Dermot

X9 can't read any plans older then V10. You will need to read them in with an older version of Chief (X8 would be good if you still have it installed) and then save them. Then you will be able to read them into X9. If you do not have an older version of Chief installed or available to install, you should contact tech support for more help.

Without a picture showing what the problem is, I can only make guesses. I don't know if tech support explained this to you, but you can control the size of the schedule images by changing the column width. If you select the schedule, you will get edit handles at the top for every column. If you make the column width for the image smaller, it will also make the row heights smaller. The only other way that I know of to control the row height is to change your text style to use a smaller font. You can also make your other columns smaller by changing their widths. Keep in mind that you can also change the column headers so that you can use shorter headers or abbreviations to make your columns narrower. You can also remove any columns that you don't really need. Currently, there is no easy way to organize a schedule differently so that you can keep a large image and then have rows combine or wrap to avoid lots of empty space.

Your schedule is not empty. The text is really small because it is set to 1/8".

"...because I am still working in Chief Architect X8" If you already have SSA, you can get X9 for free and it should already be in your digital locker. If you don't have SSA, I would encourage you to renew it. There are a number of very useful features in X9 that you are probably missing out on.

I hate to be captain obvious, but I think it's because you are importing too much data. Most of the symbols that ship with Chief Architect have been designed by our own graphic designers so that they will look good in Chief and still perform reasonably well. If you are importing symbols from other sources, they might not have been designed with these goals. The symbol designer's main goal may have been to create the most detailed model possible without any regard to how that would impact the performance of a program designed to model a whole house. As a general rule, the more surfaces a symbol has the more it will slow down the program. If you would like to get any idea of how detailed a symbol is, drop it into a blank plan and open up a camera view. The program will list the number of surfaces generated on the status bar. There is no magic limit on the number of surfaces that will start slowing down the program because every machine will perform differently and you have to look at the whole model and not just the one symbol. There are only a few obvious choices here, deal with the slowdowns, upgrade your hardware, or don't import so much data. Upgrading your hardware might only be a temporary solution because if you keep importing lots of data you will bring even the most expensive hardware available down to a crawl. Personally, I recommend being more judicious about which symbols you import and use. Often times there are a variety of options available and you can find a symbol that performs much better then others that will still look fine. Only you can decide if the slowdowns are worth it to get the symbol you really want. Keep in mind that this is just general information. There are cases where people have actual hardware and system problems that can cause unnecessary slowdowns. If you need additional help about your specific problems, you can always contact technical support.

See the attached plan and picture. It has a very simple wall cabinet with a molding that was added through the specification dialog. I also modified the bottom separation to provide a blank area to attach the molding. I adjusted the molding position and size to get the look I wanted. The molding I chose was just one of the stock ones that ships in the library. You can create your own molding profiles in a plan or cad detail and add them to the library as needed. I placed the two boxes on the sides to prevent the molding from wrapping around the sides. They are just wall cabinets with no face items. It is not always easy to control where cabinet moldings wrap because the program does this automatically. For this reason, many people will create manual molding polylines and just bump them up against the cabinet face. Molding polylines will give you more control but they are more work and they will not stay with the cabinet unless you block them together. The basics for doing this are not really that difficult. Once you understand how to add moldings and modify cabinet faces and boxes you should be able to create an unlimited number of custom cabinet designs. cab with molding.plan

You might want to play around with using cabinet moldings. They have the advantage of being part of the cabinet so that they will stay with it when the cabinet is moved. You can create any molding profile you like, including just a rectangle, and extrude this shape around the cabinet. You can then adjust the vertical position as needed. More information about cabinet moldings can be found in the reference manual and training videos.

Just to clarify a bit... If you are having a problem with your landings not displaying their balusters, newel posts, or panels in camera views, you probably need to turn on your Millwork layer. This only seems to be a problem if you are using library symbols for the balusters, newels, or panels. Thank you for reporting this problem to tech support. It is now on our todo list.

Open the "General Plan Defaults" dialog box. Check or uncheck "Show Pitch as Degrees" You can get to the "General Plan Defaults" by double-clicking on the Select Objects (arrow) tool. You can change this in either imperial or metric plans.

Have you tried rebooting your computer? The very first thing to try when you get strange behavior is to exit and restart the program. If that doesn't solve the problem, often a reboot will. If that fails, then I would try the uninstall and reinstall. If nothing works, then I would try contacting tech support.

I'm glad you found a solution to your problem. Maybe you could post a picture of the final result so I could understand what it is you are trying to model. Also, I would bet that there are probably several good feature requests that you could come up with as a result of your exercise. I would encourage you to send those in to us or post them on the suggestions forum so that we can get them into our database.

"I am just using the railings of the landing for a workaround to do something a normal rail will not do. " OK, I'll bite. What can a landing railing do that a wall railing can't do? I can think of a number of things that the wall railings can do that landing railings can't. If you really want a dumb railing, just make one in a blank plan and then use the convert to symbol tool.

"AutoCad has something similar with their DWG TrueView which permits any file conversion from one version to another. " You can do that in Chief too. Just use the export DWG tool and choose which version of autocad you want to use. As long as you choose a compatible autocad version, then a person using an older version of Chief should be able to import the DWG and view it. Unfortunately, this will just be a "dumb" cad file with none of the smarts that are built into the actual Chief model so you won't be able to create any camera views or modify any of the original objects used to generate it. As noted above, the free Chief Architect Viewer would allow you to actually view files from any version of Chief Architect from X9 back to Version 10. You won't be able to modify the model but you could at least create camera views.

You don't need to use the old cabinet mounted outlets that we had in X8 and prior. They didn't work very well and had lots of problems. In X9, you should be able to place any wall mounted electrical object (outlet, switch, or light) directly onto any cabinet side. It should attach to the side just like it will attach to a wall. And even better, if you move the cabinet, it will move with it. If you are having problems placing an outlet on a cabinet, you might want to try placing it in a camera view instead of a plan view. If you still have problems, then you might want to post a plan or picture showing the problem situation. If all else fails, you may want to contact tech support for more help.

I would use a cabinet molding.

The landing top thickness and overhang come from the stair or ramp it's connected to. If it's not connected to anything, you can't change it.

FYI, you do not need to resend a view to layout to change it. If you open up the Layout Box Specification dialog, you can change the view type from live view to plot lines or vice versa. There are lots of other settings in the Layout Box dialog and some special edit tools that work with the Layout Box that allow you to make lots of changes without having to resend your views.

I am 99% sure that the weird clipping is a video card/driver issue. You may want to check out this help article for more information: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00106/troubleshooting-3d-camera-view-display-problems.html If that does not help, then I would recommend contacting technical support for more help. There are at least a couple of other issues going on in your plan though: - You are getting z-fighting on your floor. This is probably because you have ceramic tile in your floor structure and it is showing through your wood floor that is in the surface layer. - You are getting some strange shadows in your interior views. This is because you have no lighting and the default light which is normally created against your ceiling is inside of your custom roof plane. You can fix this by turning off the shadows or by adding your own light source that is below the roof plane.

I'm a little bit unclear on your problem... If the problem is that when you try to place one library object on top of another, the program always wants to select the first one instead of placing the new one, then you should try placing the object to the side and then move it on top of the first one. Sometimes holding down the control key helps with this because it disables the bumping/pushing and allows you to move the object freely. If the problem is that the objects won't display in the correct order in your plan view, you can control this with the Draw Order Edit Tools. Basically, you can move any object into any drawing group so that it draws in front or behind other objects. You can also move objects around within their group. More info can be found in the reference manual.

Your new text will always go onto the layer that is specified by your active text defaults. You can either change your text defaults to create text on a different layer or you can move it to a new layer after you create it. If you are just looking for a quick way to change your text defaults before placing text, all you need to do is double-click on the text tool to open up the text defaults dialog box and specify the layer you want it to go on. If you are looking for a more efficient way to work, then I would recommend learning more about your active defaults and setting up annotation sets in order to quickly change them.

It doesn't matter what I think. If you think it's a bug, or even if you think it should work differently, then you should probably go ahead and report it to us. I actually think it's a bug too because previews should almost always update when you make changes. Isn't that the whole point of previews? We might not get to it right away but we will certainly add it to our todo list.

Currently, dimensions can only locate a limited number of things within in wall. To the best of my knowledge, they are the following: - Either the inside or outside surface. - The wall center. - The exterior side of the main wall layer. This is usually the outside of the framing but this can be customized within the Wall Type Definition to be another layer if you want. These cases should handle the most common situations easily. In theory, it might be nice if you could always locate any wall layer but in practice I don't think this really comes up that much. If you run into situations where you need additional control over your wall dimensions, please submit a feature request to us. Please be sure to include very clear descriptions and pictures letting us know exactly what you want.

Automatic exterior dimensions can be set to locate wall surfaces or the wall main layer but they can't be setup to locate both automatically. You should not have to draw any extra cad lines to dimension to them though. You should be able to add a new a new dimension mark to the wall surfaces by just dragging the proper edit handle to the wall corners. In the picture below, I just selected the dimension line and then dragged the diamond handle that appears near where you clicked out to the wall corner. Repeat as needed.

Your countertop is flush with the edge of your cabinet. If you select the cabinet in an elevation view you will see where the cabinet stops. Also, you can turn on the layer for cabinet module lines to see the edges of each cabinet in vector views.

It's really not a feature but it is something we have to deal with because of technical limitations related to producing high resolution camera views in real time. It's also not some big secret we are trying to hide. There is a whole section in the Reference Manual about "Keeping Layout Views Current" where this issue is mentioned. There is also the help article that I posted above.