BWoods

31 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

• Think of a symbol as a collection of triangular 3D faces.  This geometry is fixed and will always be tied to that particular symbol.  Any changes made in the 3D or Sizing tab of the Symbol Specification dialog will not actually affect that original geometry, rather they will affect how that originally geometry will be displayed and how it will be treated when resized.
• Think of the bounding box as the dimensions at which you want the aforementioned geometry displayed at full size.  Any changes to the size of the symbol will affect the displayed geometry proportionately.  
• If you want to accurately adjust the sizing of your symbol's 3D geometry then you need to modify the original geometry.
• With all the above in mind, it's typically best to wait till you have your desired geometry sized correctly and create a brand new symbol before messing with the bounding box.  Creating a new symbol will ensure that the symbol is using your desired geometry and not just a modified version of the original geometry.

All good information. Appreciate it. 

32 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Once you get your symbol sized to your liking, select it, click Convert Selected To Symbol, and then take that NEW symbol and adjust its bounding box.

This was where I was messing up I think. Ignoring all other mistakes (messing with the bounding box first), I was simply saving my symbol to the library instead of converting it to a new symbol. 


To clarify for anyone who finds this thread later on: 

1. Place your selected symbol in plan

2. Open the Fixture Specification DBX

3. Set the W/H/D to what you need it

4. With the edited symbol selected, press Convert Selected To Symbol

5. Select Show Advanced Options. You may select Add to library if you like but not necessary. Click Ok. 

6. Go to the Sizing tab and enter the OPENING WIDTH (fridge width + 1/4" in my case) into the width tab.

7. This leaves me with a 23 3/4" fridge with a 24" bounding box. Note that if you open the Fixture Specification DBX from here, it will display the bounding box width dimension as opposed to the actual dimension of the fridge.

8. To test this worked, dimension the width of your fridge. Your extension lines should be just past the edge of each side of the fridge.

Thanks Michael, much appreciated. 

9 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Maybe I forgot to mention a step. It worked fine here. I just dropped my saved library one in my plan and the object DBX width and the symbol DBX bounding box width match. All I need to do now is open the symbol and change the bounding box to include the gap. Keep in mind that when you do this the fridges object width will now change to match the new bounding box width. All widths are according to the bounding box width, not the symbol within the bounding box.

Im not sure what the issue is. After setting the sizes like you said, I save it to library, and pop the saved one into my plan and the bounding box still is the original size of the fridge. It did not change to match my adjusted symbol size. 

17 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Just played with this and it seems that what you need to do is to drop say a 36" width fridge into your plan, Open the symbol and change the bounding box to be the exact size of the fridge, eliminate the built-in gapping. Then open up the object DBX and set the width to the actual size of the fridge, no gap. Now save the symbol to your library, bring that new symbol back into the plan, open up the symbol DBX and then change the bounding box width to include the gap you desire. It seems to be that the relationship between the actual symbol size and bounding box around it does not update without saving the symbol first, in other words it will always use the relationship when the symbol was first loaded. Not sure this makes sense but give it a try to see if it solves your issue.

This did not seem to work. After setting the bounding box to the exact size of the fridge, changing the size of the fridge itself, adding to library, and back to plan, the symbol still shows the bounding box dimensions of the original fridge size. Basically, it seems like changing my fridge size does not update the size of the bounding box at all. I have pictures attached showing that my fridge is set to the size i need it to be, but the bounding box are still the original dimensions. 

7 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Just played with this and it seems that what you need to do is to drop say a 36" width fridge into your plan, Open the symbol and change the bounding box to be the exact size of the fridge, eliminate the built-in gapping. Then open up the object DBX and set the width to the actual size of the fridge, no gap. Now save the symbol to your library, bring that new symbol back into the plan, open up the symbol DBX and then change the bounding box width to include the gap you desire. It seems to be that the relationship between the actual symbol size and bounding box around it does not update without saving the symbol first, in other words it will always use the relationship when the symbol was first loaded. Not sure this makes sense but give it a try to see if it solves your issue.

Yea this makes sense. I see first off when trying to do this, my bounding box is set to the exact width of the fridge, but still has somewhere between 1/16" and 1/32" extra space on either side of the fridge. If I set the bounding box to 1/16" less than the width of the fridge, my bounding box is now inside the fridge by a hair. It won't let me do bounding boxes to 32nds of an inch so I guess I just have to deal with having an extra 32nd of an inch space on either side of the fridge? Either way I'll follow these steps and update with results when done. 

I am using Chief Architect Premier X12 on Windows 10. 

I have a fridge i took from the chief catalogs and need to increase the height and width, reduce the depth, and set it's bounding box to be 1/4" wider than the width of the fridge itself. I'm not sure what the correct process to do this is. First I set the size of my symbol in the general tab. Then I closed the tab, went to edit symbol > sizing, and it shows my bounding box is still the original size of the appliance. Changing the bounding box size from here increases the size of my appliance AND bounding box, so I'm left with a bounding box that is the correct size, within the 3D symbol as opposed to enveloping it, and my symbol is much larger than i need it to be. Then I thought I needed to set my bounding box to the right size proportionally to the existing symbol size (same height, same depth, + 1/4" in width for 1/8" space on either side of fridge opening) and increase my symbol size, which would increase my appliance size proportionally with the bounding box to give me the right size. This did not work either. I'm completely lost on how this stuff works, and the tutorial chief has on bounding boxes doesn't help with this issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Awesome, thanks to you both. 

I'm working in Chief Architect Premier X12 on Windows 10. 

I want to change the text size of the layout box label, and the font as well. I looked through all the settings under Default Settings for the layout file but nothing changed it. Is it a text style in the drawing file itself? 

Ahh, wow, simple solution. Thanks a ton! 

I'm working in CA Premier X12. I want my Plan title in the title block (address & customer name) to sync with all pages when I change it on one page. As of right now I just change one and copy and paste in place to the rest of the pages. I've looked through the macros available in rich text and didn't see anything that would give me this functionality. How can I go about doing this? 

SOLVED: Camera was clipping the whole drawing. 

For anyone with a similar issue in the future: Check the camera position in plan view and set the clip distance to as little as possible. From the Orthographic view, it looked far from the plan but it was actually right next to it and clipping the entire plan. 

18 minutes ago, Signatures said:

 

 

 

Please update your signature

 

Done, thanks. 

I'm working on CA Premier X12. I'm trying to put 2 isometric views into my layout with a plot line view option in Line Drawing rendering mode. I am able to do this with one view and it works fine. The other view disappears when I switch it to plot line view. If I set it to Plot Line with color, the color shows up but no plot lines. If I set the 1st view to plot line with color, it shows both the plot lines and the color. I'm not sure if this is a layer issue or what, but I've deleted and recreated both Camera Views multiple times to no avail. I can't understand why they're behaving differently when I follow the exact same process for each. 

Picture 1 shows the top left in plot line view, bottom right in live view. Picture 2 shows when I change bottom right to plot lines. Picture 3 shows when I change both to plot lines with color. 

Just now, Kbird1 said:

PS if you are on a PC ( not is your signature) it is Ctrl-E (Default Hot Key) not CMD-E to open Objects

 

Yes PC, sorry I will add that to my signature. And yea, just said CMD for clarity's sake. 

1 minute ago, Kbird1 said:

You can print a list of Current Hotkeys to an HTML File from the Tools Menu too , and  it is highly customisable for HotKey People....

I will look into this, thanks. 

1 hour ago, Alaskan_Son said:

If you either turn off Contextual menus or require 2 clicks, you could leave the cabinet tool activated and still easily select the door using a right click.  You can even leave contextual menus on.  It’s just a little problematic in my opinion have the contextual menus pop up automatically.  I personally don’t like it.  

I'll try this out, thank you.

On 2/8/2020 at 5:31 PM, rgardner said:

As I mentioned I use CMD E 90% of the time and really only use double click myself on opening rooms (when they are large and you can select it without selecting other items.) 

Apologies for the late replies everyone. Forgot to turn on notifications. 

I didn't know CMD+E allows you to open objects. I will definitely start using this as keyboard short cuts are much more familiar to me than having to click on the interface. When I previously used ACAD, almost every single function I used regularly was on a keybind. Coming into chief and having barely anything be on keybinds by default has been tough to get used to. 

On 2/8/2020 at 4:35 PM, Kbird1 said:

Well I read it as he/she wants to swap the Keys due to muscle memory, I see no issue with that, and assumed he/she knew what he/she was doing.....

This is correct. Essentially, all I'm looking for is to be able to hit escape and not take me to a previously used tool. If there's a better solution to this than swapping the keybinds for space and esc, I'm all ears. 

On 2/8/2020 at 5:08 PM, Ridge_Runner said:

May be a foolish question, but does changing the function of the spacebar not cause a conflict when in a textbox? Or does CA switch its function when in a textbox already?

This is a good question I hadn't thought of. I would assume that Chief keybindings only change how they function within the drawing area, and not within dialogue boxes. 

On 2/8/2020 at 5:19 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

Switching to the Select Objects tool though, doesn't just escape out of the operation.  It drops the current tool and loses the selected object(s) entirely.  This means in many cases you're forced to reactivate a tool and/or re-select one or more objects.  Very inefficient.  Much more effective to learn to select and edit objects as Chief intended. 

I have been in this situation for sure. 

On 2/8/2020 at 5:19 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

get into the habit of selecting objects without always switching to the Select Objects tool.  You end up switching tools a lot more often than you really need to. 

This is where I'm a little confused. For example: Lets say I'm drawing a bathroom. I currently have the cabinet tool selected and click to place a cabinet where I want it. After placing it, I can see that a door I've already placed is in the way and needs to be moved. With the cabinet tool selected, trying to select anything other than a cabinet will just place another cabinet instead of selecting the door. Hitting space (to go back to select objects tool) will allow me to select the door. Hitting Escape once MIGHT take me back to select objects, but it also might take me to a different tool that still won't allow me to select my door (depending on what tool I was using previously of course) leading me to have to hit escape again until I get to the select objects tool. Maybe my mindset or the way I'm thinking about it is wrong? Let me know. 
 

On 2/8/2020 at 5:19 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

My suggestion for most people would be to learn about left click vs. right click, to read up on Contextual Menu options (first item in Preferences)

I'll look into this. 

Thanks for the replies all. 

I'm working in Chief Architect Premier X11 on Windows 10. I want to swap the function of the space and escape keys as I am used to AutoCAD and hitting Escape when I want to deselect everything and go back to my default selector tool. I went into the keybinding changing dialog but can't figure out how to set a function to the escape key. Instead of putting Esc in the box where you apply the key bindings, it just closes the window. Is there a way I can change this? Or am I stuck having to use something other than escape? 

Solution 1 will work for me. Thanks! 

I'm working in Chief Architect Premier X11 and would like to put a dimension in without the number from the dimension, just my own text for a "height to be determined" scenario. I see I can add the leading/trailing text segments, and also that I can make it a blank segment, but that gets rid of all the text as well as the number. Surely there's a better solution that to just draw my own dimension lines. 

1 hour ago, solver said:

Here is a topic that should get you started.

 

 

 

 

Read up on Molding Polylines.

Took a little bit of playing around but this got me exactly what I needed, thanks a ton. Picture is attached for anyone who may be looking for something similar in the future and stumbles upon this thread. 

 

1 hour ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Here’s a video I made a while back that goes over some of

the basic ideas you’ll need to know.  The fireplace is a little different but hopefully you’ll get the idea...

 

 

Will definitely check out this video also. Thanks. 

Thanks. I'll look into it. 

I'm using Chief Architect Premier X11. 

Pardon my bad sketch. I'm looking to make a fireplace similar to the one I've drawn flat against a wall with the upper half tapered on the front and both sides. There is to be a flat recess within the front taper for a tv mount. I drew a polyline in elevation to get the two sides tapered and converted to a polyline solid, but can't figure out how to taper it from the front at this point. 

Also, there is to be a sort of crown molding mantle separating the upper and lower halves. Is this as simple as using the crown molding tool in the library browser and raising it to the height I need? 

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a ton! 

I'm currently using Chief Architect Premier X11 and have been tasked with drawing this kitchen for a customer, as pictured. I know how to do bow fronts, radius ends, etc, but can't find any way (or tutorial) on how to do what I'm looking for. The customer wants a sink base with an almost tilde shape (~) and a bowed corner cabinet, both with curved backs. Is this possible?

Edit: Also, for the corner cabinet to the left of the sink base, they want the lower portion straight up, to have the top half go into a radius to make the sink base work properly for this layout. 

Thanks in advance.