Dermot

Start here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00705/understanding-line-weight-scaling.html

Most likely reasons why ceiling planes would not show in a camera view: - the layer they are on is turned off in the layer set being used in the camera view. - you are using the wrong camera type (full vs. floor). The floor specific cameras will not always show ceiling planes. - you do not have a well defined room. Ceilings are only built for rooms and if your walls are not connected or you have any "no room definition" walls, you will not have a room. - your room structure was modified to turn off the ceiling. You can specifically turn off ceilings for any room you want and you won't get ceilings if your room does not have a roof. There are probably a million other reasons that are less common. Your post is too vague to give you any more specific advise and everything else is just a random guess. If you want more specific help, you should post a plan with a saved camera that shows the problem. Or if all else fails, contact tech support. Also, on a side note, people might be more helpful if you stop yelling at them. Posting in all caps is generally considered the same as yelling on web forums.

Tech support was nice enough to point out that we already have a tech article that explains everything very nicely. The article also includes a link to the X8 Client Viewer that you can download and use for converting your legacy files. The tech article is here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00279/opening-legacy-files.html

FYI, you are not using the latest update. I highly recommend keeping current with the updates. There have been a number of important bug fixes that you don't have yet. For a full list of what was fixed, see these update notes: https://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/documentation/chief-architect-x10-update-notes.pdf To get the latest update, you can always use the "Download Program Updates" menu option under the Help menu. You can also use this link on our support page: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/updates.html

We already have a standalone product that will convert these old plans. It's called the X8 Client Viewer and it should still be available at no cost. We currently have no plans to develop another product to do the same thing.

First, do not turn off your angle snaps. This will only lead to further frustrations. You can specify the exact angle you want in the wall specification dialog and you should not get the warning indicators for off angled walls. You can also choose to turn off the warnings for any given wall once you are sure the angle is what you want. You can also setup any specific angles you want in your Allowed Angles in your Plan Defaults to draw plans at these angles without the warnings. This is the recommended thing to do if you are trying to design a building with one or more portions at some angle that is not one of the standard 15 or 7.5 degree angles.

X10 will only read plans that were written by version 10 and newer so you will first need to convert your V9.5 plans before you can open them in X10. If you have already upgraded to X10, you should contact tech support during normal business hours to see if they can provide you with a solution to convert your older files. All you really need to do is get something like the X8 Client Viewer (or any other version of Chief from V10 to X8) and you will be able to open these older plans and save them in a format that X10 will be able to read. If you have not upgraded yet, you should discuss this with our sales team to see what solutions they can provide. Since your plans are so old, you should expect to have to do some amount of manual cleanup. We have worked very hard to make sure that when you bring plans forward that they do so with very minimal changes but when you bring plans this old forward you will have to deal with all of the minor changes that have happed over all of the versions you missed.

One possible cause of this kind of problem is that there is an object in the plan that the program can't tell whether it is inside or outside of a room. We use the room's lights to shade all of the surfaces so if the program incorrectly thinks some surfaces are inside of the building they will appear too dark when viewed from outside. You can sometimes have the reverse problem where some surfaces appear too light when viewed from the inside. In any case, the best solution is to report these problems to us so that we can make improvements to our lighting algorithms. Please report any problems like this directly to our tech support team so that we can investigate them further. Discussing them on the Chieftalk forums is not the same as reporting them. Please include the plan with a saved camera view that demonstrates the problem along with an image that shows what you are seeing on your computer. Please be sure that you are always using the latest update before reporting any problems since it is possible that we have already fixed the problem.

As far as I know, you are mostly correct. Rich text does not use Text Styles. The layer mostly just controls whether or not the rich text object is displayed. It can also control the color of the text, but only if "Layer Color Text" is checked on the Appearance panel. Also, just as an FYI, you can control whether rich text or normal text is placed when you use the Leader Line tool in your preferences.

Please see this article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00795/displaying-and-printing-objects-that-exist-on-another-floor.html

I agree with Chop and Eric. Those look like wall coverings. You can add wall coverings in rooms, walls, or even in your wall defaults. You will need to look in all those places and remove the wall covering. Assuming that your refer shows up in your plan view, then it is probably on a layer that is not turned on in your camera view. Either you accidently turned it off or you switched to a layer set that doesn't have it turned on. You can figure out what layer the refer is on by selecting it in plan view and looking on the status bar or opening the dialog and looking at the layer panel. There are lots of other less likely possibilities such as setting the elevation to something crazy or painting it with an invisible material, but who knows. If you still can't figure it out, then you need to post your plan and I bet someone will be able to help you pretty quickly.

You might want to try changing the "Current Floor" defaults for the second floor and then use the "Reset to Defaults" tool under the main Edit menu.

Does your new room need a covered top separate from the main room? If the top is not covered, you can use the half-wall tool and specify the railing height on the Newels/Balusters panel as suggested above. If the top needs to be covered, you can use normal interior walls and then specify the room as a "shelf ceiling" and then lower the ceiling height to what you want. You can remove the base moldings by opening up the room specification and removing them for the whole room. If you need to remove them for just a few specific walls, you can mark those walls as "no room def" or you could convert your room moldings into molding polylines and adjust them manually.

Plan Footprints are really just as "live" as plan views are. You may have some minor issues with updates though and if you run into any problems the easiest solution is to close the footprint detail and then open it back up. Please note that I am not talking about using CAD Detail From View which is just a snapshot and will not update if you change your plan. You also have full control over everything that displays in the cad detail and can make it look exactly like a normal plan view if you like. I think it really comes down to whether or not you want to display your walls in your plot plan or if you want to just display the outline of the house. If you want to display just the outline, I think it is generally easier to use the Plan Footprint. You can also create an outline of your house using a room polyline but this polyline will not be "live" and you will have to modify it anytime you change any of your exterior walls. There are some other minor differences as well but mostly these come down to how you want to manage your different views. Another thing that may affect whether or not you want to use a Plan Footprint is if you have a multi-floor building with different shaped footprints on each floor. In this case, it might be easier to use an exterior room polyline for each and then merge them together instead of using the Plan Footprint since they can only be linked to a single floor.

The original poster is using X9 but the export picture tool should work the same in either version. If you are having any problems with exporting images in X10, then please try it again after you get the new update we posted today. If you are still having problems after that, then please report them to technical support so that we can look into them further. Please be sure to include information about things like what rendering technique you are using and what all of your export settings are (file type, image size, dpi, etc.). Including a sample plan with a saved camera representing the view you are trying to export would also be helpful. Please be sure to include all of your system information, like your OS version, video card, and driver info. You should always report any problems you are having directly to tech support and not just discuss them on the forums. Here is the link: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/

Have you tried using the Export Picture tool from within Chief? I would recommend that you try this first before anything else. You can specify the pixel size to generate as well as the resolution. As Graham pointed out, if you need a 30" image at 600 dpi, you will need to specify 18000 pixels for the width. You might also need to specify the height unless you want to have the image match the screen aspect ratio.

Make Best Fit will automatically generate enough 11" deep steps to reach the next level that are as close to the "ideal" riser height of 6.75" as the program can get. Looking at your picture, you may not be able to create a stairway that is as short as you want that will reach the next level and still meet typical code requirements. You can either make your tread depth shorter or remove some steps and use a larger riser height. By default, the program will not let you build a stairway with automatic heights unless the riser heights are less then 9". You can turn off the automatic heights and specify whatever riser height you want but your stair may not be very practical or legal.

My guess is that you are using X10 and you are sending a floor plan view that is linked to a saved plan view. Any changes to the saved plan view will affect your layout views if they are linked. You need to unlink them or create separate saved plan views for anything you want to send to layout. To unlink them, you can change the saved plan view to "none" using the drop down box on the toolbar before you send or you can unlink them in the layout box specification dialog box. To create a new saved plan, just use the "save plan view as" tool.

My guess is that your light is inside of the soffit. Soffits are basically 3D boxes so you will need to place your lights on top of the soffit if you want to see it. Another solution would be to use some other object that is not closed at the top. You could model this using two soffits (one for the bottom and one for the front) or something like an open molding polyline. Added lights will work in all the same views as a normal light fixture. If placed inside the soffit, you will have the same problem that you have with the fixture inside the soffit. Added lights work well for situations where you need to model a light source but you either don't have or need a fixture. Regardless of what kind of light you use, you may also run into the 8 light limit in X9. For standard render views, you are limited to having only 8 light sources turned on in your view at one time. If you have more then 8 lights, you will need to get creative with which lights are turned on, use a ray trace view, or use X10 which will allow you to use as many lights as you want.

FYI, this is just a quick update to address two issues that we felt were important. We are still planning on releasing a 20.2 update in the near future that will have a number of other improvements. If you are having any problems downloading and installing the update, then please contact our tech support department. If you are having any other issues in X10 that you did not report to our technical support team, then you should report them. It's unlikely that they will make it into the 20.2 update but we will try to get them into a future update if we can reproduce the problems.

Learn how "dynamic defaults" work in Chief and you can probably save yourself a lot of work. If all of the windows in the plan have their "Window Type" set to "Default", then all you need to do is change the default window to a different type and they will all automatically update. Just double click on the window tool to bring up the Window Defaults specification dialog box. Change the Window Type to one of the casement types. For things that do not have dynamic defaults, then using a method such as group selecting, match properties, or replace from library would all be good options.

First of all, let me remind everyone that you should not try to report bugs to us using this forum. Please see the forum guidelines here: Second of all, as Mick indicated, it's really not a bug since we designed the program to work this way. It's fairly common practice in architectural drawings to show door openings with dashed lines to indicate that they don't go all the way up to the ceiling. This new feature eliminates the need to manually draw these lines in. We also provided tools to force these lines to display or to turn them off for any particular situations that we could not account for. So, my question to you is, why don't you want to show these lines? Are there any ways we can improve the automatic behavior for some common situations?

Please contact our customer service department by phone or email. They will be more then happy to help you resolve your problems.

What you are describing is not something that happens often. I would recommend that you do a full uninstall and then reinstall. Before doing that, I would also do a full virus scan. If that does not work, then by all means contact our technical support team for further assistance.

I don't think this has anything to do with rendering techniques, shadows, video cards, or a lot of what was said in the above posts. It's all about the materials and how they are setup in the library symbols. All of the door panel symbols that are in the core libraries that ship with Chief are setup to use your Material Defaults. When you place one into a plan it should automatically use your "Doors (Interior)" and "Doors (Exterior)" material. The only thing that is probably confusing is where we get the material from when generating the library preview. In X9 and X10, we get the default materials from your default template plan that is setup for new plans in your preferences. In prior versions, we would get the materials from the current active plan. This caused some inconsistent behavior because the previews could show different materials depending on when they were last updated. Trying to keep them updated every time you activated a new plan led to performance issues. Since the library browser is really independent from all of your open plans we felt it was better to get the default materials from somewhere that was not changing frequently. Please note that if you create your own library symbols, your materials may be set to use a specific material instead of a default material. In this case, the library preview should always show you the specific material. If you find any problems with any of this, please feel free to contact our tech support team for more help.