DBCooper

In my opinion, probably only worth exactly what you paid for it, and since you are already familiar with Chief and you are primarily residential, you should stick with Chief. The learning curve to go from X4 to X15 is going to be much smaller than the learning curve for Revit. I have not actually used Revit myself but from the demos I have seen and everything I have heard, it will take you much longer to learn the ins and outs. I'm sure there are advantages and disadvantages to both but I'm also sure you will have an easier time sticking with what you already know. You will also be able to bring your old X4 plans into X15 if you ever want to update or reuse any of them. In the end, the cost difference probably doesn't really matter as long as you are making enough money to justify a $200 business expense. If you can't, then you might need to rethink your plans and just get a job working for someone else even if it is not designing. Or, you could even just stick with X4 if it already does everything you need.

Sounds like a video card or driver issue. If there is a newer driver available, I would update. If not, you might want to try rolling back to an older one. If that doesn't help, then I would recommend calling tech support but you will need to wait until monday. You might want to read through this tech article to see if it helps you before then: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00106/troubleshooting-3d-camera-view-display-problems-in-chief-architect.html

It let's Chief fix the wall you messed up by editing the wall top or bottom manually.

Drop it into the plan outside of the cabinet so it is a free standing object. Then just drag it on top of the cabinet. As a standalone object, you can put it on any layer you want and it will still cut a hole in the counter top.

That is what Chief calls an "opening indicator". It is usually drawn as an arrow for sliding/rolling doors and window and as a triangle for hinged doors and windows. You can turn off all of the opening indicators by turning off the layer. You can turn it off for all garage doors by turning it off in your garage door defaults. You can turn it off for any single door in the door dialog. Here is a tech article with more info: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03150/displaying-door-and-window-opening-indicators.html

First, check "ignore room moldings" in the soffit dialog and then rebuild 3D should update the room moldings and they should ignore the soffit and not build around them.. The only reasons I can think that this wouldn't work is if your room moldings were converted into custom molding polylines or your soffit has a custom molding applied to it. If it's not one of these things, then post your plan.

Rebuild 3D.

Those settings apply to all dialogs, for all plans, but only while Chief is running.

Try this: - place an L-shape stair with winders. - delete one of the stair sections. - stretch the remaining stair section so that it has as many steps as you want. - now select both winder landings - use the copy tool and reflect about the stair center - remove the railings at the start/end of the landings You should end up with something like the picture below:

You can also setup your arrow keys to orbit. In fact, you can setup all of the camera movement tools with hotkeys so that you can do almost everything with the keyboard. I like to set my arrows to orbit and then use "i" and "o" to move in and out.

Chief has a tech article about using reference display (there is a section about half way through on 3D) here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00475/using-the-reference-display.html They also have a video here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5435/using-the-reference-display.html?playlist=100 These are both pretty basic though.

Maybe it can't because something is wrong in the model? For example, if all of your walls were marked as "no room def", you would have no rooms and therefore no roof. Or maybe your walls are not connected? Or maybe your rooms are all marked as not having a roof? Or maybe....

I don't really know anything about the GTX 960, but I am going to guess that since the raytracing stuff is disabled that your video card does not support it. You can tell for sure by going into your preferences and looking at your "video card status" and see if it says "yes" next to "hardware ray tracing". I also think the problem might not be related to your video card and is either a model or material problem. See my previous post.

If you want to see what your lines will look like on your layout while you are in a plan, you also need to go into your "drawing sheet setup" and make sure your paper size and scale match what you are using when you send it to the layout. You might want to check out this tech article for more detailed info: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00923/understanding-and-adjusting-line-weights.html

I am not seeing the same results as you in a simple plan I was playing with. I get a little bit of light bleed around the edges of my chair rail near some windows but what you are seeing does not look like light bleed. It looks more like the molding is not responding to the light in the room the same as the other objects. Is that a room molding or a custom molding poly? Are you using a custom profile or is it one from the core library? These are important because maybe you setup the profile or the molding poly wrong. I assume that is a custom material on the molding. Maybe you have setup your material properties wrong. You might want to post your plan so that others can see if they are getting the same results. I would recommend posting a stripped down version without all of the furnishings though.

Here is a tech article that covers how in more detail: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00007/importing-and-applying-a-custom-picture-to-a-frame-computer-or-tv-screen.html I think most of this should be the same between X15 and X13.

Start here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/playlists/100/saved-plan-views-layers-annotations.html I think most of this still works the same in X13.

BTW, the distance is the minimum spacing between posts. The program will automatically space them equally depending on the length of the fence. So if your fence is 10' you will get a post in the middle at 5' and not at 8' like you might want. You can always add break points to the fence to force a post where you want it but this can be a pain.

You might be able to design something that is pretty close just using the railing tools. In the picture below, I just made an open railing with a round top rail and some stock library newel posts. You could probably make a better newel post with a little more work. Once you've built it, you can turn it into a symbol, resize it however you like, and drop it on top of the shelves or cabinets where you want it. If you setup proper stretch planes, you should be able to keep it looking pretty good when you need to resize it.

Actually, I think schedules are automatically sorted based on the text that shows up in each row so it may depend on what columns you are showing and what order you have them in. You can always just drag the schedule rows up/down to put them in whatever order you want. Look for the little round handle on the schedule number you want to change. Also, assuming you have X15, you can sort by any column in the schedule. Look for the little triangle handle up at the top of the column.

In addition to using a mask (drawing a white filled polyline to hide things you don't want to see), you may also be able to edit the shape of the layout box to crop the view (assuming that you are sending the view to a layout to print). Select the layout box and see if you have the "break" tool. If so, you can add break points along the edges and make the layout box almost any shape you need.

I don't think it really has to do with HD pro or mac. I think it's because you are using the 2021 version which I think is based on the same engine they used for Chief X12. Back in X12, I don't think wall elevations ever included vaulted ceilings and now they do. So I think you either need to use the full cross section (and maybe crop or mask the view to show what you want) or manually draw what you want to show above the wall elevation. The other choice would be to see if you can get the newest version (2024) working on your machine (or upgrade your machine). I know most of the people that had problems when going from X12 to X13 either needed to update their video card drivers or upgrade their machines. You should first check to see if your machine meets the min sys reqs and if it does, you should be able to get the newer version working on it.

There is no way I know of to specify an offset. I did notice that if I took a blank floor plan and just drew a normal poly and sent the view to layout that the program automatically created a slight offset for me. See picture below. I also noticed that it did this if I did the same thing in a cad detail. Not really sure why this isn't working the same for you. You might want to post a plan or report this to tech support. I suppose if all else fails, you could always create your own "offset" by doing a concentric copy of the poly and then setting the line style to "invisible". It should still be used for sizing the layout box but it won't actually display.

Ugh, I should have been able to guess that. When color is turned off, all of the colors will either be mapped to black/white or to some version of gray depending on that preference. The program default is b/w and since the solid gray you used for your walls was light enough, they ended up white which is why they did not show in your plan. So you can either turn color on, make the gray a darker gray, or change your preference to use grayscale.

Do a save as on the plan and delete everything that doesn't matter. Another thing you can do is zip it (turn it into a compressed file) since that will be much smaller.