Dermot

Chief Architect Moderators
  • Posts

    2420
  • Joined

Everything posted by Dermot

  1. Since no one from sales has commented, I will give you some of my technical perspective. Chief Architect will take advantage of multiple cores for a wide variety of our internal algorithms which is why a multi-core processor is one of our minimum system requirements. As a general rule, the more cores you have the better the program will perform. Processor speed is still an important consideration though and you will not get the same performance using a processor with twice as many cores if it has half the processor speed. Ray tracing and some of the advanced rendering techniques are some of the more important places that we take full advantage or your multiple cores. Building the 3D model, which happens any time you create or make any changes in any of our camera views, can also use as many cores as you have available. Many people make the mistake of assuming an elevation view is a 2D CAD view (which might be true in some other programs) but in Chief it is really a camera view and is derived from the same 3D model that every other camera view uses. Displaying a typical plan view may not use all of your cores (although this also depends on what else is going on during the drawing process). Drawing operations need to happen in a well defined order so it's not something that can easily be split up over all of the different cores and get any kind of performance improvement. Also, for most users in most situations, displaying plan views is not where you will see any slow downs. Most of the time the program will be waiting for you to do something rather then you waiting for it to finish drawing. I would worry less about how many cores the program is using and more about whether or not the program is performing to your satisfaction. If you find a situation where the program does not perform to your expectations, you should report this problem to our technical support team. You should send them the plan that demonstrates the problem along with a clear and detailed description of exactly what you are doing when you see the problem. If we can determine when and where these slow downs happen, we can often make significant performance improvements that have nothing to with the number of cores you have.
  2. It has to do with your pony walls. Take a look at your windows in an elevation view. If the window is entirely in the upper portion of the wall it will display differently. You can modify how your pony walls and openings display in your Pony Wall Defaults. In particular, you may want to adjust the "Display of Openings in Non-Displayed Parts of Walls".
  3. Personally, I find it much easier and more accurate to edit objects with line weights turned off. You can toggle line weights on and off using a toolbar button, using the menus, or even setup a hotkey to do this.
  4. I suppose that works... but in my opinion it is easier to just use the cabinet filler tool. Under the Build menu right under your normal cabinet tools are the Cabinet Filler tools. These tools will place a 3" default cabinet filler that already has a blank face. If you zoom in and place one in between the cabinet and the wall, it should resize smaller to span the gap. The only reason that I would use an actual cabinet is if you need to show sides or a back but in those cases I would still start with the filler and then uncheck the "filler" option so you don't have to edit the face items.
  5. Dermot

    Newels

    If you are trying to move a newel post within a railing wall along the wall, just place a wall break.
  6. From the image, it looks like your stair thinks it is connected to a railing at the top. When the stair is connected to a railing, the railing usually makes the post, not the stair. Since there is an obvious gap in your railing, I would first try to fix this and see if you can line up the railing post where you want it. You can always manually place posts but I don't think you should need to in this case. If all else fails, post your plan or contact tech support for additional help.
  7. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00802/troubleshooting-exception-and-assertion-error-messages.html
  8. Open the stair dialog and turn off "Automatic Stair Openings". When automatic stair openings is on, the program will create an opening in the railing where the stair connects to it. All openings in railings will normally have a post on each side. If you turn off the automatic openings, you will have to create your own openings manually. Also, just as an FYI, for more control over your post spacing you can always put wall breaks in the railings. Wherever there is a break, the program will place a post.
  9. Sounds like you changed the settings by clicking on the "Num Style" button. Changing these settings mostly only affects the dialog boxes and not your cad display as you might have noticed. You can either change them back or just exit and relaunch the program to go back to the system defaults.
  10. The molding work-around will give you those extra lines but it should probably not be necessary. For normal wall cabinets, using face frame construction, we try to align the bottom with the top of the face frame piece which should give you the recess you are looking for. There are a number of things that might prevent this from happening, such as building a frameless cabinet or how you have modified the cabinet face. There is something different about your plan that is causing this and I could only make guesses as to what. The best thing to do is post an example so someone can dig into it further. If your plan is too big to post, there are a number of things you can do. First, you can always zip up your plan to make it smaller. You could also make a copy of your plan and remove the things that don't affect the problem area. In your case, I would simply copy your wall cabinet into a new blank plan and post that. BTW, if the copy doesn't have the same problem then that is a good indicator that the problem is somehow related to your cabinet defaults. If all else fails, then I would recommend contacting tech support again.
  11. Just looking at the third picture in the first post shows what the problem is. The reason you can't delete the "Reflected Ceiling Set" in the Layer Set Management dialog is because it is the active layer set for the current view. It shows you this in the lower part of the dialog. Select a different active layer set and then the delete button should be enabled. You also won't be able to delete the "Reference Display Layer Set" for similar reasons. For all other layer sets, the delete button should be enabled and you will get a message explaining when you can't delete it if it is being used somewhere else in the plan that is less obvious.
  12. Eric's method is a good way to find things. I happened to find it by creating a full overview and turning off the roof. You can also see it in plan view if you look for the pink edge lines close to the walls. It is hard to select unless you click right on an edge line and you probably need to use the tab key to get it.
  13. The short answer is that you have a custom ceiling plane. These don't magically appear by themselves so you must have drawn this at some point. Just delete it and then reset your wall heights back to default. The longer answer would have to include all of other things in your plan that I thought were either strange or wrong. I see nothing in your plan that requires all of the manual work that you are doing. The lowered ceiling looks like it could be handled through your room defaults and you could probably even use the automatic roof tools. I saw a number of problems related to your walls though so I would consider working on getting those right first and then worrying about your ceilings and roofs. I'm not sure why you painted a brick material onto a Siding 6 wall but this probably is not what you want. You can't change the structure of a wall by painting a material on it. You should probably reset all of your wall materials back to "use default" first and then fix the wall definitions. In addition, it looks like you are having some wall alignment issues with the pony walls. In general, Chief does not really like pony walls that are thicker at the top then the bottom and this is why your interior walls have gaps at the bottom when attached to them. You should try to model your walls as close to how they will be built in the real world to avoid these issues. I would then focus on your rooms. If you ever find yourself trying to change all of your rooms by editing each room in your plan, I would suggest that you are doing it the hard way. You should probably reset the room structures back to "use default" and change the default room for the floor instead. You might want to use the "Reset to Defaults" tool as a start. In general, you should only edit the room structure of an individual room when it is going to be different from all of the rest. Once your walls and rooms are correct, I think the roof will be easy. I would highly recommend that your review some of our training videos and help articles. You might also want to consider some of our various training options: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/training/
  14. You could also just remove the camera backdrop. This would mean that you would not see any scenery out of your windows either. The bottom line is that if you want a more realistic view, you will have to create a more complete model.
  15. You can curve a straight ramp or stair section by dragging the end handle while holding down the Alt key. You can also use the Change Line/Arc edit tool to convert from straight to curved or back. This should even work in HD Pro 2017.
  16. The schedule numbers assigned to objects are based on the order they appear in the schedule. All you probably need to do is drag the schedule rows up or down to get the order you want. Here is some more information that might help: - If you have two or more objects that are grouped together into a row in the schedule, and you make one of them different, then the program has to assign a new number. - Objects are grouped into a single row when all of the properties displayed in the schedule match. You can modify how they are grouped when you add and remove columns from the schedule. Please note that the program does not base these groupings on the 2D or 3D preview if it is being shown in the schedule. - You can always modify the position of rows in the schedule by selecting the schedule row and dragging the row edit handle up or down. - You can also modify the position of the schedule columns by dragging the column edit handle left or right. - You can modify all of the objects that are grouped into a row by using the Open Row Objects edit button. - You can find the objects in a plan that are grouped into a row by using the Find Object in Plan edit button. - There are a number of training videos and help articles related to schedules with more information.
  17. Please report this problem directly to our tech support department. Please include the plan and the EXACT steps you are using to reproduce the problem. The above information is not enough to help us diagnose this issue. The only bug that I am currently aware of is that you can still select windows and doors when the wall layer is turned off and the window and door layers are still turned on. From the above comments, it sounds like this is a very different issue but so far we have been unable to reproduce this problem. Without more detailed information we might not be able to do anything about this.
  18. This is just an FYI. There is nothing really wrong with having lots of saved plan views. You can also setup Saved Plan Views that are floor agnostic. If you open the Saved Plan View specification dialog from the Project Browser, you can set the floor to "Use Any Floor". This will allow you to use the same saved plan view for any floor in the model. You should not get a warning about not saving it if you change the floor and then close the view. When you send one of these saved plan views to a layout page, the program will remember what floor you were on when you sent it even though it is still linked to the saved plan view. You might want to try setting up some of these saved plan views to see if it allows you to work more efficiently.
  19. The best way to get info about contacting technical support is by using this link: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/ The info at the bottom of the page explains how to contact support using either the online support center or by calling them during our normal business hours. If you are looking for feedback from other users regarding the issue, then please feel free to post on the General Q&A forum. Other users will probably be able to confirm whether or not the issue is a bug or might be able to offer possible workarounds. Please note that posting any info about a bug on any of our forums is not the same as reporting it to us. We do not monitor these forums for bugs so it is very unlikely that we will get the information we need to address the issue.
  20. Not exactly. The fact that I posted here to give you some more info about how the program currently works means nothing. We don't look for features or bugs in the Q&A forum. If you would like to report a bug to us, then you need to contact tech support: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/ If you would like to make a feature request, then you need to make an official suggestion: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/
  21. Electrical objects will only attach to the outside of cabinets, not the inside. Also, they only attach to cabinet sides that are not already attached to walls or other cabinets. You should be able to attach an outlet to the wall behind a cabinet without any trouble. It won't display inside the cabinet unless you specify the distance from the wall of at least 3/4" though. You could also remove the back of the cabinet by editing the back face in the cabinet dialog. Also, you can attach an outlet to the side of a cabinet that is against another wall or cabinet by first moving the cabinet out of the way, attaching the outlet, and then moving the cabinet back. The outlet should stay attached but it may not be visible in camera views because it might be blocked by either the wall or other cabinet. For other situations, it can be useful to use an vertical outlet that has been changed to floor mounted, These can be placed anywhere in the plan and then moved into position as needed. These do not actually attach to cabinets or walls though. Also, if you really don't care about showing the outlet in camera views (or material lists), you can always just place the outlet cad block where ever you want on your plan. You can use the Cad Block Management dialog to find the outlet block and then use the Insert tool to place it into your plan. If all else fails, contact tech support.
  22. As far as I know, we have never had anyone report this particular issue to technical support. I have seen occasional reports on the forums where people have suggested that "hacked" versions of the program can do this. The fact that no one has reported this to us leads me to believe that this is not actually a "bug" in our program. If this was the result of a bug in our internal security system, then it must be very rare because someone would have reported it by now. If you are using a legitimate version of one of our products, then please contact our technical support department for further assistance. If you are using a "hacked" version, then you should stop using it.
  23. Inside corners should work the same as outside corners. You need to drag the windows really hard past the corner to get them to merge. The one limitation that I know of is that you can't have any windows that merge on both sides. It's only going to be one or the other.
  24. As far as I know, there was never anything very automatic like this. The only thing that we have that is semi-automatic in cross sections is the Auto Detail tool. It only puts in cad objects with fill styles though. Maybe you are thinking of a Cad Detail or Cad block? If it was one of these, you should check the ones that ship with the X10 core libraries to see if we have any that are similar. There may be additional ones available through our web site too. It is also possible that you actually created something custom in your V10 template plan and were using that. In any case, if it was something like one of these, then you should be able to bring it forward from a V10 plan into X10. How you do this depends entirely on what you had though. You might want to post an example V10 plan showing people what you were using. Then someone might have better suggestions of how to find the equivalent in X10 or how to bring it forward.