Dermot

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.

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.