Dermot

If you are mostly doing interior work, try this: - In your General Wall Defaults, set the Resize About to Inner Surface and turn on Show Wall Length When Editing. - In your Auto Exterior Dimension Defaults, turn off Auto Refresh Dimensions - In your Temporary Dimension Defaults, turn on Locate Wall Surface and Locate Both Wall Sides

See if this tech article helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03064/live-views-on-layout-appear-blurry.html If not, then you should post a plan and layout that demonstrates the problem you are seeing. If all else fails, then you may want to contact technical support during normal business hours.

Stairs will only display automatically on the floor above if they within an open below room. You can either create a fake room around your exterior stair using invisible walls or use the reference display to display them. One advantage of the fake room solution is that the up arrow will automatically switch to a down arrow and you have some more control over how stair break lines will display.

See if this tech article helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00521/troubleshooting-slowness-in-chief-architect-plans.html

You can't take your user library from X12 and import it into X11 (at least not easily). You also can't take any plans created in X12 and open them up in X11 (although you can export a plan as 2D cad and import this into X11 and trace over it). Your best bet is to try and resolve your X12 issues. These kinds of problems are almost always hardware or system issues, usually video card related. I would encourage you to review this tech article (if you have not already done so): https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03049/troubleshooting-chief-architect-software-closing-unexpectedly-on-windows.html I would also recommend that you continue to work with our technical support team to see if you can get this resolved.

Just to clarify... You can only delete a layer that is not being used. When you see the big red "+" symbol, it means the layer is being used somewhere in your plan. If you hoover your mouse over the "+", the program will give you some hints for where to look.

You might want to check out this thread too: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/26361-filter-through-objects-in-your-plan/

I was told that we were not participating in the virtual event this year. I doubt that we would have passes to give out as a result. You should call our sales team during normal business hours to confirm if you want to be sure.

There is only one wall cabinet default in a plan but you can customize it to be any style you want. You can also save different cabinet styles in the library. As for corner cabinets, if you try to place a default cabinet into a wall corner, it should automatically switch to a corner cabinet. You can also change a cabinet into a corner cabinet from the dialog box.

Sloped soffits work well for something like a false beam sitting against a sloped ceiling. For your situation, I would probably use a polyline solid drawn in an elevation view. You could also take a symbol and rotate it if your post was a more complex shape.

By default, arrowhead lines can attach to other objects at both the head and tail. You can tell whether or not the arrow head or tail is attached by selecting it. If the end handle is filled, then it is attached. If the end handle is open, then it is not attached. If you move or resize an object that has an attached arrow, then the program will also move the arrow to keep it attached. If you want to disable this automatic behavior, you can turn off "Attach Head to Other Objects" and/or "Attach Tail to Other Objects" in the Line Specification dialog. The picture below shows an arrow attached to both a text object and a cabinet. If you move either the cabinet or the text, the arrow will move as well. I can't really tell much from your picture but it is possible that either the head or tail is connected to some other object then the one you thought it was. You may have modified this other object causing the arrow to move.

This video might help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/368/creating-a-dynamic-wall-legend.html?playlist=85

Just to add to what Michael has said... You can usually tell which object is selected by looking at the edit handles and highlighting. If you are having trouble telling which object is selected, look at the status bar and it should tell you what is selected (either "Wall" or "Window" in this case). The dimensions can represent multiple objects and in this case they show can show the wall length along with the window size and position. The only way the program knows which object you want to modify is based on which object is currently selected. If the window is selected, the program will adjust either the window position or size depending on which dimension you select. If the wall is selected, the program will adjust the wall length based on the dimension you have selected. Here are some videos that might also help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5487/drawing-and-placing-objects.html?playlist=81 https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/67/door-window-basics.html?playlist=138 https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5429/positioning-walls-precisely-using-dimensions.html

You may also wish to review the recommendations here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html

Lew is right. Chief Architect is still evolving way too fast which means lots of things under the hood are going through big changes every version. If we were to write code to take out everything that we added in the latest version, the older file would be pretty "lossy" which, in my opinion, would make it almost useless. Just as one example, we added tray ceilings in X12 and we had no such thing in X11. What would we do with the tray ceiling if we wanted to write out the file so it could be read in X11? Remove it entirely or maybe just convert it into a hole? Take a look at all of the other things that are in the what's new in X12 list and imagine what would happen to a plan if you removed all of these things. On top of that, it would create a lot more work for us. That would mean less time to implement new features for the new version. The bottom line is it will probably not happen until Chief stops evolving so much. For now, probably the best thing you could do is export a 2D CAD file which could then be imported into the older version (as suggested by David). If you want the 3D model, you could always export this as well but you would lose all of the actual smart objects that you have in Chief.

No, but there are some things you can do depending on what you are trying to do. If all you want to do is use different defaults, you can always import them from other plans. You can also use the edit area tool to copy the model from one plan into a new blank plan started with another template. If the problem is that you started a plan with the wrong units (imperial vs metric), then the easiest thing to do is start over.

Please remember that these sneak peek videos are not a complete list of what will be in X13. You might want to reserve your final judgement until you see the actual list of what's new. "Why not ask users what they want after all its us thats using the software." Actually, we do this all the time. Our marketing team sends out a customer survey every year. We also talk one-on-one with customers at trade shows, training events, and user group meetings. We even have a place on this forum where people can post suggestions: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/ If there is something that you would like to see us work on, then you should ask for it. The more people that ask for things, the quicker they move up our priority list.

Posting unprofessional and offensive posts on this forum doesn't actually help anyone. I think Michael B's post does a really good job explaining why some posts are more helpful than others but I would like to add some more information to this thread. This is a problem that we are aware of and actually care very much about even though it appears to be only affecting a very small number of users. Unfortunately, we have not been able to reproduce this problem in any sort of reliable way which means that we have been unsuccessful in all of our attempts to fix this. If you are experiencing any problems with toolbars that are not staying where you have placed them, then please report this directly to our technical support team. You will need to provide them with some very detailed information about your system and your toolbar setup (including giving them your actual toolbar files). It would also be very helpful if you could try to determine what you are doing that causes you to lose your toolbar setup. Things like switching monitor resolutions or changing your monitor setup or even changing your toolbar or open window configurations are the types of things we have been looking at as potential causes. We appreciate your continued patience and thank everyone who is willing to help us try to solve this problem.

Just to clarify, you can remove or modify pretty much anything in the library and it should not affect any existing plans. Plans are pretty much self-contained (with a few caveats I will list below) because when you use a library object in a plan, we make a copy of it and keep the copy with the plan. The exception to this is with the following things that can contain an external file reference: - picture or pdf boxes. These can be set to "save in plan" which will then remove the external file reference - materials and images/billboards

You have multiple objects (polyline solids and shapes). I would first convert it into a symbol and then it might be easier to treat as a single object. See if this picture helps. More info can be found in this article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01021/editing-a-symbol-s-rotation.html

As pointed out by Chris, you could change these settings in the Send to Layout dialog in prior versions. This ability was removed because we feel that this is not the preferred method of working. You probably modified them in an older version of the program and then migrated your preferences forward.

The edge line and pattern line defaults (18 and 10) are actually stored with your program preferences. There is no built-in interface for changing them but you can manually edit the ini file if you are very determined. If you manually edit your preferences file and mess things up, you are basically on your own though. I would recommend that you only do this while the program is not running because the program will write out the preferences from memory when you exit. And for the record, I really recommend just working with your layers and material settings while in the camera view so things are more WYSIWYG.

Did you try clicking on the Help button when you were in the Send To Layout dialog? Did you see the part where it says "The Edge and Pattern Line Defaults settings are included for legacy files and are not the recommended method of specifying this information." As a general rule, it is preferable to use your layer and material settings to control your edge and pattern lines while in the camera view. Then when you send the view to layout, you would have "use edge line defaults" and "use pattern line defaults" turned off. This will allow you to better see what you will get on your layout view while in the camera view. You can also control the edge lines for each object independently using the active layer set. You can control the pattern lines for each material independently using the material settings. If you have a particular need to override these settings in your layout view, then you would want to set the "use defaults" options. The program will then use the edge and pattern line defaults that are specified for the particular layout box created. You can change these values in the layout box specification dialog box (as you have shown in your second picture). Currently, there is no way to specify the system default values used when a new layout box is created. BTW, it looks like Chris's version of the help file might be old. See picture below for what my version says.

"and once again this Gremlin strikes" I would hardly consider the ability to use plan check to bring back a manually deleted living area a "gremlin". It's just another tool that can be helpful, but only if you know how to use it. There are other ways to regenerate the living area label as well as ways to create your own manual living area label but those all take more work to explain. Currently, there isn't even any indication that this will solve the original poster's problem, just a guess, and you should note that it was actually 3rd in my list of guesses. Some of your posts are getting to be a lot like houseguests, after about 3 times, they are starting to smell a bit, well, fishy.

You might not have any enclosed rooms on the second floor. Or you might not have any rooms that are included in the living area calculations. Or you might have manually deleted the living area and need to use the plan check tool to bring it back. Or... You might want to check out this help article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00424/changing-how-square-footage-is-calculated.html