but what you know and have on hand can also handicap your learning Chief when in a pinch.

I think that is a windows thing.

Thanks Robert. I overlooked that.

Please help. the blue line is back and I cant get rid of it. It is cutting my plot at the blue line. No matter what page size or printer I choose, the line will not go away.

If your whole office is ACAD, it will be a difficult switch. I would recommend having one person trying Chief on a few simple projects for the first two months. If it goes well, that person can help with the training and transition. That person will do best if he/she has that time and interest to dedicate learning. It is not hard to learn. It is actually fun to use. Including my time to learn, I was still faster creating interior elevations than 2D CAD jockey on ACAD. Keep searching for the right software. You will be back here.

It has been 90 days since I started using Chief. It is both better than I expected and in some ways not as good as I had hoped. But it is better than the alternative. I have used ACAD since the first release. I own Archicad and used it for about ten years, but cannot afford to upgrade. ACAD is good for nothing. Archicad is good for commercial and you would pay way too much for its capabilities to build a house. Sketchup was not mentioned and it is great for custom shapes and unusual homes, but it is not ready for production. BTW, Sketchup and Chief work well together as you can drag and drop SU files into CA. I would say that you can very quickly learn and build 75 to 85% of what you need to create a house plan. In the first week I did a full house (4,000 sf) with walls doors, windows and dimensions on both floors and was able to view it in 3D. The next week I placed cabinets and generated interior elevations. However, things became more difficult once I attempted to create complete and usable 3D views, as they require more gaps to be filled in. Roofs are still challenging when I have various dormers and bearing heights. I have not done any site work modeling. Photorealistic Ray Tracing requires a lot more work and time as you must set up lighting, materials, select furniture, set up views, but they can wow the boss and clients. There are so many more areas to learn. I feel that in these 90 days that I have nearly become an expert at cabinetry as Chief excels in this area and I still could improve. I see Chief as very customizable in setting up default settings to make cookie-cutter houses go very fast, but you must invest a lot of time learning Chief to know what settings can be configured in defaults. The training videos are pretty good. There are a lot, almost too many. This forum is pretty good, but as you can see, some of the long time users can get defensive when new features are suggested. Over all, Chief is the best app for conventional residential construction. No app does it all perfect. Chief has room for improvement, but it is decades ahead of ACAD and very similar to Archicad. Chief is deeper than I expected. Not a shallow, off-the-shelf CAD program. It is intuitive for the 75%, but the other 25% will require more work to get the full 100% of Chief's capabilities.

How do you change the material? I have been trying. I opened the object and it does not even have a material assignment.

It is very slow, but I thought it was just my system.

Here is a link if needed. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lo009p9jjfzjeq8/AABtmWXYDYSeBQ3ON50SmnjKa?dl=0 It is difficult to know where I should place the finished ceiling ht for rooms like this.