Dermot

There is no easy way to prevent walls from snapping together. Just some interesting workarounds. If all you want to do is have your railing post offset from the main wall, there are controls to do this in X12. You can also switch between having a full post, half post, or none.

Post a plan. What you are describing doesn't seem right. 1. In general, you should be able to select the "Specify Label" radio button and then type in whatever you want to appear as the label. This should be simple and fast. You can also use built in macros or custom macros for added functionality but that is a much more advanced topic. 2. You probably don't need to suppress any labels unless you have a particular object that you don't want to ever display a label. It is much better to control the labels through your layers. For example, click on your cabinet and then use the Object Layer Properties tool, you will see all of the layers associated with the cabinet. If you turn off the "Cabinet, Labels" layer, this will turn off all cabinet labels in the current layer set. You can use different layer sets for different views so that you can have some views with labels and other views without. If you suppress a label, it will be off in all views.

Yes, but you need to learn more about layer sets and reference display. I would start with these: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00765/understanding-layer-sets.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00475/using-the-reference-display.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5435/using-the-reference-display.html?playlist=100

Apparently, the program switches the attic wall into an invisible wall to prevent it from getting rebuilt automatically. I was not aware it did this but it makes more sense now that I think about it. Attic walls will regenerate when there is no wall already there. If the program allowed you to just delete it, it would keep magically coming back.

You can copy any folder in the core or manufacturer libraries that you want by right-clicking on it in the library browser. You can then paste it into your user library as a full copy of the original items or as shortcuts to the original items. You can also add your own search attributes to any library object in any folder.

There are no defaults for saved plan views. If you use the New Saved Plan View tool in the project browser, I believe the program will just use whatever active defaults you currently have. Opening the specification dialog from the project browser will give you the ability to review and change all of the settings. You can also make copies of existing saved plan views in several ways. - using the Save Active View As tool. - using the Duplicate tool when right-clicking on a saved plan view in the project browser - switch the current saved plan view to None and then use the Save Active View tool If you don't have any saved plan views in a plan, you can also just save the active plan view. You can also import saved plan views from other plans using File->Import. You can also make new saved plan views from layout boxes using the Create Saved Plan View edit tool that appears when you select an unlinked layout box.

As Eric has suggested, you should see if you can find a backup of the plan that does not have the problem. Another thing you might want to do is to try and figure out if something in your plan is causing the problem. You can do this by removing things from the plan to see if you can narrow down what is causing it. Since you were removing walls I would start with trying to make sure your walls and rooms are all OK. You could also try posting the plan on this forum and someone here might be willing to look into it to see if they can figure out what the problem is. For more information about these kinds of problems, you might also want to checkout this help article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00802/troubleshooting-exception-and-assertion-error-messages.html If all else fails, you may just have to contact technical support during normal business hours.

The only reason is that we haven't added in the necessary code to put hardware objects into schedules. In theory, with some of the schedule improvements that we have made in X12, this should be easier to do in the future. If this is something that you want the program to do, then you should submit a feature request. In your request, you need to clarify which type of hardware objects you would like in the schedule (free standing hardware versus hardware attached to things like doors and cabinets). You should also ask for any specific information you want included in the schedules. In addition, you should absolutely include a sample plan or picture showing us what you want and how you want it displayed. The number one problem with 99.9% of the feature requests we get is that people do not give us enough information about what they want. The other big problem is that they never actually send us a request and somehow think that if they mention something in passing in a random forum thread that we will automatically log a feature request for them.

"I used the polyline method to create a hole in the roof and drop the skylight into the hole." I'm still not really sure what you are doing but if it's working for you, then all is probably fine. Just to clarify, the only difference between a skylight and hole in a roof is whether or not the "skylight" checkbox is checked. You can either place a 2'x2' skylight by single clicking or draw any size skylight you like by clicking and dragging. This is not always obvious to new users. The only reason I can think of that you might need two separate objects, a hole and a skylight, is for the situation where you have a skylight on a roof plane and a ceiling hole in a custom ceiling that is below the roof plane.

"if you don't mind, what parameters qualify an 'appropriate' hole below it. I would imagine size needs to be at least as big as the skylight.. but is there an upper limit to the size of the hole?... and is there a limit to the distance, both vertical and horizontal from the skylight?" If you play around with the tools, you might be able to figure out what will work and not work pretty quickly. If you find a real-world case that you think should work and doesn't, then please be sure to submit a feature request or bug report to our technical support team.

Just to clarify, it all depends on how the symbol was created. If the symbol is a fixture or furniture item, it can be placed into a schedule. If the symbol is a hardware or millwork item, it can't. You can tell what type of symbol it is by placing it into a plan, selecting it, and looking at the status bar. You can convert a symbol into another type by selecting it and using the Convert Selected Into a Symbol edit tool. Just make sure to choose the Symbol Category that you want it to be.

As far as I know, the program will never change a wall into an invisible wall automatically. My guess is that you accidentally clicked on the Make Walls Invisible edit button.

Just to clarify, the "automatic" setting for the reference floor will normally display the floor below. If there is no floor below, it will then display the floor above. This means that it might actually change on you if you add/remove a foundation or link the layout to another plan that has different floors available. X11 works the same as X12 in this regard but they are both different than X10 and earlier since we added some significant improvements to the reference display in X11. For this reason, I would recommend that you specify the actual floor you want to reference, especially if you are trying to show the reference floor as part of your construction documents.

If the second floor is turned on for reference display and you send the view to layout, the second floor should be on for the layout view. This has not changed in X12 but a number of other related things have. If you open your layout box and look at the plan view data, you should be able to see if your layout box is linked to a saved plan view or not. If it is linked to a saved plan view, then the saved plan view will control the reference display. If it is not linked to a saved plan view, then the layout box will control the reference display. Check these settings. If you still can't figure out what is going on, then you should post a simple plan and layout that demonstrates the problem. Someone should be able to quickly tell you what is going on. If all else fails, contact technical support during our normal business hours.

"I created a detailed plan with many 3d objects. The size is 354Mb and every little thing I change creates an undo file of ~500mb. This really slows down my ability to work and eats up my drive. How can I reduce the size?" The file size is probably from all of the 3D objects you have placed. Depending on the types of objects you are using and where you got them, this could have a huge affect on file size. This is just a guess though because no one can really tell unless we have the actual plan to look at. Just as an FYI, if you delete a bunch of 3D objects and then save the file, the file size may not shrink as much as you expect until you close/open it again and save it once again. This is a side effect of the way the program only determines that the 3D data is not being used when the plan is read in and not when it is being written out. You should see a huge drop in file size after the second write though. Another thing you might want to explore is the Delete Objects dialog. This allows you to quickly remove things from your plan to see what might be taking up lots of space. You just asked about reducing the file size but I am guessing that the real problem is that you want to improve performance. There are lots of ways to work that might improve your performance. The suggestion of keeping a separate reference plan with all of the symbol data in it is only one idea. You could also take any furniture or other symbol data and make architectural blocks out of them and then remove them from your working plan and put them back in later when you need them. You could turn off the layers for these things which might speed up your camera views but probably won't affect the undo performance. Turning off your undo or switching to an SSD drive could also have a big effect. Each of these things has it's disadvantages and there is no silver bullet to solve all problems. Again these suggestions are all based on guesses. If you want a more accurate answer, then you need to post a plan or contact tech support.

Just to clarify, plan views are technically always "live". Any changes made to the model or the layers that are displayed will show up in the layout view. It sounds like the problem you are having is related to layer sets and probably related to saved plan views. Check out this post for more info:

Here are a couple of thoughts and some suggestions: You shouldn't need to redraw the plan just to fix a skylight. Have you tried just deleting the skylight and redrawing it? Have you tried selecting the skylight and looking at the data in the dialog (it looks like you might just have some bad sizes)? If you can't figure this out on your own, you will probably need to post the plan so someone can figure out what you did and offer some better suggestions. In the future, I would recommend you post a new thread when you have a new problem. If all else fails, I would recommend that you contact technical support for more help.

You might also want to check out this information: https://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/documentation/chief-architect-x12-migration-guide.pdf

Have you tried this in X12 yet? The problems with the stair tread related to curved stairs and closed stringers should be significantly improved in X12. As far as the railing is concerned, the program is not able to clip a normal railing to fit under a staircase. You will have to come up with a different method for modelling this. You may want to submit a feature request for this.

I think your problem is that you did not delete all of the surfaces you need to. My guess is that you have surfaces facing the other way that don't show up in your normal view but do when you convert it into a symbol. Copy the cabinet into a blank plan and look at it from all angles to find all the surfaces you need to delete.

See if this post helps:

You can only change the component sizes for certain window types. Changing the window type should enable this control. Custom muntins are not always going to do what you want. The custom muntins need to cover a certain portion of the window. So making a cad block with a single muntin probably won't solve the problem. Stacking two side lites should probably work. Whether these are fixed windows or fixed doors.

"Not sure when this got slipped in." Version 6. And, no, I don't mean X6.

You may find this migration guide helpful: https://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/documentation/chief-architect-x12-migration-guide.pdf

BTW, the original poster never said that he wanted the label tied to the swing direction. That's just seem like people reading more into the post than was actually said. If this is what people actually want, then someone needs to submit a feature request for this.