DBCooper

I don't think the reference guide has a list of the built in macros. There are a few different things that can help though. 1. Select an object. Open the ruby console. Type in "owner.names". This should list all available macros. The list is not that easy to read though. 2. Create a text object with an arrow pointing to the object you want to know about. Put %object-properties% in the text box. It should list out all of the object properties and their current values and types. Very useful but a bit of a pain to find what you want when the list is long. 3. Select an object. Use the "match properties" tool. In the dialog that opens, I *think* that every property shown has a macro associated with it. If it says something like "Box Height" (for say a cabinet), then you should be able to use the macro %box_height%. I like using the match properties mostly because it is searchable and shows you the current values.

There are a couple of things you might want to try. First, you can unblock them (like Alan suggested). Second, if you really want to keep them blocked, you can make the "inside mullion depth" 0 which will make the trim flush with the wall and then set the interior trim material to the same material as the wall. This should look pretty good but you might get an extra line in vector views. In the picture below, the windows on the right are just two windows and the ones on the left using the technique I am suggesting.

I like Joe's suggestion of using "ceil" instead of "round" since I believe this will always round up instead of rounding down when you are less than 1/2 a unit. Wouldn't want your framers to cut things off too short.

If you don't want to see the hole under the deck, just open the terrain dialog and uncheck 'hide terrain intersected by building".

You can also use the "complete break" tool that should show up in the edit toolbar when you click on the the stair and then the break tool. Have you tried using %total_risers%? This should give you the total number of risers for all of the connected sections.

If you want it to the nearest inch, you can use "%length.round()%". if you want it to the nearest foot, you can use "%length.to_ft.round()%". If you want it shown in feet and inches but rounded to the nearest inch, you can use "%length.round().to_s("'-\"")%".

Look in the bonus catalogs, "MEP no 8, surface mounted electrical" probably has what you want.

I didn't notice any slow downs either. Must be something else going on. Maybe try a reboot? On a side note, I looked at your macro and didn't see anything that looked weird but I am definitely not a macro expert. One thing I thought though was that you could be using "owner.is_railing" to make sure you actually had a railing. Not sure but I thought that if you turned a railing into a wall that some of these other macros might still give you something back that makes you think it is a railing when it really isn't. Too bad there isn't a macro that would just tell you that it's a halfwall because that would make it even easier. Personally, I would just setup my railing and halfwall defaults to make the label what I want and not bother with the macro but that is only because I don't mess with macros that much.

I think you use the "s" key to skip dimension marks and you use the "shift" key to add them. I couldn't find the documentation on this and I can't remember where I learned this. Seems to be pretty well hidden though.

The update notes are here: https://cloud.chiefarchitect.com/1/pdf/documentation/chief-architect-x18-update-notes.pdf It looks like they just fixed a few things they thought were important. I heard that they are still working on other fixes that will go into 28.2 but I don't know when that is coming out.

If your plan is too big to attach, you could try creating a compressed .zip file to see if that will work. If it is still too big, you could try removing things that don't have anything to do with the problem (like fixtures and furniture) and doing a "save as" to a new file and then zipping that. If it is still to big, you could post it to a shareable online location (like dropbox or whatever) and then post the link.

Yeah, I have noticed some funky behavior that seems to be related to camera angles. My guess is that you don't really have them set to "show" and you are still using "automatic". In camera views, labels can be set to "show", "hide", or "automatic". When they are set to automatic, they will sometimes show and sometimes not. If they are showing and you don't want them to, then just force them to hide. If they are not showing and you want them to, then just force them to show. When you use the edit toolbar button, I think it will either force them to show or hide and it should turn off the automatic behavior. If they are not doing what you want when you have them set to automatic, you still might want to send this to Chief and "suggest" that they make the automatic behavior work better.

Wall heights are usually set based on floor/ceiling heights in the room dialog but you can override any of them by editing the height directly in a camera view. So this is probably either a room problem or a wall problem. You can usually fix both by using the "reset to defaults" tool. Just select floor/ceiling heights and wall tops/bottoms for "all floors" and they should all be set back to the defaults. If that doesn't work, then you might want to post the plan so someone can poke around in it. It could have to do with the floor/ceiling structure or maybe even something else.

Instead of drawing a brick wall and then changing it to a railing, you might be better off just drawing a railing wall to start. To fix your walls, you might be able to open the dialog and change the wall type from a "brick" type into a "railing" type. The walls are probably going to resize though and then you will need to move them to the proper positions.

Btw, there are lots of changes to room labels (and other labels as well) in X18. Room label should work more like other object labels now but there are also some new features that let you do things like you could in X17. First, and probably most important, when you select a room (or any other object) and you want to do things just to the label, you can click on the "edit label" tool. This will open up a new toolbar with a bunch of label specific tools: