Dermot

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

Finally, some good news... NVIDIA has identified a problem that we think is causing the random but frequent "device removed" error messages on Windows 11 using any 3000 series video card. They are working on an update for the video card drivers. Not sure about the ETA though so we are still looking into whether or not there is a reliable workaround for this problem. Hopefully, this will be resolved pretty soon. 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. Please report all repeatable "device removed" error messages using any other OS or video card series directly to our tech support team: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/

You should always submit an official feature request for anything that you would like to work differently. Posting frowny faces on the Q&A forum isn't the same and is very unlikely to ever get into our feature request database. Very possible but not very simple. For all the people that asked for this (and I know there were a number of you, over far too many years), here's a little sneak peek at X14.

As mentioned above, most of the training videos have been recorded using Premier. You will see some differences because Interiors is subset of the features in Premier. Interiors does not come with the Extended or Terrain toolbar configurations. These configurations have a number of tools that are not available in Interiors. You could get a copy of these toolbar configurations and try them out but I don't recommend it because they will be missing a lot of tools. Instead you can use the Customize Toolbars feature to add any tools you want to your current configuration. You can also create your own toolbar configurations to quickly switch your available tools. More information about customizing toolbars can be found here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00811/customizing-toolbars.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5407/customizing-the-toolbars.html?playlist=81

Did you ever submit a feature request?

Please contact our sales department for more info (as suggested by Mick). They will be able to confirm that the seller is actually selling a legitimate copy of the program and what the transfer fee will be. Please be aware that the transfer fee price may vary depending on whether the seller is selling a primary or a secondary license (that was purchased at a discount). They should also be able to explain to you what your options are regarding our SSA program. X14 should be available during the first half of this year and if your SSA is active, you will then be able to get X14 for free along with all of the other SSA benefits (such as tech support, training, and bonus library content).

Double callouts, or numbers in the note schedules, almost always means duplicate schedules. See this tech article for some more info: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02968/removing-duplicate-callout-labels.html

"As far as I know that is not possible." That was my first thought too. The only things I can think of is that you might have messed up your allowed angles, turned off your angle snaps, or maybe you rotated your plan view? At any rate, you should either post a plan or contact tech support.