Dermot

No, not really. I suppose you could create a manual stair with the riser height set to 7 1/2" and then copy it into the plan you want but I'm not sure how useful this would be. I am curious about the reasons why you want to do this though. Most of the time, when your stair is going from one platform to another, the riser height is determined by the overall height difference. Forcing it to be a different height would mean that it is either going to be too high or too low and then it probably doesn't meet code. Please explain what you are trying to do and how changing the default riser height would help you solve this. If you want the program to work differently, then I would encourage you to always submit actual feature requests. We don't monitor the Q&A forum looking for feature requests that may be hidden among the questions. To make a feature request, you should make a post on the suggestions forum here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/ If by "numerous" you mean exactly once, then you are correct. And if by "requested", you mean tacked onto someone else's shopping list of stair related feature requests, then yes, it has indeed been requested. I guess I should really give you some extra credit though because one other person up-voted your request (but I won't give you any for the up-vote above). Maybe "numerous" means something different in Canada?

Automatic counter tops just aren't as smart as you would like them to be. If you have one cabinet that is taller than the other, then it should probably use the overhang but it won't because the program sees the cabinets as attached to each other and doesn't account for the different heights. The best solution is to use the Generate Custom Countertop tool and then manually pull the countertop out to create the overhang you want. By overlapping the cabinets, you are simply preventing the program from allowing them to attach to each other. This is usually not a good solution since this will cause a variety of other side effects including incorrect plan views and camera views. Another trick you can use to get one cabinet to not attach to another one is to convert one of them into an architectural block. This can also have side effects but at least your drawings will be more accurate.

Thank you for submitting this problem to our tech support team. Please be sure to always report these kinds of problems directly to tech support so that we are aware of them and can improve the program by making the material list calculations more accurate. For now, you could convert your automatic counter tops into custom ones using the Generate Custom Countertop tool to make sure that you are getting the most accurate area calculations. Please note that you can do this very quickly by just group selecting all of your base cabinets and doing it in one step. If you need to make changes later, you can either manually edit the custom countertops or just delete them and generate them again.

Open the symbol object. Check out the Elevation Reference setting. If it is set to "From Terrain", then the symbol can change height every time you rebuild terrain if the terrain height changes. If this is not the case, then I have no idea what is going on without the plan. If all else fails, then I would suggest that you contact tech support for more help.

FYI, one easy way to find hidden schedules is to use the Project Browser. If you right click on any of the schedules listed in the Schedules area, you can then use the Find in Project tool to quickly locate it. Schedules can be hiding on other floors, in elevation views, or in cad details.

"Can we accomplish what we want right now or is updating to X12 worth the investment?" Yes and yes. You can have a different text style (using different scales) for your cabinet and door labels. Just specify the text style you want to use in your layer display options (as shown by Mark above). You will need to do this in the layer set that you are using for the views you want to send to your layout. You don't need to use saved plan views but you may want to because they can help you be more efficient. You don't need X12 to accomplish this. There are a lot of reasons to consider upgrading to X12 though. You may want to review the info about what's new in X12 here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/upgrade.html I would encourage you to speak with one of our sales representatives to discuss the current sale going on and how that would work with your multiple licenses.

I think changing the subfloor material is the easiest solution to get the look you want. FYI, "opening indicators" don't actually display in plan views. The door swing will always display with the door itself. Also, you might want to adjust your sliding doors so that the plan view display matches the 3D model. You can do this by adjusting the plan view display to drag the door closed or by showing the doors as open in the 3D view.

You are looking through the walls and seeing the floor platform (sub floor actually). If you turn off the "Walls, Normal" layer, and move your camera it will probably make more sense.

Tab should select the first of the component windows. Please note that all of the other component windows are actually just virtual copies of the first one. There is no way to make them different using the automatic bow window tool.

Or just place your GFCI outlets directly from the library. If you need to do this all the time, then customize your toolbars and use the Place Library Object tool with the GFCI assigned to it.

As far as I know, no one has ever asked for this before. If you want the program to work differently, then I would encourage you to submit an actual feature request. We don't monitor the Q&A forum looking for hidden feature requests. To make a feature request, you should make a post on the suggestions forum here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/

There are a lot of different things you can do to expand the content available: - If you can't find what you want in the core libraries that come with the program, you can use the Get Additional Content tool to download more libraries from the Chief website. All of this content has been designer to work well with Chief. - If you can't find what you want in any of our libraries, you can look online for 3D content that you can import directly into Chief. Please be aware that some online content is going to work better in Chief than others. Some of it may have very high surface counts and could really slow things down in Chief. - You can build your own objects using a wide variety of the tools within Chief. As noted above, the cabinet tools are very flexible and can be used as a basic building block for many other types of objects. You can also use the 3D primitives, shapes, and molding polylines to create all kinds of other things. I recommend that you design these things in separate plans and then convert them into architectural blocks or symbols that you can then add to your user library for reuse. - You can build your own objects using other 3D modeling software and then import them into Chief. There are a lot of things that I can design very easily in Chief and other things that I would not bother. For example, although I could design a toilet in Chief, I don't think it would be very easy so I probably wouldn't.

Just to clarify... The width of rails can be specified to be the same as the wall width or they can be set to a specific value. The railing is always centered using the thickness of the railing "wall". Making the wall type thicker is the easiest way to move a railing in from a deck edge. A very thin wall will allow you to move the rail so that it is centered on the deck edge. There is no "easy" way to move a deck railing out more from the deck edge for situations where you want to attach the railing to the outside of the deck. There are a variety of work-arounds to do this, such as Tommy's suggestion above. Using a search on this forum will show you some other techniques. This is a frequent request and already on our lengthy todo list. If it is something you need, please free to submit another feature request because the more it is requested the faster it moves up the list. You can also offset the newel posts independently of moving the railing using the wall thickness. This can be useful if you need to align the rails to one side of the posts.

See if my post in this thread helps:

It's the Place Library Object tool. You can drop as many of these as you like into your toolbars. The first time you click on it, you will be able to assign a library object to it. If you ever want to change what is assigned to it, just double click on it.

There is some good information here that might help your buying decisions: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html

If you are using the door tools, you can modify your door defaults to be whatever you want but you are still limited to having only one default for each type of door. For example, you can only have one default exterior hinged door. So what if almost every house you design uses a different door between the garage and the house? Rather than change your default exterior door, you are probably better off getting it from the library. And if almost every house you design uses the same door in the garage, you could then setup a library toolbar button so that you don't have to go find it every time.

Just to clarify, a layout box may or may not be linked to a saved plan view. If it is not linked to a saved plan view, you can change the reference display setting directly in the layout box dialog. If it is linked, you can either unlink it and change the settings in the layout box or keep it linked and change the settings in the saved plan view.

Just to clarify some things, in Chief, the door size does not include the thickness of the jamb so you will want to adjust your rough opening to account for this. Window frames are the opposite and are included in the size of the window. In the first picture below, I have a 2' 8" door with a 3/4" jamb thickness and 1" rough opening per side. This gives me a 1/4" gap on each side for the actual rough opening. I have built and displayed the wall framing so that this is more clear. This door fits easily when the walls are 3' 2" apart giving me enough room for my studs and casing. Please note how I drew my dimensions going to the framing and not to the drywall. If you want only 3" of clearance on the inside, you will either need to adjust the casing or turn on "Ignore Casing for Opening Resize" in your General Plan Defaults. Of course this will affect how you would need to frame it. In the second picture, note how I made the interior casing smaller so that this door would fit into a 3' 2" space. Please keep in mind that it's not just the casing width that affects this since the reveal also matters. In the picture, my casing is 2 1/4" wide with a 1/4" reveal which allows it to bump up against the 1/2" drywall to give me the 3" spacing shown in the dimension. I suspect that the original problem you were having had to do with your casing bumping against the drywall preventing you from positioning it where you wanted it.

The drawing sheet setup for the layout should be set to 1:1. The drawing sheet setup for the plan should be set to something like 1/4":1'. This will control the default scale used when you send a view to the layout.

I recommend that you start with this tech article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00521/troubleshooting-slowness-in-chief-architect-plans.html

I'm not sure which tool the "side bar icon" is but you can turn off "Connect Cad Segments" either through the toolbars, menus, or hotkeys to prevent cad lines from connecting together to form polylines. Once you turn it back on though, if you edit any of the lines, they will usually join together again unless they have different attributes (like layer or color). If this is not working for you then you need to give us more information about what exactly you are doing using which tools. If all else fails, you can always contact tech support during our normal business hours.

Just updating the program should never remove any libraries from your computer. You really haven't provided enough information to make anything other than random guesses. Are you missing all of the libraries or are you just missing the manufacturer ones? Did you update from 22.2 to 22.3 or did you update from some older version? My recommendation is to contact tech support during our normal business hours for help solving this problem.

If all of the labels are showing through walls, not just through non-opaque windows, than this is most likely caused by a video card problem. Updating drivers or changing the hardware edge smoothing setting can usually solve this problem. Haven't seen this problem in a while but here is some more info:

I'm pretty sure it's something you are doing, as opposed to some program bug, but I'm not really sure what. When you send an elevation or cross section view to layout, the layout box keeps track of the plan and the camera view that you sent. The camera then keeps track of the layer set you are using. This is usually a pretty robust system. I think I remember some bugs in the past when we switched to the extended character set where people using strange file and layer set names had some issues but I think these have all been worked out. I am going to assume that you are keeping all of the views that you send to layout as separate saved camera views. If not, then this may be the source of your problems. One saved camera view for each layout box is the way that I recommend people work. I am going to assume that you did not delete or rename any layer sets. If you delete a layer set that you used for a layout box, this will cause the program to switch to some other layer set. I am going to assume that you are not doing a save as or relinking your layout boxes to different plan files. If you are, you may be linking them to versions of the plan files that don't have the layer sets which causes the program to switch them back to some other layer set. I can't think of anything else that would be obvious. You could try posting your layout and plan files and someone here might be willing to look at them. I'm not sure if they will be able to tell anything though because they will probably see that your layout is linked to a saved camera that is using a layer set that you don't want. The current state of the files probably won't show anyone how you got into that state. I recommend that you try to pay close attention to everything you are doing to try and figure out how you are getting into this state. On your layout page, you can verify that your views are using the correct cameras with the correct layer sets by opening them from the layout page. If all else fails, please feel free to contact our technical support team during our normal business hours.