Dermot

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.

See if this knowledge base article helps. If not, I would recommend that you contact tech support. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03064/live-views-on-layout-appear-blurry.html

I don't believe this is possible. I would recommend that you contact technical support for more help.

Yes. Try the following: - Create a new plan and draw a single wall. - Place a switch on the wall and then select it. - Use the Open Symbol tool. - Go to the Options panel and change it from "Wall Mounted" to "Floor Mounted". - Use the Add to Library tool to add your new switch to your user library. Anytime you need to place a switch that is not connected to a wall, use your new floor mounted one from your user library. You can also create your own custom toolbar button to place your switch using a "Place Library Object" button.

Ronald, I believe your particular problem is related to your video card. Unfortunately, it looks like updating the drivers does not solve this particular problem. One possible solution would be to adjust your Render Preferences and turn your Hardware Edge Smoothing to either High or None. We were only able to repro this problem on one machine with this setting on Low.

You can edit stair sections separately by selecting the stair section while holding down either the control key or shift key. You can tell that you are editing only one section when the stair dialog only lists the one section instead of all of the connected ones. By default the program will try to keep the start and end heights the same for T-shaped stair configurations. This will not work well when you have two different heights. You can override this behavior by turning off the automatic heights when needed. You should be able to draw the existing stair using the automatic heights and then turn them off for the new section to specify whatever start and end height you need.

"I don't want line weights displayed but I do want the line type displayed correctly." As far as I know, the only way to show the line style the way that it will actually print is to either turn on Line Weights or Print Preview. What is surprising to me is that, as far as I know, no one has ever asked for this even though it seems like this might be a good way to work. Glenn's work around of setting up a layer set with all your line weights set to 1 would probably work for you but I doubt you would want to use this layer set when printing or sending to layout. Regarding dimension and label sizes, the preference settings shown in the 3rd post will let you specify a minimum size for your dimensions and labels shown on the screen. This allows you to zoom way out and still be able to see and modify your dimensions which can be very useful. What might not be so obvious is that there is also a maximum size for dimensions shown on the screen. This is useful for when you zoom way in so that you can still use your dimensions. I don't think there is a way to modify the max size or turn it off unless you are in Print Preview mode. If you would like the program to work differently, then you should probably send in an actual feature request.

Try toggling the tool for showing line weights. This tool also affects the line style display.

I think this depends on how the cad file was setup. If the objects you are importing are using "by layer", then you can use the Advanced Layer Mapping tool in the Import Drawing Wizard to map them to whatever Chief layers you like. This should give you fairly good control over what layers the objects will be assigned to and what they look like in Chief. If the objects are using "by object", then they will come in using whatever color the original designer thought they needed to be. Currently, there is no way to override this at import time. Seems like the ability to automatically reset imported objects to use "by layer" might be a useful feature. As far as I know, no one has ever asked for this.

I have not heard of any problems with this tool. I just tried it and it works fine for me. Did you select all of the layer sets that you want to import? When you get the Import Layer Sets dialog box, you need to either shift-click or control-click all of the layer sets that you want to import otherwise you will probably only import the currently selected one. If this is still not working for you then you probably need to contact tech support for more help. They will need more info from you describing exactly what steps you are doing and what windows you have open at the time you are doing it.

This is mostly likely the result of video card or driver issues. See this tech article regarding these kind of issues: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00106/troubleshooting-3d-camera-view-display-problems.html If this does not help you solve your problems, then you should contact technical support on Monday.

As already mentioned, we don't have 24/7 tech support. We are just not that big of a company and we don't believe in outsourcing our tech support. If we did, you would probably get far worse tech support then you do now. Also, I don't work on weekends or respond to direct requests on Chieftalk. Of course, by posting this on a Sunday, you know that this is not entirely true. As far as your issue is concerned, what you are showing on your screen makes no sense to me. You are obviously in a bad state. The layer set drop down on your main toolbar should always match what shows in either the ALDO or the normal LDO. If exiting Chief and rebooting the computer does not magically fix the problem, then you will need to send your plan into technical support so that we can diagnose what is going on. It will probably take a developer working within the debugger to see what is really going on under the hood.

By default, any camera that is "active" will always display in plan view even if the layer is turned off. This is so you can tell where the camera is and make modifications to it directly from plan views. You can disable this feature using Eric's suggestion of turning off "Always Display Active Cameras". If your only concern is sending a plan to someone else and them getting confused by all the cameras, just turning off the camera's layer is probably all you need to do. When they open the plan, there will not be any active cameras so it's pretty much a non-issue. For those of you who like to bring your old templates forward, you can always see what the default current system layer names are by using the Reset Names button on the Layer Display Options dialog.

I hate to sound like Captain Obvious here but the short answer is because no one asked us to. I just searched our internal database and I could not find any reports of anyone ever asking us to do this. People ask us to do lots of things, and asking doesn't guarantee we will get to it anytime soon, but not asking probably means it's not ever going to happen. Please remember that discussing something on this forum is not the same as making an actual feature request or reporting a bug to us. We don't have anyone here who's job it is to read every post. Sometimes people like myself will read random posts and comment on them when we have extra time. We also have moderators who look for forum issues (like spam) but not program issues. If you want to report a problem to us, you should always contact technical support. If you want to make a feature request, you should make a post on the suggestions forum here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/

I have not heard of anyone else having any problems like this. If you create a new layer in one layer set, it should show up in every other layer set, always. And what exactly to you mean by it showing up "corrupted"? I would highly recommend that you work with tech support regarding these issues. They will need a sample plan that demonstrates the problem and the exact steps you are using to see the problems. For example, there are several different ways to create new layers so you need to be very clear about explaining what you are doing.

Please read my answers regarding bringing you older plans forward on your other post here: Just to clarify, you can run a 32 bit application on a 64 bit OS. You can't run a 64 bit application on a 32 bit OS. This does not mean that you will have much luck trying to run V9.5 on a newer system though. There are lots of other compatibility issues mostly with things like hardware lock and video card drivers. If you do a search on this forum, you should be able to find some posts related to running older versions on Windows 7. I know some people were somewhat successful at getting them to work but maybe not with any versions as old as V9.5. Personally, I wouldn't even try. If you are determined not to upgrade, then you would probably have more luck finding an older computer that is still running an older version of Windows on Ebay.

"Do I have to buy it again or can I use it as is as long as I want?" You will be able to use X9 as long as you want to. This is assuming that you have a computer that will still run it. We can't do much to make old software run on newer computer systems (that's the job of the OS) and we can't do anything to make sure your old computer will run forever. The only thing that stops in 12 months is your first year of SSA. The SSA program includes free upgrades, training videos, technical support, and bonus library content. More info about the SSA program can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/ssa/ "And to make it worse, the new Chief won't load my 9.5 projects." X9 will only read plan files that were written by version 10 and newer. If you decide to purchase X9, tech support should be able to provide you with a solution to convert your older files though. All you really need to do is get 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 X9 will be able to read. Since they 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 these plans forward you will have to deal with all of the minor changes that have happed over the 10 versions you missed.

That feature is not new in X9. My guess is that you started with a plan or template that was pretty old. It's been a long time since the default was set to 4 panels.

OK, I'm a little confused, why do you want to display insulation in a railing? This is not something I have seen before. Currently, normal railings do not display the information for the wall type. Solid railings (or half walls) will display the wall type. In a normal railing, the wall type is mostly used for situations where your railing creates a portion of a wall either above or below the railing and normally does not display in plan view. Normal railings can display the railing details though. If you want to include a fill style for the railing components you can do this by changing the fill style in the Plan Display section of the Newel/Baluster panel of the Railing Specification dialog. You can also use a wall hatch on a railing. There are no defaults for the wall hatch tool. If you need to change the fill style for your wall hatching, just place them all and then marque select them to change them all at once. Also, the plan you posted has the "Walls, Layers" layer turned off in display options. Even normal wall types will not display fill styles when the wall layers are turned off.