Dermot

"Can you control the shutter width?"

Of course you can.  I would recommend that you spend a little more time learning Chief and a lot less time using Sketchup.

"...but on Mulled window I seem to be out of luck."

Why?  You can add shutters to mulled units.  The arch can be a bit tricky.  If you make the top window an arched window and then mull them, the mulled shutters will be rectangular instead of arched.  If you make the top window rectangular and then make the mulled unit archted, the mulled unit will build the correct shape for the arch.

Chief's cabinets are setup so that they can only join one cabinet back to another cabinet back.  If you have more then one cabinet against the back of a cabinet, you may get stray module lines because the program gets confused about which cabinet is connected to which other one.  You can either display all module lines or use one of the many workarounds suggested here.

If you have a wall, and it's layer is turned on in the layer set being used by the camera view and assuming that your camera is actually looking at the wall, there are probably only a few other things that could be wrong.  It may be that the wall has bad materials or a bad wall type definition.  Try just drawing a normal wall nest to it and see if it shows up.   If all else fails, post your plan and I bet some one could figure it out in less time then it took me to write this.

I think Graham's post above was very well stated. 

Since Chief architect is designed to work for a wide variety of users in a lot of different situations and locations, we have tried to design in as much flexibility as we can so that individuals can customize the program for their specific needs.  This means that you should be able to create your own custom library of electrical objects that will display however you like with whatever labels you like.  You can even modify the 3D data to give them they look that you want in camera views.

If anyone feels strongly that the electrical objects that ship with the program should be labeled as 120V and 240V instead of the current 110V and 220V, please submit a suggestion that we change this.  I think this is a relatively easy change but as far as I know, no one has ever asked for us to do this.

Sorry, I couldn't resist the humor.

The standardization of electrical voltages is actually somewhat complicated.  Although 120 and 240 are the current nominal voltages for the US, these are often commonly referred to as 110 and 220 which were the nominal voltages at one time or another.  This comes from Wikipedia:

In the United States^[6] and Canada,^[7] national standards specify that the nominal voltage at the source should be 120 V and allow a range of 114 to 126 V (RMS) (−5% to +5%). Historically 110, 115 and 117 volts have been used at different times and places in North America. Mains power is sometimes spoken of as 110; however, 120 is the nominal voltage.

220, 221, whatever it takes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX3kxAA2L4Q

One of our more curious developers looked into this yesterday.  He discovered that there is a hardcoded limit built into Chief that won't allow you to resize any electrical object less then 1/2 of the original height.  This limit is only checked at the time the 3D data is built so you will only notice the change after viewing it in a camera view.  This code has been in Chief since as far back as our source control system allows us to see (around 1998).  Although I am quite sure this limit was put in for some specific reason, we are not able to determine what that reason might be.  We will probably remove this limit in the future as long as testing can't find any side effects.

For now, you could probably create your own modified symbol by first converting it into a fixture, resizing it, and then converting it back into an electrical object.

"...opened the plan & now all I see is the foundation..."

My best guess is that you last saved the plan when you were on the foundation floor.  You can use the floor up/down tool to navigate to the other floors.

"...when I go to Full Camera for interior view, it looks like a fun house mirror....images are stretched & distorted."

Sounds like a video card problem. 

I recommend that you contact tech support or post your plan otherwise people will only be able to make random guesses.

It seems to me that the original poster's request is 100% valid.  I can't think of any good reason that the Layout Page Table should show the actual page numbers.  It should probably always show the printed page numbers instead.  This was just an oversight on our part from when this feature was originally put into X6.  When we first created the Layout Page Table we hadn't fully developed the features for creating multiple template pages or the idea of having place holder pages.  With those added capabilities, the actual page numbers really don't have anything to do with the pages that are intended to be part of the printed document.

I don't think the Layout Page Table should change if you decide you want to print out a different set of pages by selecting them in the Print Range section of the Print Layout dialog.  This means that if you need to make a correction and then reprint one or more pages that the table should look the same as if you printed the whole document.

This change will be available when the 17.2 update is released some time in the near future.

In the future, I would encourage you to report issues like this directly to our tech support team.  It was pretty much random luck that I saw this post and made sure this change would happen.

"I am just trying to increase the size of door and windows label type in my plan.  Any suggestions?"

You can change the size of your labels by changing the text style assigned to the layer that is used for the labels.  For example, by default window labels use the layer called "Windows, Labels" which uses a text style called "Default Label Style".  You can either change the size by modifying the "Default Label Style" which will affect all labels using this text style, or you can create a new text style to use just for your window labels.

"Would you agree that the schedule callout is the same as the object label?"

Well, no, at least not from a programmer's point of view.  You can't make the schedule callout display anything other then the schedule number with a shape around it.  You can make the object label display almost any text you want but you can't include a shape around it.  Other than that, they do share a lot of similar functions.

If all you want is a portion of the floor to be a different material, then the floor material region will work great.

If what you really want is separate areas, with different room labels and to show up separately in your room finish schedule, then you should use room dividers (or invisible walls).  As noted by Glenn, room dividers will be automatically converted into invisible walls in any situation where the floor/ceiling structure will be different.

You are not displaying the schedule callout.  You are just displaying the object label.  It looks like you have customized the object label to display all of the information that you need (including the schedule number which is available through the label macros).  There are a lot of things you can display in the object labels but technically they are not the same thing as the schedule callouts.

"Did CA address this in X7?"

Yes.  You can edit your electrical defaults in X7 and adjust the label info and/or position however you like. 

The label information is also kept for electrical objects that are saved into the library now too.  In prior versions, this information would get lost when you saved it into the library (like it still does for fixture and furniture objects).

Here is some good information that might help you choose the right product to start with:

https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/product-chooser.html

Here is some good information about upgrade pricing and any discounts/rebates:

https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/discounts/

If you have any other questions, feel free to call our sales department.

BTW, Chief Architect also includes a ceiling mounted outlet in the library.  In my opinion, placing it from the library is much easier then opening up a floor mounted one and changing it to ceiling mounted.  If you do change a floor mounted one to ceiling mounted, then don't forget that you will also need to rotate the symbol around otherwise it will be facing into the ceiling.

As noted by Ray, Home Designer Architectural includes a ceiling mounted outlet in the library.  Just place it directly from the library.

For future reference, we do have a separate forum for Home Designer products called HomeTalk that you can find here:

https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/

I don't understand why I can select the wall cabinet icon and then shift-select in order to only select wall cabinets, but if I select the interior wall icon and shift-select I get all walls, both interior and exterior. I would quite frankly prefer it the other way around, a way to select all cabinets and a way to select only exterior walls.

We don't currently have any tools for selecting just interior or exterior walls or selecting walls by wall type.  These both might make good suggestions though.

As for cabinets, if you are in full height cabinet mode, marquee select will allow you to select all cabinets.

Is there a more powerful eyedropper tool out there which reverts all properties to "by layer", or perhaps just an easier way to select all the lines at once?

In X7, you might want to try playing with the new Match Properties tool.

As for selecting, you could try switching to the "all off" layer set, turn on just the layer you want to change and then use the "select all" tool.  Assuming your text and leader lines are not on the same layer, this will get you what you want.  If all of your imported data is on the same layer, you may want to map them to different layers when you import them.  The Import Drawing Assistant will allow you to map each layer to what ever Chief layer you want if you use the Advanced Layer Mapping panel.

Just to clarify a few things:

- Objects can display either a label or a schedule callout, but they can't display both. 

- By default, if you have a schedule, the object will display the schedule callout instead of the label.  You can change this behavior in the Schedule Specification dialog by turning off "Use Callout For Label".

- You can customize the object label to display pretty much anything you want, including assigning your own unique numbers to them.  You can then turn off the schedule callouts to display the label instead.  You can also turn off the schedule number column in the schedule and display the label column instead.  This will work as long as you don't care about the callout symbol being displayed.

- You can have a schedule with holes in the numbering sequence.  The technique for doing this is to create a place holder object, move the schedule rows around to get the ordering you want, and then delete the place holder object.  The schedule numbers should remain unless you use the renumber tool.  Take a look at the pictures below.  I want all of my windows labeled with even numbers only.  In the first one, I have a temporary wall with my place holder windows.  I ordered the rows so that my place holder windows are the odd ones.  In the second picture, I have deleted the temporary wall so that my schedule numbers are all even numbers.

It's great to see how excited people are about our next version of Room Planner. 

All I know is that the Android version of Room Planner is still in development but is expected to be released some time this quarter.  Which I guess means anytime in the next 3 months (assuming it isn't delayed again).

I also know that if you would like a tablet that will run Chief Architect Premier right now then you should consider purchasing a Microsoft Surface instead.

I would like to see the orthographic camera come back for the viewer, I find clients get a little confused by the perspective overviews and camera shots.  It would also be nice to allow furniture placement, perhaps our friends at CA could find a way to sell this feature.  I know the folks I deal with would be more than happy to pay.

I think a lot of people find perspective cameras less confusing then the orthographic ones since they tend to look more natural.

As for placing furniture, or any other playing around in the plan, your client could purchase one of our Home Designer products.  You would need to turn on the checkbox for "Allow Editing in Select Home Designer Products" in the General Plan Defaults for them to make any changes.  You could also lock any layers for things you don't want the client to change.  I would recommend that you only send him copies of your plans and never replace your original with the one he has been playing around in.  It would be very easy for your client to accidently make changes you really don't want to have to fix up.

1.   I want my hot keys with client viewer

The client viewer uses the default hotkeys for any tools that are available in the viewer.  The client viewer does not have the ability to customize hotkeys.  Did you want to send him your custom hotkeys or let him customize his own?

2.   I want to be able to change layer sets

Currently, the client viewer does not allow changing layer sets.  It will open a plan, camera, or detail with what ever layer set you saved it with.  We did this to give you more control over what the client could see but I'm not sure how useful this is.  You could always send the client a layout page with as many different plan views using different layer sets as you want and have him open them from the layout.  You may want to submit a feature request to add layer set control to the client viewer.

3.   I want my framer to be able to put some text on the plan.  This way he can make notes......  I think I want this

The client should already be able to add text and arrow lines to the plan and send it back to you. 

Are you using a deck railing or a normal railing?

There is some automatic behavior associated with using a deck railing where the program will always create a deck room.  If you don't want deck rooms, then you should probably use the normal railing tool instead.