Designer1

Does anyone know who to use chiefs door tools to create those disappearing wall doors? I know there are several kind some that stack back into the wall or the ones most similar to a pocket door that slide on top of each other into the wall. I tried the pocket door and sliders but there are many limitations to making these disappearing wall doors because it only allow so many panels like two or four. Does chief plan on expanding its door tools to include these? Ive been seeing these door types in almost every new plan. Any ideas on how to create these with chiefs given tools? Thanks! Chad

Great, thanks for that information. Yes, I saw that choice for vector views, I wish they also had that choice for 3d views. I will try using those options you gave. Thanks for the reply!

Does anyone know how to get the 3d views to not be able to see inside the windows, make them opaque or some option? Reason I want to do this is if I do a sketch of it, it tends to show too much detail in the windows because its showing the inside of the house and makes the end result look indistinguishable because its too busy. Any ideas? Thanks! Chad

I wanted to know what most chief users were using for room planning when drawing their floor plans? I noticed in the CAD section of the chief library there are a lot of useful 2d CAD blocks but don't see any for generic furniture placement to demonstrate room arrangements. I don't want to furnish my plans with furniture for 3d just 2d blocks. Do most of you just use the 3d furniture and then turn off the layer in 3d or is there a good library of these 2d furnishing somewhere I haven't looked? Thanks!

Anthony, yes, I agree I liked X6 icons a lot better. I had posted about this earlier not knowing if it were just me thinking this or what. The previous icons had looked good with variation in color and depth. Now they are harder to distinguish and look too similar. Hope they come out with the old dashboard icons again or advance the next version with a more developed appealing icons like they had before.

I obviously like the updates with every new version, I was just thinking if it were my first version of chief and looked back at X6 I would have felt the improvements with icons on the dashboard would have been a move backward as they appear less sophisticated and developed then previous version. If theres a good functionality reason why they changed that's fine, I just thought they look a bit less in depth and professional looking. Since were all in one way or another designers creating homes etc its good we have an eye for what looks good or not. My hope is that X8 will revive the dashboard look maybe with new icons like they had but more finished looking.

Does anyone know why chief changed the icons for a lot of the toolbars in X7? In my opinion I feel the X6 tool icons seemed superior more up to date and detailed then X7. For instance the cabinet icons, the wrenches, the wall tools, camera icons. Im wondering if they looked that much better in X6 why they would take it down a notch? Was it for a specific reason? Would love to hear from chief software designers!

Thanks guys for not only the links to videos but the visuals for the brick application on the elevations and your solutions to these issues. Thanks again!

Many chief version ago an article came out about how to get bricks to curve evening along an arch. Typically, if you use brick trim on an arched window for instance, it will look fine until it reaches the arch, at which point it bunches the brick all together and looks fake. There was a tutorial, that I watched and actually did it a few times in chief about 6 versions ago. I cant remember how to do it anymore?? I even made the brick ledge they taught and still have it but cant remember how to get it evenly spaced. Does anyone remember how to do this? Im using x6. Thanks in advance!

Heres what Im looking for with this complicated stairway.... 1. Id like to have the stairs closed underneath, however, when I select that in the stair dbx its closed too much and wont allow for a clearance to the stairs leading down stairs. 2. I like the cable railing and when I drew them on the stairs but when I drag them onto the landing they go haywire. I don't have 'no railing on edge' selected on the landing dbx, so Im not sure how to accomplish this with a custom railing drawn on the staircase. 3. Since 'closed underneath' staircase was too much closure and I cant adjust how much I want closed I tried to draw a wall underneath but then it causes issues with stair widths etc on the stairs leading below. Any ideas? My dream for chief would have been a super overhaul on stairs and railing for X7. Still on X6 until the final version of X7 comes out.

Greg, yes it is! He is such a generous person always helping everyone out. He also makes amazing custom symbols for chief!

Another question about a different aspect of stairs and railing... Does anyone know how to space or control the number of newels along a railing? I know you can use doorways to change the numbers but what about if you didn't want a break in the railing you just wanted to have control over the number of newels and where they were placed? In this pic, you can see everything looks ok but the newel is directly in the center of the door blocking the view and I didn't necessarily want that look. Any advice?

Greg, you did a great job on the video. Thanks for the additional info!

Greg, Good video! Im curious what were the compression and frames per second you used? The video appears to be very smooth. Do you have any particular media player or codec your using? I don't currently have the chief recommended codec of XVID but my videos seems smooth, I just couldn't figure out the angles and stairs, now Im getting a hang of it. They also mentioned VLC players good but I didn't look into that yet. What are you using?

Hi Greg, Thanks for the compliments on the stairs. Actually my friend David made them. He actually has a website you can pay to be a subscriber to and get all the neat symbols hes made over the years. Let me know if your interested and I can give you more information about it. Perry, thanks for that idea, I forgot about that. I make the opening the same width as the staircase but in this instance just to get it to look a bit more realistic Im going to adjust the width to whatever I need to, to get it to look better.

For me, I think the stairs/railing tools are now my most annoying and antiquated chief tool. They haven't changed much since version 9 and they are so difficult to have control over. Not complaining about chief, I like everything else and the improvements made over time, just the stair/railing tools seem to be noticeably outdated. If you compare the stairs to the rest of chiefs tools that have incrementally improved over time, stairs/railing have seemed to stay relatively the same since version 9. Ok here are three pictures of issues Im seeing with stairs and the railings. In one pic the newels are double the size of the rest of them on the railing and sizing is identical. Then I decided to reduce the size of the newels thinking it would make them a bit smaller but it breaks them down to two small newels and doesn't match the sizing of the rest. Finally, I decided to delete the newels and in the second picture you can see the railings don't even connect to look realistic. I tried to select all railing sides to have smooth transitions thinking that would make it nice and neat at the top landing but it made no difference. Is there a way to have the same size newels but reduce the number of them to one newel on each side versus two smaller ones on both sides? Does anyone have any secret stair solutions to better control stairs to achieve a more realistic attractive stair? Thanks for any advice!

Thanks guys, the video and explanations were a giant help and worked! I haven't used the walk through tools for about six chief versions so things in that department have changed a bit. That video was very clear and easy to understand. Now I think Im just focusing on learning the new tools and how to perfect it to make a smooth good video. Thanks again!

Thanks Gerry, I will look at those videos and get some insight on how better to use the walkthrough tools. Thanks for the recommendation!

Does anyone know how to have a continuous walkthrough if you have a two story home? I can get the camera to walkthrough the first floor and up the stairs to the second floor but then Im not sure how to continue the walkthrough spline to continue on the same video to finish the second floor. Second question, does anyone have any recommended setting for tilt and camera angles if you want to view a second story ceiling on the first floor? Thanks! Chad

Thanks Lew, you always reply to my posts! Yeah this is really strange Ive never had anything like this happen in all the years Ive used this. If I can find out how to fix this I will post the solution back on here, otherwise I might just have to delete my user library and reload it from the back up. Have a great holiday next week.

I had a -My Materials file in my user library. For some reason I was clicking on it and it disappeared into no where. I searched other local files to see if I accidently dragged it to another file and also searched the trash can but nothing. I also went and looked up the "-my materials" and the individual materials show up but not the folder location. When I click on the individual material and click show in browser it just shows the entire chief libraries including user libraries but doesn't show me where the folder went. I also tried painting a cabinet with one of the custom materials from my library and then opened the dbx to the item because chief usually opens the location but it doesn't it just shows all the libraries (chief, manufacture, user library). Of all the years using chief I have never had this happen before. Usually if I had a missing library it would just be accidently dropped in another local library. I have X5. Does anyone have any other ideas on locating this crazy missing -My Materials folder?? Thanks!

Very interesting solutions, Im going to try a few of them to see what works best.

Hi guys, sorry for the delay in response. The file was too big too upload by 2 mb. I went back in to delete some items and I deleted the roof plane that was right above it and poof, the line was gone! So you were all right, it was a roof plane. I guess by having the file too big, I figured it out. I pretty much deleted everything but that small roof plane and the very last thing I deleted was the issue. Thanks for all your help!

The plan I attached has a strange dashed line in the right window seat area. The only way I can access this line is by selecting cad to view and then it says its a polyline. If I delete it in cad to view it doesn't delete it in plan view. For some reason im unable to access this line in plan view to get rid of it. Any ideas??

Nice, thank you guys for posting examples. This is a new part of chief for me I don't have much experience on. My question at this point is, now that I have some cad to views, why are some views saved on the plan that I can click on and have them retrieved and others are deleted completely and I cant find them? This one cross section that took me an hour to perfect didn't save and for some reason it was gone, even after saving it... is it saved somewhere else?