Dermot

We believe the problem is the virus protection software, not Chief. We are working with them to try and correct the problem. If you need additional help, please feel free to contact tech support.

CAModel is one of Chief's DLLs that is needed to run the program. Try uninstalling Chief and then reinstalling it. If that does not solve your problem, then you will probably need to contact tech support tomorrow during normal business hours.

Look at the schedule in your original plan to see if the info displayed for w03 and w04 is actually the same. Schedules will only group objects based on the information displayed in the schedule. If the objects have the same data for all columns displayed, then they should be grouped together. If any of the data for any column is different, then the objects won't be grouped. The only exceptions to this rule are the schedule number and if you are displaying any previews in the schedule. If all else fails, you may wish to post the original plan or contact technical support for more help.

My best guess is that your footing lines are on a locked layer and this is why you can't select them and move them. If this is not the case, then you should probably post your plan and I bet someone could figure it out pretty quickly. If all else fails, you can always contact tech support for more help. Regardless, I think you are much better off working in the actual model rather than converting it into cad. That way you can keep your elevations and cross sections live and don't have to worry about trying to modify all of the cad or keeping it up to date. If you move your footing in your cad detail, then you will still have to update the display in any other views that might need to show the same footings. If you modify the model instead, then all of your views will be correct without having to keep doing this error prone work. You can adjust the size of the footing in the wall specification dialog. You can even offset it sideways when needed. If you need to extend the footing out past the end of a wall, then you can just add a wall break and make the end section invisible (yes, invisible walls can have visible footings). Should only take about 10 seconds. As far as your earlier problems with top plates and roof blocking, I have no idea why you were not getting the results you expected but I am fairly confident that you could have also solved them in the model rather then having to convert it into a cad detail.

These are the requirements for the Chief Architect 3D Viewer: More information about the 3D Viewer can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/3d-viewer/ You should probably contact our sales/customer service to see if you purchased a legal version of X8 that can be transferred to you. If so, then you should be able to purchase SSA which will have the added benefit of letting you get the latest version, X9 as part of the service. If not, then they can discuss your other options.

Your deck floor structure has no planking. You need to have a layer for the planks and the joists for the program to build your deck structure. You should correct this in your Deck Room Type Defaults.

Regarding the sink problem, the Countertop Corner Treatment settings do not affect any holes in the countertop. The sink hole comes from the cad block for the sink symbol. It was set to have a beveled inside corner by the symbol designer when it was built. It is possible to change this but the process is not trivial. Basically, you will have to create your own sink symbol using a custom cad block that contains the sink hole that you want. Regarding the cabinet side/back panel, when using an inset panel you can set the panel thickness to be whatever you want . You need to change the thickness on the Accessories panel of the Cabinet Specification dialog from 3/4" to 1/2" to see the 1/4" set back.

There are two drop downs on the default toolbar configuration that ships with the program. The one on the left is for the current layer set and the one on the right is for the current annotation set. You can always tell which one is which by hovering over the toolbar until you get the pop-up hint. It sounds like the template plan you are using has only one annotation set. You can create new annotation sets or import annotation sets from other plans. The real question is "why does your default template have only one annotation set?" If you are using Chief Architect Premier, the default template has several annotation sets already available. If you migrate your template plans forward from an older version, you may not have these annotation sets. You can also manually modify your default template to add or remove annotation sets. Without knowing more about what product you are using and what you have already done, I can only make guesses. There is a lot of information about this in the training videos and through the program help. If all else fails, you may want to contact technical support during normal business hours.

As long as your shelves only need to be rectangular in shape, I would use the cabinet shelf tool. Cabinet shelves can have molding added to them which gives you ability to add various edge profiles to them. If you need a more free form shape, I would probably use a custom counter top instead. If you need to show some kind of support, you can always place brackets under them. You can also block the shelf and brackets together if you want to treat them like a single object.

You can change the number of vertical lites to adjust the height. If the number of vertical lites is 2, the height will be 1/2 the window height. If the number of vertical lites is 3, the height will be 1/3 the window height. If the number of vertical lites is 4, the height will be 1/4 the window height. etc.

We use laptops for all of our trade shows and training computers. You can review our minimum and recommended system requirements here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html My personal preference would be to get one with an Intel I7 multi-core processor (7th or 8th gen), 16 GB of ram or more, an SSD drive, and a GeForce video card with a minimum of 4 GB of card memory (the 1070 with 8 GB looks like a pretty nice card), and as large of a screen as you are willing to haul around.

To be honest, I have never worked with auto rebuild turned off and would never encourage anyone to. I would also be surprised if turning this off really made much of a difference in speed. Chances are that if you are experiencing slow downs with a particular plan that turning this off will not make much of a difference. You may want to look more into what is slowing down your plan instead. The bottom line is that if you are going to work with it off, you should get used to the icon. All it's doing is telling you that you need to do a BFC which you can do manually anytime you want to make sure the model is up to date. I would also recommend that you never turn off your behavior indicators. If you do, you will miss all of the useful things that the program will tell you which can avoid lots of confusion.

It's going to come back any time you make a change that causes the walls, floors and ceilings to be invalid. This includes modifying any walls, rooms, ceilings, roofs, or anything else that modifies one of them because it is attached to it in some way. Basically, it will come back on anytime you change almost anything. You can make it go away and stay away by turning on Auto Rebuild Walls/Floors/Ceilings in your 3D View Defaults dialog. Was there some reason that you turned it off to begin with?

Did you report it? As far as I can tell, no one has reported this problem to us. If it's bothering you, then you should report it to tech support otherwise you should not expect it to change.

Although it is recommended that you stay current with our updates, I consider this one pretty optional. The only thing we changed with this update is the wording related to deactivating your license. The old wording was confusing for some of our rental customers who were concerned that they were still being billed after they "deactivated" their license.

Sometimes we fix problems but our fix is incomplete because we only fixed the problems we saw and not the ones you saw. This is another reason why reporting problems to tech support is so important. The good news is that we were able to identify some problems with the edit area tool dealing specifically with electrical objects attached to walls. We are working on a fix for this but I want to be sure that it is 100% fixed. If you report your specific problems to us, then we can be more confident that our fixes will solve them.

I'm sorry but it doesn't work this way. Discussing problems on Chieftalk is not the same as reporting problems, even if you are discussing them with me. I often post on this forum when I don't have any access to the program or our internal databases. I don't have time to follow up with people to get their system information, sample plans and exact steps to repro their problems. If I was to spend all of my time reading Chieftalk and reporting bugs for people, I wouldn't be able to spend much time actually fixing them. If you think the problem is something that needs to be fixed, then you need to report it to tech support.

Have you tried turning on print preview mode or show line weights? We don't display line styles on the screen the same way that it will print unless you turn on print preview or show line weights. Also, as far as what displays in a normal plan view, you should use the page setup tool to set your plan scale to match what you want to print it as if you want to see it accurately. If the line styles on the screen do not match what prints out in a pdf while you are in print preview mode, then you should probably report this to tech support.

For most video cards, you will probably see very little difference in performance between setting your hardware edge smoothing to High instead of Low and it will probably make your camera views look better. For anyone else that is still seeing problems with extra or missing elevation labels, I would encourage you to report these problems to tech support.

What kind of graphics card do you have? We have seen some people have this problem because they are using a particular graphics card that has a bug in the driver. The solution for these people was to adjust the Hardware Edge Smoothing in the Render Preferences. Try changing it from Low to any other setting to see if the problem will go away. If not, then I would suggest you continue working with tech support.

If you think it's a bug, then you should report it to tech support. As a general rule, you shouldn't expect bugs to get fixed if you don't report them to us. Keep in mind that discussing it on Chieftalk is NOT the same as reporting it. Regarding Alan's solution, in my opinion, this is not a good solution. Basically, by doing a view to cad detail you are converting all of your "smart" electrical objects into simple cad objects. You have then lost all of the attributes that actually make them electrical objects. A better solution is to use the reverse plan tool. If you still want to use the edit area tool, I think it works better if you reflect about a line that is completely off to the side of what you are reflecting. It looks like the program is only getting confused when you are reflecting the plan around the center of the drawing. If needed, you can also use edit area to move the drawing back into the position you want.

Arielle, Your question is not clear. This is an old post filled with a lot of misinformation so you should probably disregard most of it. You need to be more specific about what you are trying to import, what you are trying to do with it, and what problems you are having. Chief Architect can import both 2D and 3D DXF and DWG files. 2D files can be imported as simple CAD drawings and 3D files can be imported as symbols. Drawings containing terrain information can also be imported and converted directly into Chief as terrain data. 2D drawings can also be converted into actual Chief models using the CAD to Walls tool but there are a number of limitations. For example, your drawings need to be pretty simple and things should be on proper layers for Chief to do this conversion. For some people, it is just easier to trace over the drawing rather then setup the CAD to Walls to work correctly. Almost any 3D data can be imported and used as a symbol within the program. There is no way to convert from another program's 3D model into an actual Chief model though.

Are you basing that opinion on your experiences with prior versions or with X9? We actually improved the library search engine for X9. See notes below from the What's New in X9 documentation: - Library Search Improvements. Enhanced search algorithm more reliably finds results by prioritizing results through better word matching and includes folders in search results; use quotes to search for specific phrases or words. If you are still having problems finding what you want in X9, you should let us know by reporting these problems to our tech support team.

I just figured out the issue of the molding between the rooms is because it's a actually a mirror. Sorry about the confusion.

You can control the number of treads/risers in the stair specification dialog. If it's set to be automatic, then the program will calculate how many are needed for the given height based on the length you have drawn. If you have locked the number of treads, then you will get the same number of steps regardless of the length or height. I can't tell exactly what is going on with your stair without looking at your plan. Room moldings will pretty much ignore stairs. If you need to show moldings along a stairs or landings, you will probably have to draw them yourself using the molding polyline tools. You can also turn on the stair stringer/trim against the wall and that may give you the look you want. I have no idea what is going on with your room moldings between the two rooms. If you need help with that, you probably need to post your plan. That would probably be better in a separate thread though since it looks like it has nothing to do with your stair issues. I would encourage you to make new threads whenever you have questions that are not related to the original topic. For example, the trailer question really doesn't have anything to do with your questions about stairs. It's also a good idea to make sure the title of your thread title describes the problem as clearly as you can. If someone in the future is looking for help on stairs, there is a good chance they won't look at this thread.