Dermot

You should not turn off the preference for this warning. You should first try to fix your model to prevent any problems with disconnected walls. Disconnected walls can cause all kinds of other problems such as bad room definitions. If you believe you have found a case where the program is warning you where the walls do not need to be connected, then you should report this to technical support as a bug. This will allow us to make further improvements to the program in future updates.

You do not have all of the same style options with stair railings that you do with normal or manually drawn railings. Manual railings that have been set to follow stairs are very tricky to create and get good results with. Unless you are an advanced user I won't recommend them. I assumed that Austin's main problem was creating the stacked stairs with properly connected railings and open below rooms. The simple example I attached above demonstrates how to do this just using the automatic tools. Once you have a properly configured stair, it is fairly easy to change the style of the normal railings that form the open below rooms. To change the style of the stair railings to match, you may have turn off the stair railings and create manual ones instead but this is an advanced skill. I think it is important to get the configuration correct first and then to worry (or not as the case may be) about the style considerations.

I can't see how making a custom handrail will make your life any easier. I would recommend using the Auto Stairwell tool as a starting point instead. This tool should automatically generate a railing and an open below room that will contain your stairs. See the attached plan as a very simple example. stacked stairs.zip

I would love to figure out what the problem is. If you can't post a video, then maybe you can post a plan that demonstrates the problem along with some very clear steps as to what you are doing.

Saved cameras should always remember their active defaults. As long as your active defaults match one (and only one) of your annotation sets, it will work just like it remembered the annotation set. There should be no difference between opening the camera from plan view, project browser, or layout (as long as you don't send the same camera to multiple layout pages). Plan views are different. The reason they are different is because you will almost always send the same plan view to different layout pages. When you open a plan view from a layout page, it should reset the view so that it is using the same defaults that it had when you sent it to the layout page (or the defaults you set when you choose an annotation set in the Layout Box dialog). In this case, it is the layout box that is remember the defaults because we don't have a saved camera for plan views. I still think that the most important things to understand about annotation sets is that they are just a short cut for changing your active defaults and that all views remember their active defaults. There still seems to be a lot of confusion here. I'm not sure if my explanations of how the program works is helping. I apologize if I am not being clear enough. One thing to keep in mind is that all of my comments above only pertain to X7. Prior versions did not necessarily work the same way.

I don't get this behavior. I can't tell from your description whether or not you are doing something wrong or if you have found a program bug. The only time I have seen something like this happen is when someone had duplicate annotation sets. I can't remember seeing another case where switching views would require you to select your annotation set again. Views should always remember the active defaults they are using. Whether or not the defaults match any of your annotation sets is a separate issue. As long as your annotation sets are always unique, which means that you don't have two annotation sets with the same set of defaults, this will work exactly as if the view remembers the annotation set. If your annotation sets are ambiguous, then the program will use the first one it finds which can lead to confusion. If the program is not working the way I have described, then I would recommend that you report this as a bug so that we can look into this further.

Just some comments to try and clarify some things that often confuse people. Annotation sets are only a short cut for changing your active defaults, default cad layer, and possibly your layer set. That's all they do. Annotation sets are completely optional. You can change active defaults or layer sets at anytime without using annotation sets but it is usually faster to setup and use annotation sets. Views will remember your active defaults, not your annotation set. For convenience, the program will change the annotation set toolbar if the current active defaults match any of your annotation sets. If none of your annotation sets match the active defaults then it will say "Using Active Defaults". If you have more then one annotation set using the same defaults, the program will just choose the first one that matches. Don't make more then one annotation set with the same defaults because it will not work how you expect and you will just get confused. Changing which defaults are used by an annotation set will not update any views. You must reselect the annotation set if you want to have the view match your annotation set changes. Deleting an annotation set will not affect any views. Your views are tied to the defaults, not the annotation set. Annotation sets were designed to be flexible so that people could choose how they want to use them. What works best for one person may not work best for another.

I would recommend that you work with Chief Architect Technical Support to solve these issues.

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I can't think of what might cause this. You probably need to post the layout along with the plan and a better description of what you changed that did not update. You added the "Comments" column to your door schedule twice and then you renamed one of them to "Hardware Group". When you click on the "Hardware Group" column in the "Columns to Include" list, you might notice that the "Reset" button is active. This means that it was renamed. Clicking the Reset button will set it back to the original name.

To determine if a plan or layout is metric or imperial, all you need to do is open up pretty much any dialog box and look at what units are being used. In an imperial plan, the values will display as inches and in a metric plan they will display as mm. I am going to guess that your current plan or layout that is open is imperial and you are trying to save it as a template but your preferences are set to be using metric.

Jared's method is only appropriate if you want to work in imperial units but display your plan dimensions converted into metric units. If you want to actually work in metric units (and only in metric units) all of the time, you need to open up the Preferences dialog, go to the New Plans section, and change the default units for your new plans and layouts.

As far as I know, they are not going to be turned off when you upgrade. I would guess that they were actually turned off in the previous version and that it just wasn't noticed until they were brought into the new version. If we had the original plan, we would be able to confirm this. If someone did find a case where they were turned off by the program, then I would call this a bug and I would recommend that they report this to our tech support team. I have no idea why someone would ever want to turn off the casings layer in a camera view. I can think of a number of reasons why they would want to turn them off in a plan view though. I also believe that if we have a layer for turning them off in plan view then it should also be able to turn them off in a camera view. Would you ever want the program to decide that there is no reason for you to turn them off so that it wouldn't let you?

You can modify your rich text defaults in several different ways: - Through the Default Settings dialog along with most of the other defaults used in the program. - Through the Active Defaults dialog along with all of the defaults that can be changed through annotation sets. - Through the Annotation Sets dialog. Although all layers can have a text style associated them, this does not mean that all objects on that layer will use that text style. Rich text is one of the only type of objects in the program that never uses text styles. Many other objects may be setup to use text styles (either directly or through the layers) but they can also be setup to use a custom style instead.

To clarify, rich text does not use the text styles. You need to change the font in your rich text defaults.

This is what a camera view looks like when the casing layers are turned off. Open up your layer display options dialog and make sure the casing layers are turned on.

The layout box on page 5 is using the layer set called "Layout Set 14". The "Fixtures, Labels" layer is turned off in "Layout Set 14". Your fixture labels will not display unless you turn them on for the layer set that is currently being used for a layout box. This help article has some more info about how layout boxes work with layer sets: http://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00939/this-new-layout-box-references-the-layout-set-1-layer-set-saved-in-your-plan.html There are also a variety of training videos about layer sets that you may find helpful.

Open the Deck Room Specification dialog. Go to the Deck Support panel. Click Edit Post. Check Show Cross.

The correct answer is that it depends on what you mean by "in color". Technically, they are always in color but we don't actually display any of the surface fill colors. We only display the surface edge and pattern lines. Assuming that you are not sending an elevation view to a layout as an image, the following is true: Elevation surface edge and pattern lines will always be sent to layout views in color. If all of your edge and pattern lines are black, then it may be hard to tell that this is the case. Also, all of the cad, text, and dimensions you have in your elevation view will always display on the layout in color. The biggest thing that makes an elevation view look different when it is sent to layout is that we don't display the solid fill colors for any of the surfaces. This is because we don't actually draw any surfaces when you display an elevation view on a layout page. We convert all surfaces into just the visible edge and pattern lines and store those with the layout box. These lines are all created at the time that you send the view to the layout and can be regenerated anytime you close the elevation view. You can also modify all of these lines on the layout page using the Edit Layout Lines tool and adjust their colors or other properties.

In the picture you have shown, your dimension is going from the outside of the framing to the outside of the framing and does not include the sheetrock on the outside of the building. This makes the interior room dimensions 9'11" (10'7" - 4" - 4"). The living area is also calculated from outside of framing to outside of framing which makes it 112 sq ft (10'7" x 10'7").

Did you ever contact tech support regarding this problem? The only problem that I am aware of is the problem that Joe just reported today regarding using the recent files from the task bar. All other reported crashes have been fixed.

The 17.2 update previously fixed the performance problems that Ken was seeing. We just released the 17.3 update that I believe will fix Perry's problem related to the recent file list. As far as I know, X7 should perform as good or better then X6 in almost all cases. If you are still experiencing any performance problems in X7, you should probably contact our technical support team. The 17.3 update will also fix a problem where people would see crashes when trying to do a save as or an export on Dell systems due to some backup software that was installed with a recent system update. If you are still experiencing any crashes or similar problems in X7, then you should also contact tech support.

Here's how I would do it: - turn on the layer called "Layout Box Borders" and set the color to something very visible. - select each layout box on each page. - if you see the "Relink File" button on the edit toolbar, click on it. This will show you the file name that the layout box is linked to.

Since this is only happening on one of your computers, then it is probably system related and the key will be figuring out what is different on that computer. First, if you have not rebooted it lately, then do so. Next, if you are not using the latest update, then download and install it. After that, the next thing to look at is whether you are using the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Chief. If you are using the 32 bit version, then my first guess would be that you are running out of memory. The easiest way to solve that problem is to use the 64 bit version. If you are already using the 64 bit version, then working with tech support is going to be your best option.

The Wall Material Region tool works best for situations where you only need to change a portion of the wall that is some arbitrary shape. It has the added capability of specifying multiple layers of materials and even replacing the finish layers of the wall. An example of where you might want to use it is to define the tile area around a tub/shower combo. The tile does not need cover the whole wall and the material region can remove the existing wallboard and replace it with a region defined using a tile backer layer and mortar layer below the visible tile layer.