tbrummel

I think @DBCooper is onto something. Looking closely, I see the doors are being displayed in light gray, implying they are not on the "current level". If I cut the window and paste it into another wall and then change it's Window Level to 0, it also fails to display automatic dimensioning! So, it looks like the automatic dimensions for my plan view are applying only to items on Window Level 1. How I change the active window level (not the level for a given window) is a mystery to me but if I figure it out, I'll post back... Oh, and I see DBCooper just posted as I was writing this -- and, sure enough, that works. The "window defaults" seems to set the "displayed window level (and dimensioning)" and plan view. Wow. Thanks for the help! I might have stumbled on that in 5-10 years :-)

Test plan attached. Family Room 1.plan

Any idea why I'd be missing temporary dimensions for doors only? I started a new plan to mess with this and if I put a window into a wall, I get temp locating dimensions, as expected. However, this simply doesn't work for doors. I've noticed it doesn't work for me on X15 or X14. 1) Temporary dimensions is enabled (obviously, since it works for the window and toggling it does add/remove the dimensions) 2) I've reviewed the dimensions defaults and even changed the locate to center and I see that is working - I now see measurements from the centers - but not for doors. So, I figured I'd draw an Interior Dimension to see if those settings were being applied -- and that doesn't find the door (opening) either. Is a door not an opening? I feel like I'm missing some basic 101 setting here but don't recall ever changing anything related to dimensioning until now. Click a window, works fine: Click a door, nothing: Interior dimension line can't find door: Dimension defaults - I turned on a locate for everything and doors are still not located:

@Kbird1 Wow! I would never have looked at "Arrow" config for actual behavior settings! Thanks! I see the arrow config on a measurement line is just what I'd expect -- how should the arrow look. On CAD lines, it's a whole different story. This makes CAD lines VERY useful now as configurable measuring tools. @solver The Arc Centers and Ends controls the display of the center, but that's not necessary in order to snap to the center of the CAD circle. Snapping is controlled by the snap settings which show with the extended toolbar config. Those snap settings might be configurable somewhere else as well but I just use the toolbar. Thanks for your help guys!

Sorry if this wasn't clear. I'll add pictures below. What I want is to have the dimension line always directly connect the centers of the circles and tell me the (shortest) distance between those centers. Here's the start - we have a dimension (manual in this case) between to CAD circles. Nice. Now, I move one of the circles and what I want is this: However, what I get, is this:

Challenge: Draw two CAD circles. Now get a dimension line that connects the centers of the circles. Great - now move one of the circles and things go south. The dimension line keeps its global rotation and measures the distance between the circles' projected centers onto the original dimension line. I can see how someone might want to know this - but what I want is to have the dimension line always directly connect the centers of the circles and tell me the (shortest) distance between those centers. I scoured through setting and properties for the dimension line and I'm coming up empty handed. Anyone know how to do this? As an aside, I was thinking I could work around the problem by connecting the circles with a CAD line -- but I found out that doesn't work either. I can't seem to connect a CAD line to the centers of the CAD circles and have it stay attached to those centers when the circles are moved around. Any help appreciated.

@smaloneymt rlackore is right - this is simply the migration to Adobe. Substance was its own company with its own website/logins. Now that Adobe has acquired the products, the old site will be retired and people need to move to Adobe's ecosystem. As you noted from the post, the good news is that if you have a perpetual license (student, etc) on Substance3d.com, you can download the license file along with the version of the software currently posted on Substance3d.com, and you'll be able to install and activate it at any time in the future. Adobe will continue to develop the Substance software products and new versions from Adobe will not activate with your license from Substance3d.com. You'll need an Adobe license (subscription)... OR you can buy the products on Steam. Adobe offers a Substance subscription for about $20/month (and please note that Substance products are NOT included in the Adobe "all products" subscription - yes, I found this out the hard way). If you buy a product on Steam, you get a perpetual license for the version you buy. So, for example, if you just want Substance Painter and think the 2022 version is all you'll need for some time, then you can go buy it on Steam for $149 and you'll own the 2022 version forever. You can buy an upgrade if/when you feel like you need it. Who knows if/when Adobe will no longer sell the products on Steam but, for now, they are available. Now, since this post is primarily focused on Substance PLAYER, which is currently free, I asked Adobe if it will continue to be free once the Substance3d.com site is shut down. I was told that it will. There will be a new link/page to download it from, but Adobe plans to continue to release Substance Player for free.

Really? The ways I'm aware of are: 1) create a room with invisible walls so you can have Chief create a roof over it. or 2) Just draw a custom roof plane in mid air. Those are fine -- but then I didn't see anything simple about getting the framing/structure for the roof that attaches it to the wall. I'm probably just more comfortable with Blender but I know Chief has some 3D primitives and you can model some stuff right in the program -- which I still need to play with before I can do a fair comparison and decide when I need to drop out of CA. I'm modeling a garage lift (MohawkLifts.com) externally and I think I'll try to build that in CA directly as well so I can compare. WRT textures/materials: I'm finding that modeling objects in Blender and importing them with textures is not really the best way to go for CA, in general. Sure, it's great if you're modeling a custom piece of furniture or something where you really need fine control over texturing. However, then the textures (materials in CA) are not usable for anything else (as they are baked UV specific). Better to just import a model with material "slots" (so they can each receive different materials in CA) and then apply materials (making new materials, if needed -- as many stock are not PBR). I did that for my roof now so it doesn't "own" any textures. Much more generic/reusable (and less memory intensive as materials are reused).

I've been doing a bit with Chief and custom 3D objects (created in Blender). This has been a lot of fun - here's a simple custom roof example I made for over a garage door: However, I've noticed that dealing with materials and objects/symbols in Chief is a bit "manual" and I'm wondering if I'm making life harder than it needs to be. One big thing is importing custom 3D objects with materials -- I can get the base material color (usually called the Diffuse) to load but I can't get Chief to recognize and load the other material maps (sometimes called textures) such as the Normal Map, Roughness Map, etc. I've tried different file formats to see if it matters but neither Collada (.dae) or Wavefront (.obj) seem to work. I exported an OBJ from Blender complete with material maps (Diffuse, Normal, and Roughness). You can see in the material file (sidecar file to the .obj file) that these are correctly specified (and they are in the same directory as the .obj). Chief, however, only loads the Diffuse (base color) file -- the other slots in the material definition dbx in Chief are empty. I have to go in and manually add each additional file I have for the material. The material isn't accurate/complete without the other textures(maps) being loaded. Am I missing something? Is there a way to get Chief to load the objects along with ALL material files it uses?

Ok, so it's a bug then. I updated all catalogs and started a fresh project. Add a "Beveled Mirror (vert)" to the wall. Then add some other object (I added Ebene Vase). Open the vase and change the material to Mirror from the Library catalog. You will have two mirror materials in your list now. They are exactly the same in all ways that non-programmers can discern. In fact, if you use the "Find Original In Library" feature by right clicking the objects and then selecting the "Mirror" material, both objects will resolve to the exact same material in the Core Catalog. FYI, copying the beveled mirror to the user catalog and then doing this same experiment still results in 2 Mirror materials in the list. HOWEVER, if you copy to the user catalog and then open the mirror and replace the Mirror material with itself -- literally just click Ok when you select a "new" material -- selecting the same Mirror material from the core catalog, then repeat this experiment with your "new mirror" and, viola, you do not get a duplicate. So, it appears that there are multiple material IDs mapped to the same core library material (or something along those lines) - and "Mirror" isn't always "Mirror" as far as user's can tell. I did use other mirror objects from the library (Entry Mirror, Floor Mirror 1, etc) and they all behave this way so maybe the Mirror material was upgraded and these objects are using an old material ID? Anyway, good to know the app is trying to link to the existing material if it exists in the Plan Materials list (maybe the search could consider all IDs?) and this is just a bug. It's not usually terribly difficult to clean this up if you want to. Thanks.

Figured I post to this in case someone else find this in a search wondering why they have multiple materials with the same name in the Plan Materials list. @Dermot: It's very easy to get duplicates. Here is what's going on: UPDATE: Oops, I noticed after posting this that materials used from the User Catalog do not behave exactly the same (or so it seems) - it appears that CA is trying to reuse materials if they already exist in the plan - but as described below, this isn't always working. Might be a bug now that I see there is inconsistency. When you add an object from the library to your plan, obviously, the materials for that object are now associated with your plan and show up. This is what everyone expects. Start a blank plan and drag a wall mirror from the library onto a wall. Now, you'll see 1 Mirror entry in your plan materials. If you drag more of the same (or different) mirrors to your plan, you'll still only see one entry -- they are all using the same Mirror material. So, how do we get duplicates? Place some object from the library into your plan (a table, for example). Now, open that object and change the material used for the top of the table to Mirror by selecting the Mirror material entry from the core catalog. Note, this is the same material being used by the mirror(s) we already have on the wall -- However, you will now see TWO Mirror entries in the plan materials list. When you select a material and apply it to an object, a copy of the material is made and associated with the plan (I believe this is documented). Note that if you use the rainbow tool to edit the material properties for your mirror table top, you will NOT affect the mirrors on the wall. So, applying materials to objects is probably the number one reason for duplicates in the list. You can merge them if you know that all mirrors in your plan are they same (and, with mirror, they probably are - but be careful with other materials you may have edited on specific objects). I believe this is by design as, if this were not the behavior, then if you edited the material properties for an object you just applied a material to, how would CA know if you intended to affect just this object or all objects using that material? You'd have to manually copy the material before editing if you didn't want to affect the whole plan. I'm not saying this would be bad, but the current behavior is "safer". You won't accidentally affect an object on another floor if you apply a material to something and then tweak the material properties. If you place a standard mirror, and then another, and then edit the material on the 2nd mirror (say, change it to a default material, colored red), you may have already guessed that BOTH mirrors WILL be affected -- they are using the same mirror material and you just edited it. However, drag a new mirror into the plan after that edit, and you'll have another Mirror material in the list. Interestingly, if you change the material in use on one of your edited mirrors and re-select the original Mirror material (which is being used by the 3rd mirror), you'll still get another Mirror material in your list -- again, because you applied a material from the library to an object. It's a bit unexpected because you're applying a material from the library to the plan and that material is already in use -- you'd probably expect both objects to use the same material reference. At least this behavior is consistent with the above. Note that you can avoid creating additional materials by using the Material eyedropper -- if, instead of selecting the mirror material from the library in the final step in the previous example, you, instead, use the eyedropper to pick the mirror material from the third mirror and drop it onto one of the others, then you are telling CA to use the exact same material reference and you will NOT get an additional Mirror material in your library. Finally, if you have an object using an edited (or applied from the library) material, and then you replace that material with something else, you will have "orphaned" the previous material (unless, of course, other objects in your plan are using it). That's how you get a material in your list that is not "in use". It was in use, but isn't anymore. TIP: if you're going to back up your entire plan to send to someone else, note that CA will include ALL Materials in the Plan Materials list including materials not in use! So, Purge your plan materials list to reduce the size of your backup (unless, for some reason, you want to save those materials because you might want to switch back to them at some point). Probably more than you wanted to know about Plan Materials but this was bugging me enough that I spent some time investigating...