Dermot

This is not clear to me. Do you get the assertion message when you try to launch X8 without opening a new or existing plan? If so, then you either have a bad installation or system related problem. In this case I would first try uninstalling and then reinstalling the program. Do you only get the assertion when you are trying to open a particular plan or layout file? Then the most likely problem is that the plan or layout file is corrupt in some way. It is also possible that you have found a bug in the program. In either case, you should report this problem to technical support so that we can look into it further. If this is a bug, it may already be fixed in the soon to be available update but if not we would want to try and get a fix into the next available update. If the problem is a corrupted file, then we would still like to see if we can improve the program so that this file could be opened without crashing the program. Regardless of whether the file is corrupt or there is a bug in the program, you probably won't be able to open it in your version of X8. You may want to look for a backup version of the file that does not have this problem. For additional help, you may wish to contact technical support on Monday during normal business hours.

Unfortunately, no and I agree that this would be a nice addition. You do have some control over newel placement by just adding breaks to your railing walls. Not precise but it helps. If you want to keep the railings centered on the newel, then do not offset the newel. The best way to control the newel/rail position is through the wall width. Not ideal but it should work in most cases.

Curt, If you are using X8, you are probably doing a lot more work then you need to. 1. To align your 8" newel post with the outside of the deck, you just need to use an 8" thick wall. There is no need for any special wall layers. 2. You will need to turn off "automatic width" for your rail widths unless you want an 8" wide rail. 3. Unless you really need to see the balusters in plan view, all you need to do is turn on display of rails and newels in the railing dialog and you won't have to draw any cad lines. See simple deck plan that I attached. simple deck.plan

If you switch your "live views" to "plot line" views, the program should work very much like it did in X7 and prior. If you are still having problems, then you probably need to post something more specific or contact tech support.

You can only edit the layout lines if the view is a "Plot Lines" view. You can't edit the layout lines If the view is a "Live View". You can change your live view to plot lines (or vice versa) in the Layout Box Specification dialog. Personally, I would recommend that you keep the view live and make all your changes in the actual view. If all you want to do is hide some cabinet shelves, you could create a separate cabinet or something that hides the shelves and control the display with your layers. If you convert the view to plot lines you will have to repeat all of your line edits every time you make any other changes to the model.

FYI, there are actually two ways to solve the problem of faceted (or segmented) arcs in Chief. The first method, which I think is the preferred method, is to adjust the facet angle. When you select a polyline based object (like a counter top, slab, or polyline solid) that has an arc, you will usually get the "Selected Arc" panel when you click directly on the curved edge. When available, you will also see controls for the "Facet Angle" and "Automatic Facet Angle". If you have an arc that appears too segmented and you would like to smooth it out, just uncheck automatic and specify a smaller facet angle. The facet angle controls are not available for all objects but when they are available they will allow you to create a smooth curve without losing the actual arc. The facet angle controls are also available for things like walls, railings, and roofs. The second method, is to convert the curved arc into a bunch of smaller straight line segments. If you select the arc segment of the polyline, you should find an edit button called "Convert Curve to Polyline". This will allow you to smooth out the curves by specifying the number of line segments you want it broken up into. 100 segments seems a bit much and you should be able to use a smaller number of segments and still get a smooth curve. Unfortunately, I don't think either of these two tools are available for 3D molding polylines (although they probably should be) so you will have to use Michael's method of first converting it to a simple polyline, convert the curve into straight segments, and then convert back to a 3D molding polyline.

For future reference, go here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/

When we refer to Home Designer 2016, we mean all Home Designer products (Pro, Architectural, Suite, Interiors, and Essentials). When we refer to Chief Architect X7, we mean all professional products (Premier and Interiors).

I bet Joe's right. Look at your wall layers and in particular if your outside layer is marked as "framing".

It's a standard drafting convention that all of your vertical and horizontal labels will always face the same direction. So it's going to be normal for cabinet labels to face the wall sometimes. There are a couple of easy things you can do if you want to change this though. - If you would prefer to have all of your cabinet labels horizontal instead, you can set the label angle to "absolute" and 0 degrees in the cabinet dialog. - If you really want some of your vertical labels to be flipped around, set them to be 180.01 degrees which will prevent the program from flipping them back automatically. Unfortunately, this won't work on the horizontal labels but I'm not sure that you would really want those upside down. There may be other suggestions but these are what I came up with that are easy.

Assuming that you upgraded them, then you can't sell any of them. Once you upgrade a version, you can't sell any of the older versions. Please see your EULA for more info. If you still have any questions, please contact our Customer Service department.

You might want to turn on "Automatically Rebuild Foundation" instead. This will keep your foundation up to date as you make changes to your floor plan without losing any thing else on your foundation plan.

The recently posted update only corrects a couple of important issues that were in 18.1 that were not in 18.0.

The corners have a gap because you are trying to model the sides using an inset door. Modeling the sides as a frame and inset panel will probably work better. See attached plan. column.plan

Chief has never been able to figure out how to notch the tread overhang where it intersects with the platform. If this is important to you, then you should report it to technical support as a bug.

This looks like a bug to me (and yes, X7 does have the same problem). I will make sure that it is added to our database and we will look into it further.

That's because we couldn't find any bugs. As far as I can tell, X7 and X8 should work exactly the same with regards to how we calculate automatic stair heights. We always use finish floor heights to determine the height difference for calculating riser heights. I believe that this is the correct way to do this if you wish to meet code requirements. You always have the option to specify your own manual heights for any other situations. The thing that might be confusing you is that we have changed the default way we display the "Top Height" in the Stair Specification dialog in X8. In X8, we now display the top height using the floor or landing as the reference instead of the using the top tread like we did in X7. If you switch to use the top tread as your reference, you should see the exact same numbers that you would have seen in X7. See picture and plan below for reference. If you open the plan in both X7 and X8, you should see that the stair is being built the same. x7 stair top height.plan

X8 has been officially released. For more information, see this post in the Announcements forum: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/8433-x8-now-available/ All problems that were reported to us during beta that we determined were new problems in X8 should have been fixed. If you find any other problems in X8, then please assume that they are issues that we are not aware of. Please report any problems you find directly to our technical support department so that we can investigate them further. You can contact technical support here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/#contact

Ben, The bug that you reported to tech support should be fixed in the X8 release. The picture you posted on the other thread does not look the same as the one you reported to us though. Please report this as a new problem along with the plan you have and we will look into getting a fix into the next available update.

"This problem just started for me and I haven't even download X8 yet..." Then your problem is not the same problem. If a reboot does not solve your problem, then I would recommend that you contact tech support.

I would try uninstalling and then reinstalling the program. If you still experience the problem, then please contact our technical support department during normal business hours on Monday.

"If I upgrade to CA, am I able to use the file I already created in HD Pro?" Yes, absolutely. You can also download the trial version and try it out on your hardware: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/trial.html

Are you using a floor camera or a full camera? In X2, floor cameras will not show anything above or below the floor you are on. In X7, floor cameras have the option of showing the floors below them (as shown by Perry in his post). Full cameras will always show the whole model (except what is hidden through layers).

Easy peasy. The difference between the right and left side heights is 37.5" (90 * 5/12). On the window general panel, you need to set the overall height to 53.5 (37.5 + 16). On the window shape panel, you need to set the left or right height to 16" and then raise the opposite bottom corner to 37.5".

Not sure why you are having a problem but I doubt a reinstall will have any affect. Might be an obscure bug related to how you are creating them. If you can consistently reproduce the problem, you should report it to tech support along with very clear steps for exactly what you are doing. BTW, when drawing your custom muntins, you probably don't want to draw filled polylines. The program will actually try to create a muntin for each line in the polyline. All you need to do is draw a single CAD line for the center of each muntin.