Dermot

This is exactly why you should keep your subscription. Your subscription includes free technical support which will be your best option for this kind of problem. There are way too many things that could be causing the problem for people on the forums to help you. My best guess is that it is a system problem but there is no way I can know for sure. Technical support is trained to diagnose these things and can usually get you back up and running faster. Give them a call if you haven't already.

We have no interest in paying anyone to show us how to use our program to do things it was not designed to. If other people have an interest, they are free to contact you. We are always interested in improving our program to meet the needs of our highly valued customers. The best way to get those improvements is to submit your suggestions to us on the suggestions forum or through email.

If you are using Chief X7 and he is using HD Pro 2017 ( the most current version), you will not be able to read his plans. There is no way to save to an older version in any of our products. Here are some things you could do: - have him export as DWG which you will then be able to read. This will be a CAD drawing though and not an actual Chief plan. - you could view his plans using the free X8 Viewer or X8 Trial Version but you won't be able to make any changes. - you could upgrade to X8. If you have SSA, this is free.

You can add a backdrop to your library by using File->Import->Import Backdrop from the menu. You can also add things to the User Catalog by right-clicking on the folder name and choosing New. You will probably get better help using the Hometalk forum which will have more Home Designer users: https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/

Have you tried rebooting your computer? Sometimes the windows clipboard gets in a bad state and a reboot will fix it. If it's not that, it might be that you are putting something on the clipboard that Chief can't read.

Not exactly. You will be able to use straight custom panels on stairs in X9. The ability to curve a custom symbol panel while sloping it to follow a stair is highly unlikely to be available in X9.

In X9, you will be able to include top and bottom rails with panel symbols. This should make creating this style of railing a bit easier.

A: How do you rotate a symbol? You use the rotate buttons in the Open Symbol dialog. First type in the angle you want to rotate and then click the appropriate button. If you turn on the x-y-z axis indicators, you will probably find this less confusing. B: How do you make a large OBJ/SKP symbol work? I don't think the file format matters. If you are having performance problems with a large symbol, you should replace it with a smaller one. Anyone can post anything they want online but that doesn't make it perform well in Chief. One thing that can help you determine whether or not the symbol will perform well is to pay attention to the number of surfaces listed in the Open Symbol dialog. As a general rule, the more surfaces it has, the slower it will perform.

As far as I can tell, both "Restrict Floor Camera to Room" and "Camera Bumps Off Walls" work the same in X8 as they did in prior versions of the program. "Restrict Floor Camera to Room" does not affect any camera movements and it never did. It controls whether or not any 3D data outside of the room is generated for the camera view. See Glenn's post above for some more info. "Camera Bumps Off Walls" only controls camera movements when using some of the camera tools. If you move the camera forward or use the camera "dolly" tools, the camera will detect walls and bounce off of them. It does not affect other camera movement tools such as "orbit" or "pan". As far as the original poster's issue, I suspect that this is related to the changes made to zooming in X8. As Michael pointed out above, you can change to "Perspective Crop Mode" to more closely match how zooming worked in earlier versions.

You should probably check out the auto story pole dimension defaults. Once you set these up, it should be a lot less work.

All of the text for the markers can be overridden to say whatever you like. See picture below. I would encourage you to take another look at the auto story pole dimension. It should be able to do what you want. If you can't get it to do what you want, then you should send in a feature request asking for the changes you need.

Lighting is based on what room the camera is in. If you move the camera so that it is located in another room, the lighting does not update right away. Once you make a change, the lighting will then update.

Basketball was invented a thousand years before James Naismith was even born. http://nbahoopsonline.com/Articles/2008-09/Mesoamericanball.html

As noted by several people already, most of the time this problem is because the lintel thickness is thinner then the sheathing layer and you have a recessed window. Currently, the program does not know how to cut the sheathing out for the lintel extensions. You can usually solve this problem by making your window not recessed, you lintel thicker, or your sheathing thinner.

The alpha test phase for X9 is already over. We are currently in our first phase of beta testing. Typically, we start the first phase with a smaller group of people that have beta tested with us in the past and know how the program works. We usually expand this team for the second phase when we have fixed the majority of issues that have been found. If you are interested in being part of the second phase, you will need to meet some basic requirements. You will need to have current SSA that is not going to expire soon. You will need to sign an NDA that says you won't talk about the beta to people outside of the beta team. You will need to have time to test and be willing to report any problems that you find. You need to be able to follow basic instructions and have some patience. (Those last two aren't really requirements but they sure help). If you would like to participate, you can email a request to beta@chiefarchitect.com. You may not receive a reply back until we are ready to start phase 2. The final phase of our beta testing is the public beta. The public beta is available to anyone who is current with SSA. That should be available sometime in January, 2017?

Just a reminder from our forum guidelines: That said, we have received a number of reports of random crashing on Macs after people have upgraded to Sierra. Only some people appear to have the problems but they seem to be having them frequently. We are looking into this and making this a top priority. It is possible that we may be able to do something on our end and release a patch that prevents the crashing. For now, I would recommend that you don't get Sierra if you haven't already got it. If you do have Sierra and are experiencing these problems, you may want to try working with bumping/pushing turned off. This may or may not solve the problems, but it might also be a more difficult way to work. The only other thing would be to rollback your OS. As always, if you are ever experiencing any crashes for any reason, I would encourage you to contact technical support: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/#contact

How the auto save and archive files work will depend on your preference settings. You can archive files hourly, daily, or only keep the most recent one. More information on how this works can be found in the help files that were installed with the version you have. You can call tech support for more help but there will be a charge if you are not currently on SSA.

Call tech support on Monday during normal business hours. This kind of problem is normally very specific to a computer system. It's highly unlikely that anyone can help you on this forum. Tech support will usually try all of the most common things first but will have to dig deeper in some cases.

Currently, we only draw the stairs below if they are in a room. You could also create a room with invisible walls to show your outside stairs.

This works better in X8. The room dimensions are both rounding the same now. You might want to consider upgrading.

The plan you have attached is empty. A zip file that's only 164 bytes can't have anything in it. My guess is that you had the plan open when you tried to zip it. You may want to try reposting the plan to get a better answer then a random guess. There is a possibility that your rooms are not really the same size. There is also a possibility that this is something that works better in X8 then it does in X5. There is also a possibility that this is something that the program needs to handle better. No one is going to know for sure unless you post the plan.

The original poster's problem was that she was getting unwanted wall pieces being generated underneath the "follow stair" railings in the open below rooms. She was still using 18.1 and this was a bug that we fixed in 18.3. I have no idea if this is the exact same problem that today's poster is running into.

I believe this was a bug that was fixed in the 18.3 update. If you are not using the latest update, you should be. If you are using 18.3 and you are still seeing problems, you should report this to technical support.

Because all automatic behavior should have an off switch.

You should not turn off the option to automatically connect island rooms. An "island" room is created when you have an interior room that is not connected to any exterior walls. If they are not connected, you will very likely have problems with things like room definitions, floors, ceilings, moldings, and more. If you don't like where the program puts the automatic room dividers, then you can manually draw your own. Once you have drawn your own, you can then delete the automatic one and it should not come back. If you don't want to see the room dividers, then just turn off the layer. As always, if you have any problems with this, I would recommend you contact technical support for more help.