ValleyGuy

Good video Mike, you are right, Solver made some good videos and I also used his material to solve a lot of issues. I'm not that much farther ahead of you doing this area calc's, but here are my school of trial and error notes that I made when I first started. I'm not sure if they are all correct, and certainly not sure how or why, but these seem to keep me on the right track with my limited knowledge. I'm not sure if they will help, but it may be more added info to work with.

I use style palettes to install the info I want into the room (conditioned vs non-conditioned, remodel vs new vs existing, etc) as well as the appropriate custom object field, and other stuff. I made custom icons for my tool bar for each of the style palettes. Set up the schedules to divide out and total up the appropriate data. It's not hands free, but it is way quicker to grab a spray can and click on the room vs the p-line stuff I do elsewhere. The schedules don't have to be nudged to activate like the p-lines do either. A poly line is more accurate if you are splitting hairs between shared walls, as the room splits down the middle of the wall vs the p-line is placed where you want it. It's quick and accurate enough for my needs, only needs updating once at the end, and keeps the information visible continuously. No macros or anything that special. You could probably come up with something that fits your needs.

....Ok, my flicker issue is purely self-inflicted ... my cross section was on Update Always instead of Update on Demand. Oooops

.... you may have jinxed me lol. Last nite and now again this morning I have a second weird thing happening with a different cross section. I'm not sure if it has anything connected to your mouse delay, but it is only happening in x-section - not in plan view. Cross Section Jump.mp4

It only happened once and I am not quite sure what triggered it. I don't use PBR, ...well I do click on it once every year or so - I'm not sure if I hit the button the day that I had the lag issue or not. The only computer crashes I have are if I leave CA open (no plan or layout open) too long without using the program. Example: if I close down the plan but don't exit the program overnight, then in the morning I will see where my computer rebooted itself with a 'Kernel Panicked' reboot report. But no crashes while I'm using the program. On a separate note, I just had an error the other day to which I followed CA protocol and sent in a bunch of information. It too was on a cross section elevation; just updating a view port on the layout. CA Helpdesk couldn't find or replicate any issues and I haven't had any issues since. Both the lag issue and the error code seem to be one-offs. I only loaded up X17 a couple of months ago but have had two strange things happen as well as a few Kernel reboots.

I also experienced this. I did a complete shut down and rebooted my Mac and it seemed to clear up the glitch.

I did find a rather cumbersome work around to finding individual wall paintable surface sizes using the individual wall sides. In my sample i used all the same colour of paint, but you could easily change colours. Maybe you can find a way to make it more efficient and user friendly.

A couple of side bars to consider as well.... 1) 3D Connexion Enterprise Space Mouse: I just loaded X17 and realized that the 5 buttons that I could not activate on X16 are now available (with a caveat) on X17. They have simple little work around but work just fine none the less. I'm not sure if it is just X17 compatibility with the M4 or if X17 has this compatibility with all the M-series. 2) Displays: I now run 4 high-res monitors, some use scaling. The M4 Max Mac Studio handles them just fine with the available band width. I regularly have 6-7 views from Cheif open and in full view all at once. Multiple views/screens all update instantly regardless of 2D or 3D (other than PBR of course). I recently learned that the Studio with regular Max chips apparently only has two channels to power monitors from, where the Ultra has four. If multiple displays are a factor, I would think that the additional channels, bandwidth and core count of the M5 Ultra in the lower 'binned' configuration would be of great value to work flow improvements. When it comes to work flow, hands down the Space Mouse (I now reconfigured to have about 350 library items and tools) and screen real estate have proven to be the biggest time savers for me. I can only imagine how much faster things will be with the new M5 chips. And if AI is taking the rendering world by storm, why not kick some butt in the every day con-doc department?

Just like @joey_martinsaid, it is possible. When using the double roof planes you may want to double the roof material and adjust it on the smaller roof plane to match better on the larger roof plane. It does section out nicely.

This is very similar and reminded me of when I do walk-out basements. Putting the 'basement' on the 1st level, and the main floor as the 2nd level messes with a few of the layer lines displayed (basement vs foundation), so it is also nice piece of mind to just assign the appropriate layer set per floor. Now if Chief would just allow us to maintain the main level as 'absolute' and create negative floor levels to handle everything below the main level and above the foundation, then we would be on to something! But that is for a different thread. Hahaha, I hear you..... I had Apple Intel when X17 came out and couldn't update from X16. I now have Apple M-series and have yet to pull the trigger on X17..... soon though, before X18 comes out.

Reference display was always a fight, I like just setting it up and leaving it attached to a specific SPV / floor level - I only have to switch it on/off now. Sometimes items are hi-lighted in a different colour, different line colours to match materials better. I don't always like having the imported pictures follow me around from floor to floor. In a SPV going to the layout I will sometimes turn off the temporary dims and use a colour like green to measure things, I can use the same green dim on all three floors, but only have it show up on one floor in the layout if I need it. Probably not real deal breakers if I didn't set up the six different floor to floor layer sets, but nice little creature comforts for a little but of work.

This is very similar to how I've set mine up too. It works well for me. Text and CAD were the thorns for me. In addition to Text and Notes, I have CAD, Call Outs, and Dimensions for each saved plan view 'group'. I share the Text, CAD, Notes, Call Outs, and Dimension layers between the group of similar SPV's. Groups would be something like Roof Main Floor and Roof 2nd Floor - they both have their own separate layer sets and can toggle on / off as needed, but retain consistency sized Text, Line Weights, etc. No need to make text for both Roof SPV's, and no stray text from the working copy showing up on the SPV going to the layout because the working copy has its own. I tend to not Floor Up and Down with this system as the layer sets don't change with the up/dn arrows. I Use the Saved Plan View tool the navigate floor levels.

Walls have interior and exterior sides. This is needed to place headers, wall blocking, viewing the framing, among other things, such as different wall layers (an example might be cement board, membrane and tile interior layers with drywall and paint for exterior layers). You can draw walls in any direction and are still able to change the interior / exterior sides using the 'Reverse Layers' tool. This tool is in the toolbar that appears when an item is selected. Walls designate the exterior side with a selected edge handle. You may also want to open up your wall and under the Wall Types > Define > Wall Properties, Toggle on the Partition Wall. This will only butt a bisecting wall to another wall.

I use a Logitech roller mouse on the right hand. A 3D Enterprise plus a Keychron Q0 Max programable number pad on the left hand. I like the roller mouse a lot and probably will never go back to shoving a mouse around. No mouse pad, small desk real estate foot print. Very comfortable on the wrist. The 3D Enterprise has well over 250 tools / library items on it - love it. The 3D mouse really shines with customer virtual walk throughs. It does have a couple of things that doesn't play nice with Apple's OS. It would probably be more efficient if Apple would allow the 8-tool radial dial instead of only 4, but not a deal breaker. My Keychron number pad has over 100 plus different things on it and almost eliminates using any of the keys on the keyboard, other than typing out sentences. Every key is programmable (keystroke / macros) so the four layers (x26 buttons) are enhanced further by programming the shift and option keys into the mix. The number pad doesn't have an on-screen radial dial view of all the hot keys, but a paper Rosetta Stone pinned to the wall provides a quick reference. I purchased shorter keys caps for comfort and to provide very good visual identifiers. Having almost all of the keyboard keys in a compact unit right beside the Enterprise is great. No more reaching to the middle for the keyboard. So far, I am really liking this addition.

After framing for many years, I can't ever remember wanting to use the center of an exterior wall to measure from. Having said that, I am guessing that the "center points on the exterior" would possibly mean the centers of openings??? One point of grief I had when framing was having too many fragments in a dimension line. The logistics of framing are to build the exterior and bearing walls first, and then come back later after the roof is built for the non-bearing interior walls. I hated having to add up two or three closet walls and a bathroom wall to place the next window opening. Likewise, on the back frame; I already had the window openings framed, why do I need to add up those fragments to get to the interior wall measurement? I find adding unnecessary fragment measurements a waste of time and more room to make an error. I decided to dimension my plans from a framer's perspective. Here is how I addressed the issue of having clear framing measurements without too much overlap. I set up my Floor Plan Dimensioned saved plan views to use RED for all exterior wall framing and Blue for all interior wall framing - usually larger text for dimension lines outside the building envelope, and smaller text for interior dimension lines. This method helps to keep more dimension lines outside of the busy building area. I manually use Orange for things like deck framing. Each specific dimension uses it's own defaults. My building officials do not mind multi coloured plans so this works well in my area. I'm not sure how well you know Chief, so my apologies if you don't need the recipe... 1) I made separate layer lines in the Layer Set. Each Dimension Line has it's own text line as well (with it's own size, colour, line thickness). Some examples are: Red, Blue Outside, Blue Inside, Orange, Gray, Green, ... I made specific dimension lines for all of the specific Layer Sets as I thought necessary. 2) Set the Dimension Defaults (little wrench icon) for each. This is where you choose all the things that you want the dimension line to locate (and not locate), text to use, line colour/size, format, arrow, extension length, etc... The Auto Locate makes magic appear with one click - powerful time saving tool ! 3) Toggle on / off the layer lines in the specific Layer Sets. Example: only toggle on the Floor Plan Dimension lines in the Floor Plan Dimensioned Layer Set. This will stop any unwanted stray dimensions from appearing in the layout. Example: If I want to measure something on my Working Plan saved plan view, they will not show up on my Main Floor Plan Dimensioned saved plan view that gets sent to the layout. 4) In the Project Browser, for each Saved Plan View, right click to Edit the Selected Defaults to use for that specific Layer Set, Dimensions, Text, etc. This will automatically attach one specific Dimension to that chosen Saved Plan View. I have the Active Dimension Default Control tool on my tool bar to quickly change between the different dimensions - this allows me to stay on the Main Floor saved plan view and use the Red Auto or Blue Interior or Manual Orange dimensions. It really is supper fast to change back and forth. I've included a foundation plan with the dimensions in RED and the diagonal dimensions in BLUE. I picked this Main Floor Plan because it is fairly busy with information but still shows the framing dimension information in a manor that is very useful in a clear and easy way to read. Making plans easy to use for the trades has proven to be a fantastic marketing tool. Hope this helps