Dermot

Since you are using the latest update (you might want to update your signature), I would try a reboot and if this does not solve the problem, call tech support.

Regardless of your toolbar setup, you can get to the Layer Set Management dialog through the menus under Tools->Layer Settings. I'm not sure if the default toolbar configuration includes the Layer Set Management button but you can always customize your toolbars and add it if it is something that you use frequently.

This is an old thread, in X9 and X10, you don't add comments through the components. You add them through the Object Information panel.

I opened your Elevation 01 camera dialog and turned on the shadows and they looked fine to me. So the comments I made to dbucholz above would apply to your case too.

Here is some general information about the reference display settings that may help explain things a little better. One of the main reasons we still have the XOR drawing mode is so that you can quickly tell if your walls are aligned between floors. If your walls are aligned then you will see your wall lines drawn in some other color (typically blue with out of the box layer settings). If your walls are not aligned then they will appear red (the out of box reference color). If you are using reference display for any other reason, and especially if you intend to use the reference display as part of your construction documentation, then you should probably always turn off XOR drawing. I agree that it is not be an ideal name but after many discussions we have not found an alternative that we feel is significantly better. The "Use Object Settings" basically controls things like fill styles and whether or not the program will use the line color and line style specified for the object versus the line color and line style from the layer settings. If you are using reference display just to align things between floors, then typically you don't need the extra details cluttering up your drawing so you should probably leave this turned off. If you are using the reference display as part of your construction documentation, then you probably want to have this turned on. Having it turned on should display the reference floor the same way it would look if you made it your current floor and used the same layer set. As far as draw first or last is concerned, this only controls whether the reference floor is drawn before the current floor or after. If you are trying to align floors and are using XOR drawing then you should probably always use the draw last option. If you are displaying your reference floor as part of your construction documentation, then you need to decide the order that the floors are displayed to get the results you want. If you find anything that you feel is not working correctly, then please report these things to our tech support department. Please be sure to include a plan that clearly demonstrates the problem.

I opened one of the saved elevation cameras in the dbucholz plan and the shadows were turned off. They looked fine when I turned them on in the camera specification dialog (not the camera defaults dialog). Turning them on in the camera defaults will only affect new cameras. Shadows in X10 are camera specific now and not for the whole plan like they were in prior versions and this may be what is confusing some people. If they are not showing for dbucholz then either he did not turn them on correctly or he is having some kind of machine specific problem (like he mucked with his preferences or is having video card issues). In either case, there does not appear to be anything obviously wrong with the plan. Just for clarification, preferences are always machine specific and they are not stored in your plans. You can even have different preferences for different user accounts on the same machine. Still haven't heard back from the original poster to see if he resolved his problems.

So many different things can cause this: - shadows can be turned off either through the camera dialog or through the toggle shadows toolbar button (or hot key). - shadows can be turned off and on for each camera view now. In prior versions, you could only modify them for all cameras. you may be trying to turn them on in your default camera and this will only affect any new camera views but not any that you already have. - the sun can be turned off or your default sun could be messed up or your sun angle you are using could be messed up. - you may have messed up your preferences by turning off "Use Enhanced Lighting" (there is a reason why this section is called "troubleshooting" and you really shouldn't change these settings unless working with tech support to diagnose video card issues.) - you could be having video card or driver issues. Also, I really hope you are not still using the X10 Beta like it says in your signature. If you are not using the latest update for X10, then all bets are off. You could post your plan and someone might be able to narrow this list down for you. If all else fails, you should contact tech support.

I did not look at your plan but from your description it sounds like you are sending views to layout that are linked to Saved Plan Views. If you change the saved plan view, then this will affect your layout view. Here are some ways to solve your problems: - You can stop using saved plan views by switching your Saved Plan View Control that appears in the default toolbar to "None". You can also do this in your default template so that new plans won't start in a saved plan view. - You can unlink a layout box from a saved plan view by opening the Layout Box Specification dialog and setting the Linked Saved Plan View combo box to "None". - You can learn how to use Saved Plan Views. If you use a different saved plan view for each layout view, you won't have to worry about accidently messing them up. More information about Saved Plan Views can be found in the reference manual or in this video: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/2421/saved-plan-views.html?playlist=100

It looks like your textures are turned on, I can see the roofing material in your posted image above. My guess is that it is related to your ambient light and/or your default sun settings (as mentioned by Chopsaw above). If you want more accurate help, you will probably need to post your plan so that someone can look into it more. Or, you could always contact tech support during normal business hours for more help. Raytrace views are not dependent on your video card (all of the processing is done on the CPU) but All other camera views are very dependent on your video card and the current driver. It is entirely possible that your problems are related to your video card (X9 has much higher video card demands than X4 did), but my best guess is that it is related to other settings instead.

In X10, the material list and the schedules now have a "find in plan" feature that will allow you to more easily locate objects in your plan. In prior versions, it took more manual work. One trick I used to use was to make a copy of the plan and remove objects until I found the one I wanted. The Delete Objects tool is good way of getting rid of lots of objects fast.

Currently, there is no setting to control this. In X9 and prior, if you opened a plan view from layout and you already had a plan view open, the program would automatically change all of the view settings to match what was sent to layout. In X10, if no open view matches the layout, we automatically open up a new view. This was done because we felt that changing the settings in an already open view was not a good thing to do. In X9, the program encouraged you to work in a single plan view and then constantly change the settings where X10 is supports working with multiple independent plan views open at the same time. Once you get used to X10, and start taking advantage of saved plan views, I think you will find the work flow is actually more efficient. If you find that this is not true, then you might want to make a feature request for a setting to make it work more like prior versions.

Yes, depending on the type of line or polyline you are working with. Simple lines and polylines can be split apart but the more complex ones can't (like the ones that represent 3D objects). You can split any line into two segments using the "Break Line" tool that appears on the edit toolbar or right-click menu. When you click on this tool, you might also notice that your edit toolbar changed giving you some new options. The "Complete Break" tool will allow you to split the line into separate pieces that can have different properties. You can also select any line within a polyline and use the "Disconnect Selected Edge" tool to separate it from the others.

I think he wants to turn off the labels for the layout boxes, not the labels in the views he is sending. Turn off the layer for the layout box labels on the layer set used by the layout document.

If you know of any sinks in our libraries that do not work correctly, please report these to tech support so that we can correct them. Just to be clear, moving the custom counter top is not necessary. You can just put the sinks in the plan as free standing fixtures and then move them into place over the cabinet.

Placing the sink outside of the cabinet means that it is not tied to the cabinet. It really has nothing to do with the custom counter.

A custom counter is not needed unless you don't want the shape of the automatic one.

Perhaps, but maybe you could just use the controls we already have. You could use two cabinets or one. If you are using two cabinets, you can customize the faces to remove the left or right stile to get the look you want. Then block them together if you want them to be treated as one cabinet. If you are using one cabinet, just place the sink free standing in the plan and drag it on top of the cabinet. In the picture below, the cabinet on the left is two separate cabinets each owning a sink. The cabinet on the right is one cabinet that only owns one sink and the other is a free standing sink. two sinks.plan

Open your window defaults and change your default stacking Level back to 0.

Unfortunately, your new tablet does not meet our minimum system requirements so it won't run any of our current software. Yes, you could get an older 32 bit version of our software (Chief X8 or Home Designer 2017) and that should run on your tablet, but then you might run into some other issues. First, the 32 bit OS will not allow the program to use more then 4GB of memory. If your tablet came with less then 4GB, it's probably not going to work very well for you. If it came with more then 4GB, the extra memory can't even be used. In either case, it will probably behave very poorly if you are trying to work with any large models. Our recommended system for Chief is that you have 16GB of memory (and more is always better). Also, keep in mind that you will not be able to work with any plans that you have created or modified on your work computer. Any plans saved in newer versions of our software can not be opened in any older versions. I suspect that you will find that a lot of other newer software won't run on your new tablet as well since there are not very many people using 32 bit Windows anymore. Since your tablet is new, you might want to see if you can either upgrade your OS or return it and get one that comes with 64 bit Windows and more memory.

You can use as many different door styles on a cabinet face as you like. The key is that you have to specify the unique door styles on the cabinet face items, not on the Door/Drawer panel which controls the default door style for the whole cabinet. If you make an architectural block out of multiple cabinets (or other objects), you need to tell the program to treat it as a single object and decide what type of schedule you want it to go into, You also need to tell the cabinet schedule to include "other" objects since architectural blocks are not base, wall, or full height cabinets.

I just wanted to post a follow-up so that everyone understands how seriously we take problems like this. We were able to find 3 cases where Scott used the "Send Report" button on the error message dialog from within the program. Unfortunately, after analyzing this data we determined that there is not enough information to diagnose the problem. The "Send Report" button is not a good substitute for reporting problems directly to tech support. It only contains some very low level program data and it does not contain any information from the plan that was open at the time of the problem or how we got there. The "Send Report" button only helps us find the actual bug in less than 5% of the cases. Not great but better than nothing. Sending a plan to tech support with the steps to a reproducible problem like this will help us find the bug in about 99.9% of the cases. At this point, we really can't do anything else unless Scott wants to give us an actual plan and the steps to reproduce the problem. In spite of all of our efforts, he has still not contacted tech support to do this.

I'm sorry to hear that you are having problems using our software. Unfortunately, you are not going to solve any of your problems by posting things like this on Chieftalk. If you are interested in solving your problems, helping us improve our software, or in helping other Chief users avoid these kinds of problems in the future, this is what you can do instead: - You should always report problems like this directly to tech support. I just checked and I could not find any reports for this problem. Tech support does not monitor this forum looking for problems. They are too busy answering phone calls and support tickets from the people that contact them directly. Posting rants on Chieftalk will not get their attention but it may result in one of the moderators removing your post. - More information about how to contact tech support can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/ - When you report problems to tech support, you need to provide them with enough information that we can reproduce the problem. In your post above, you have not provided nearly enough information to be useful. Tech support will need a plan that demonstrates the problem along with the EXACT steps needed to reproduce the problem. Without this information, we usually can't do much to solve the problem. - Some types of problems can't easily be reproduced by tech support because they are system related. Video cards and their specific drivers are a frequent source of these kinds of problems. Other operating system issues, file system issues, and conflicts with other software on your system can all lead to problems that are difficult for tech support to reproduce. In these cases, tech support will need to ask you for more detailed and specific information about your system to diagnose the problem. If tech support asks you for more information, please try to provide it to them otherwise we may not be able to help further. - If you are experiencing problems that you can't reproduce consistently, you should always use the "Send Report" button when it appears on the error message dialog box. This will give us some low level information about the problem that we can sometimes use to figure out what went wrong. It is not nearly as good as sending us a plan that demonstrates a reproducible problem, but it can help and it only takes the push of a button to do. - If you are not using the latest update, then you should always download and install it. Almost all of our updates include important bug fixes that could prevent these kinds of problems. - If you have not rebooted your system lately, you should always do this first. It's amazing how many strange and frustrating problems can disappear after you reboot your computer.

You can also use the Print->Center Sheet tool to get your drawing back on the page. And if your drawing still doesn't fit on the centered page, you might have a page scaling problem. Not a big deal if you don't ever print directly from plan views but it is sometimes nice to make sure your scale is correct so that your line weights and styles look correct when you turn on print preview.

My guess is that you have a video card/driver issue and Yusuf's suggestion will solve the problem. See this thread for more info:

The 2D plants are really just image objects (also known as "billboards"). They do not cast shadows in any of the rendering techniques (including the new PBR technique). They will cast shadows in ray trace views but these may or may not look very good depending on your camera angle relative to the sun angle. If your sun is basically perpendicular to the plant, the shadow will look just like a line instead of what you would expect and want. If you want more realistic shadows, your best bet is to use true 3D plant symbols. We have a library of 3D plants available for download that is available to all current SSA members. If you don't have SSA, you could always look for some that you could import as symbols from other sources on the web. If you decide to import some other 3D plants, be warned that not all of the stuff you can find on the web will look very good or perform very well. The 3D plants in our library have all been designed to work reasonably well with Chief.