Dermot

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.

Just to clarify what Eric is suggesting, You can make all of your window and door glass opaque by changing one setting in the render technique. As long as your glass material is set to "use default", this setting will change it between opaque and transparent. If you want to keep your glass clear but turn off the label for something that you can see inside the building, you can do this as well. The trick is that you need to select the object and turn off the label for the camera view that it is showing up in. Sometimes you can use the temporary delete surface tool to make it easier to select the object.

Actually, I have a strict personal policy of never posting while frustrated. Also, to be honest, I'm not sure how my responses can be interpreted as "taking it out on a customer" but regardless, I will apologize again if I have somehow offended you.

"Chief just twists the narrative to make it a sound good when it would be easier just to fix the problem." I'm not really sure how my trying to explain how the program works, which is actually very sophisticated and quite complicated, is twisting the narrative. I try very hard to explain things as clearly as I can but have found that if I provide too much detail that it only confuses people more. Regardless, I apologize if my attempts to explain this were not as helpful as you would have liked.

Just to try and clarify again... That symbol just means that something that might affect your terrain model has been changed and the program thinks that the terrain needs to be rebuilt. Lot's and lot's of things can affect your terrain model in ways that are not always going to be obvious. For example, when you modify a cabinet that is attached to a wall, the program will rebuild your rooms so that your room moldings will be correct. When the program rebuilds rooms, for any reason, the terrain model may need to be updated because the terrain heights and/or the hole we cut out for the building are dependent on the rooms and may need to be automatically adjusted. The bottom line is that you can let the program automatically rebuild the terrain when it thinks it needs to or you can manually rebuild the terrain whenever you want to. The symbol is just telling you when the program thinks that a rebuild needs to happen. You can ignore this symbol until you want to be sure the terrain is up to date. You can also choose to turn off the indicators but I don't recommend this. If you still find this confusing, then I would highly recommend that you turn on auto rebuild terrain and try not worry about it.

This is pretty normal when you auto rebuild terrain turned off. Basically, changing all sorts of things will end up invalidating the terrain model. So you can either turn on the auto rebuild or ignore the indicator and rebuild the terrain manually whenever you want to be sure it is up to date.

There are a variety of door styles already in the core library as well as a number of other custom and manufacturer door styles available online that you can find using the Get Additional Content Online. In addition, you can create a large number of different door styles using the built in tools for our parametric doors. Open the door specification dialog and explore the options available. Also, you can also create your own custom door panel symbols using a combination of the other built in modeling tools. And finally, you can also import your own door panel symbols using a 3D model from some other program as long as it is a compatible 3D file format. More information can be found in the training videos and through the help system. When and if you get stuck, then feel free to post more specific questions here. There is almost always someone available who will be able to help you solve the issue.

See if the information in this post helps:

You can find it in the customize toolbars dialog under Active Dimension Defaults Control. Personally, I would recommend that you use the Active Defaults tool instead because it allows you quick access to all of your current defaults in one place. Or you could use the Edit Active View tool that allows you to change the current defaults along with any other view specific data.

Just to clarify... The text used by the markers in the auto story pole dimensions is always controlled by the marker defaults specified for the story pole dimension (as in the picture I posted above). The catch is that the marker defaults may be set to either use a specific text style, to use a custom text style, or get the text style from the layers. This is true for all other markers as well. The text used by dimensions in the auto story pole dimensions is controlled by the dimension defaults specified which could also use a specific text style, custom text style, or get the text style from the layers. Just like every other dimension. The important thing I was trying to point out was that the story pole dimension has the two different parts that are controlled independently. So to change their appearance, you may need to use a different dimension default and/or a different marker default. And yes, as Eric has pointed out, this is very flexible but can also be very confusing.

The automatic story pole dimension is made up of two separate parts, dimensions and markers. You can control the text size and other properties of the dimension parts through the dimension default that it is using. You can control the properties of the markers through the marker default it is using. See the pictures below: Additional information about story pole dimensions can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/2431/using-the-auto-story-pole-dimension-tool.html

As Eric said, It is usually best to post new, and unrelated questions in new threads. The two most common reasons that a framing member would not show up in a camera view is that you either have not built the framing or that the layer it is on is turned off in the camera view. There are lots of other reasons a particular framing piece might not build though. So If you want any thing other than random guesses, you would need to post the plan file. And, as always, if all else fails, you can contact our technical support team during our normal business hours.