Dermot

You can't get rid of system layers.

The Layer Display Options dialog will give you a hint if you hover over the "used" column. Cad details and Cad blocks are obvious hiding places. You can use the Cad Block Management dialog to purge any unused cad blocks and open each block to see if the layer is used. Just looking for things on your layout pages might not find things that are off the layout page. Select All or Fill screen might help with this. You could also have things on random pages that you were not expecting. The Project Browser should help you find these pages. Any layers in linked views are not an issue because they should not show up as used in the layout.

In X13, a door will be either an interior door or an exterior door based on where it was placed initially. Moving it to another wall or changing your room types, will not change the door type the way it did in older versions. You can adjust the casing on both sides of an interior door just like you can on an exterior door. All you need to do is check the "Separate Trim and Materials on Each Side" option that Eric is suggesting.

From the documentation that pops up when click on that dialog button called "Help":

"The only things you should put on your layout pages are the things that should be part of the page itself, like page borders, title bars, and what not." The "what not" I used in this statement was deliberately open-ended. There are a number of other things that probably only make sense on layout pages, such as your page table or your revision table. You may also want to put custom view labels on the layout page rather than use the automatic layout box labels or make these labels part of the view. (On a side note, layout box labels will have some nice improvements in X14 that may make using them more appealing for many people). Regardless, it's really up to you to decide if something is part of the view or part of the layout.

Thank you for letting us know. We can't really prevent this, but we can ask eBay to remove the ads and we will do this on a fairly regular basis. It's a bit like wack-a-mole though because it usually doesn't take long for new ones to pop back up. If we can get information about the seller, we can also report them to the authorities for possible legal action. As far as looking for used versions of Chief Architect, you might want to check out the Offering Services section of this forum: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/16-offering-services/ The other thing you should consider is speaking directly with one of our sales representatives about other options that may fit your needs, such as our rental program or whether a product like Home Designer Pro might be a better alternative: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/company/contact.html

I completely agree with Rene and the others. You should add all of your annotations in your actual views and not on the layout. The only things you should put on your layout pages are the things that should be part of the page itself, like page borders, title bars, and what not. As far as the "problems" that you are having, my best guess is that your line with an arrow that is attached to your text object is also attached to your layout box border. If you resize or move the layout box, then the arrow head will also move. So a possible solution is to not let the arrow attach to anything else. You can do this in the Line Specification dialog by turning off "Attach Head to Other Objects". You can also do this in your Arrow Defaults for your layout to prevent this from happening for any new arrows drawn. Just to be clear though, if you move or resize your layout box, you will still need to adjust any annotations you have put on your layout pages. There is no way to tie any annotations on a layout page to any objects that are inside your views.

You probably don't need unused cad blocks. This is why we have set the program up by default to automatically delete unused cad blocks.

Your problems do not sound related to proformacon's problems. You should probably contact our technical support team.

Did you see this post?

Some possible reasons: - You have shadows turned off. - You have a light source that is pointing the wrong direction. - You have an added light in your plan that you forgot about. - You are using a symbol with bad surface normals. - You have found a bug in the program that we are not aware of. Without a plan, people can only make random guesses. You should either post a plan or contact tech support.

It is very likely a graphics card issue but this does not mean that your graphics card is not working correctly. It might not be a supported video card or there may be something else that it is interfering with it and causing it to not function. You should review the tech article that Mick posted above. You should also review the system requirements and known incompatibilities: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/known-incompatibilities.html If your computer meets our system requirements and is not listed among the known incompatibilities, then you should contact technical support again and ask for additional help.

Currently, cabinets can't do "barn" doors. You could try manually placing the door style you want and then resize them and position them to give you the look you want. Or, you may be able to use a standard barn door with the cabinet placed inside the opening.

I recommend that you always leave "Connect Island Rooms" turned on. The program will automatically put in a room divider wall when your plan has an unconnected room. The program does this because having unconnected island rooms can cause a multitude of problems with room definitions which can affect things like living area calculations, floors and ceilings, room moldings, and lots more. Unless you really know what you are doing, you should not turn them off. Even if you do know what you are doing, there really isn't much reason to turn them off. All you are doing is setting yourself up for problems that are hard to figure out if you accidently forget to manually connect your rooms. If you don't like where the program puts them, then you can just move them. You can also draw your own wall connection and then you will be able to delete the one the program automatically put in. If you don't want to see them, then you can just turn the layer off. If you want to see your normal room divider walls, but not the automatic ones, then just put them on a custom layer and turn that layer off. Please remember that just because they are hidden they may still affect things like bumping, snapping, dimensions, etc. For this reason, I would keep them turned on in your working drawings but turn them off in your construction documents.

See if this video helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/61/controlling-the-drawing-order-of-objects.html?playlist=97

Might also depend on whether he is dropping the DWG file into Chief or going through File->Import->Import Drawing from the menu.

My best guess is that it's probably something specific in the DWG file you are trying to import. You could see if you get the same results with a different DWG file. You could post the DWG file and see if someone else can duplicate the problem. Or, you could contact technical support during their normal business hours.

We have no reports or any evidence that there are any problems that are the result of using older templates. That said, if you want to ensure that you are using the latest X13 template plans, you can just rename the templates folder in your user data folder to something like "templates (old)". When you start Chief the program will automatically create a new templates folder and copy the installed templates into it.

NVidia released a new Game Ready driver yesterday (2/14/2022 version 511.79) that appears to help with the frequent "device removed" error messages on Windows 11. If you are experiencing these error messages while using an NVidia RTX 30 series card with Windows 11 we encourage you to download and use this latest driver. You can find the driver here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/187098/en-us Please remember that all "device removed" error messages are not necessarily caused by the same problems. The "device removed" error message is a very generic error message that only really means that there was some kind of low level error that occurred while we were trying to generate the view. These can be caused by a wide variety of system problems, video card driver bugs, and bugs in Chief itself. If you continue to have problems with "device removed" error messages, please report them directly to our tech support team: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/

A used copy of Chief for $40 is either a scam or an illegal license. Either way, it might not work very well and you won't ever be able to upgrade it or get any technical support for it. Your best option for buying a used version of Chief Architect would be through the Offering Services section of the Chieftalk forum: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/16-offering-services/ You should verify that the license is transferable and please be aware that there is a transfer fee that can vary depending on the type of license. Some more info can be found here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/33430-buying-used-license-on-chieftalk/ I would also encourage you to contact our sales team during our normal business hours and they can help go over some of your other options.

We currently have free student versions of Chief Architect Premier. More information can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/academic/

For those that run into this problem in the future, here is the tech article that explains how to create custom muntins: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00930/creating-custom-muntins.html Normally, the Load Muntins button will appear when you select the window or door in an elevation view when the program finds a suitable cad block to load. The program can sometimes be a bit finicky about what it considers a suitable cad block though. For example, the cad block has to cover a certain percentage of the window glass to be considered suitable so you can't just draw a single line, block it, and make custom muntins out of it.

Sliding windows and doors will have the opening indicators turned on by default if you are using the template plan that ships with X13. If you migrated your template plans forward, or you are bringing in a plan that started in an earlier version, they will be off by default. This was done so that plans would not change unexpectedly when you opened them in X13. If you would like to show the opening indicators for sliding doors and windows for your legacy plans or templates, just turn them on in your door and window defaults. Keep in mind that you can also group select and edit your defaults if you would like to turn them on for more than one at a time. You should normally keep the windows and doors that are placed in your plans set to "use default" unless you need to override them for some kind of special situation.

First, if you are not using the latest update (23.3) then you should download it and install it. If you are, then you may want to update your signature. Reset Side Windows almost always solves the problems that people have with missing side windows. If this does not solve your problems, then you should probably contact our technical support team for further assistance.

I agree with Glenn, your problem does not sound like an island room but without a plan or at least some pictures, people are just going to make random guesses. You should not turn off the "Connect Island Rooms" feature unless you actually know what you are doing and even then there is really no reason to. If you want to know more about why, then read my comments on this thread: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/30870-mysterious-room-divider-can-not-get-rid-of-it/?tab=comments#comment-243684