Dermot

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.

Yes, report this to tech support on Monday. Basically, the program is crashing but recovering (that is what the error message means). It may be the result of a system problem or something that you are doing that is not common but either way we would like to know about it. You should always report these types of problems to tech support so that we can make changes to the program to prevent this from happening in the future. Also, tech support can usually find a solution for you to avoid this problem for now.

Yes. You just need to open the ramp specification dialog and find the plan display options. What you can't do is have the program automatically create a handrail against the wall (instead of a full railing) like stairs will do automatically.

The biggest difference between X7 and X8 is the shadows. If you turn off the shadows, it should look more like what you are used to.

I suspect that your camera is not using the sun angle you want because it was saved using a different one (or the generic sun). Open the Adjust Sunlight dialog while in the camera view and make sure it is set to use the sun angle you want.

You can set the floor height for the deck in the deck room dialog.

The program will not automatically add any support structure for stair landings. You can manually add your support structure using the framing tools. Or you can create a deck for the landing. If you create a deck, you will have to manually set the height that you want. You may also have to drag your stair ends away and then back to make them connect to the deck.

First, don't panic. It sounds like there was a little bit of a hiccup with the daltile library update because it moved from bonus to manufacturer. It should be easy to correct but if you are having any problems please contact support for more help. Once a material is used in a plan, it should stay there forever (unless you manually delete it in the Plan Materials dialog). This is also true for every other library object. We keep a copy in the plan forever as long as it is still being used. When we update a manufacturer library, some items may become obsolete and will no longer be available to use in new plans. We have no control over what manufacturers decide to do with their product lines and we can't distribute obsolete content. The only way that I know of to make sure that you can use discontinued manufacturer content in new plans would be to create a copy of it in your user library.