DBCooper

0 - it's better to post pictures directly on the forum so people don't have to download a pdf to see them. it's always good to make it easier for people to help you if you can. 1 - it looks like somehow you made the wall into a room divider (invisible wall). maybe you accidently drew over it with an invisible wall which replaced it? not really sure but you can "fix" it by turning off the invisible option or redrawing it with the right wall type. your doorways are gone though so you may want to copy the ones from your older plan or just rebuild them. 2 - you can't use match roof if you want to make a doghouse shaped window. This tech article will explain how to do it manually: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00036/creating-shaped-windows.html

You can't change the core libraries (and I doubt Chief will ever let you) but you should still be able to do what you want with only a little bit of work. You can make your own GFI outlets with the text exactly how you want and save them to your user library as an outlet (not as a block). Once they are in your user library you can assign them to your electrical defaults. If you do this correctly, they should work exactly the same as the OOB ones. If you do this for your template plan, you won't have to do it again. If you can't get this to work right, then you are probably doing something wrong.

Sounds like you are going to want knee walls to make the attic space smaller than the floor below.

This might depend on your new employee. Some people learn quicker using some methods but others not so much. For example, some people might want to start with reading the reference manual cover to cover while another person might just fall asleep after page 2. Another person might be good with watching all of the training videos and another might really prefer a private instructor to go at a pace that suits them best. Discuss it with your new employee to see what they think might work best for them. Regardless, this might be a good place to start: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/getting-started/ Don't forget to tell them about this forum which I think is very useful once you know how to ask the right questions in the right ways.

How are you turning off the ceilings? Have you tried turning off the layer for ceilings instead of removing the ceiling using the room dialog?

Select the outlet and use the "edit cad block" tool. Select the text and change the text style. Save the bock and then save the outlet to your user library. Go into your electrical defaults and select your modified outlet from your library. I think it still works this way back in X15. If you don't have the edit cad block tool, you can still do it but it takes more steps.

If it is a symbol, the best you can do is resize it and stretch it but you can't split it apart into separate pieces. Since I don't think you can put all of the parts into an architectural block, that probably won't work. One thing that might work would be to put it into a plan all by itself and just copy it into a new plan when you need it. Can't really keep it in the library though.

Take a look at the settings in the saved plan view dialog. You can change the pony wall settings for any saved plan view so you just need to setup a different one for the basement than the other floors.

You could maybe make it a bow front and use a negative value for the depth. If you need to have a curved back, you can't do that with one cabinet, but you could make a bow front cabinet with no face and put them back to back.

Might be waiting until X18 then, although I wouldn't say "all" of the bugs will be worked out but at least the most important ones should be. For me, I am not finding any big problems working in X17 since the last update but I'm not really using the new project management yet either. BTW, it wasn't me that downvoted you, but whatever.

I think it has to do with your invisible deck railing that is up against the brick wall. I think Chief is treating it like a double wall which affects the wall cutout and casing. At any rate, the window will build normal when you get rid of the railing. Not sure if there is a better work around to get what you want though. Might want to send this in to Chief because it seems wonky to me.

Not sure why undo didn't work for you. I just tried it in a simple plan and it seemed to work fine. You might want to play around with it and see if you can repro the problem and then report it to chief. My guess is you won't be able to so I would just blame the gremlins.

I think you already answered your question. It is really easy to accidently select the exterior room when you are in a camera view. You can do this by clicking on something like a floor or ceiling surface or just by hitting "next" after selecting a wall. It's also a bit hard to tell the difference between selecting a wall and a room if you are not paying attention to things like which handles you have or what the status bar says. At any rate, if you select the exterior room and drag the top handle up/down, then you will change your default room heights for the whole floor.

Yes, you need to "block" them, which means you make a mulled unit out of all 5 of them, before you can add the arch. You are adding the arch to the mulled unit and the program will auto adjust the individual windows for you. It should work even if you block all of the lower and upper windows together first before you block the 5 horizontal units together. In other words, nested mulled units. It's the final unit that gets the arch. If you still can't get it to work, then you should probably post your plan for someone to take a look at.

You can't make a terrain perimeter if you already have one anywhere else in the plan. If it's not that, then post the plan.

The bamboo lattice might look ok. I just assigned it to the panel material below. Really depends on the look you want and where you want it to look good. Textures show up in render views and patterns show up in line drawings. You can make adjustments to either depending on what you want.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with your plan. My guess is that when you try to open the plan (maybe from file explorer instead of from within the program) that your ".plan" files are still associated with X16. The plan is definitely an X7 plan so it can't be opened in X16. You can associate your files with X17 if you want to avoid this problem. Here is a tech article explaining how: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01131/associating-project-plan-layout-and-library-files-with-a-specific-version-of-chief-architect-or-home-designer.html As for the floor problems, you have a blank second and third floor. You may have accidently made a blank second floor at first and then if you make any more new floors they will also be blank. All you probably need to do is just delete the blank second and third floor and then you can make a new second floor using the first floor walls.

No. Edit area is one way to move the whole plan around since you can move all floors at once. There are a few things it doesn't move though. Select all and transform/replicate is another tool that can help in other cases.

Open the dishwasher and change it from "appliances (undercounter)" to something else. Open the cabinet next to it and turn off the counter or make a custom counter over it. Might be others but those are what I found quickly. Begs the question, though, why don't you like it? If there is ever a case where you don't like the auto counter, converting it into a custom and then modifying it solves just about all problems.

You can't modify the size of the frame for the built in "framed doors". You might want to send in a feature request for that though. You can make a post here asking for what you want: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/ So I think your only real choices are to live with the 2 1/2" frame that Chief gives you, look for one that is "close enough" in the cabinet door libraries available, or to build your own cabinet door symbol with the frame sizes you want. This is a pretty easy thing to do and you can use a bunch of different other tools to actually build it and convert it into a door symbol. When you make the new symbol you might want to also set up stretch planes so that your frame stays the size you want. Personally, I like to use the cabinet tools themselves to build door symbols. Once you have created a good base plan, you can create all kinds of different door styles very quickly. Here is a tech article explaining how to build a custom door symbol: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01808/creating-a-custom-door.html

I think that is an issue with tray ceilings not liking room dividers between rooms. There might be some workarounds but I don't know them off the top of my head so you might want to search this forum to see if you can find some older posts. The easiest solution though is probably to just hide the hole using something like a poly solid or wall material region.

If you can't find something in the core libraries, you should check the bonus libraries to see if one is available. I didn't see one but I didn't spend much time looking. The next place I would look is 3D warehouse to see if there was one I could download. Be careful about surface counts though because some of the stuff there has way too many surfaces which is fine if you only need one column but if you need a bunch of them it might really hit your performance. The other solution is to build one yourself using the modeling tools in Chief. Or if you prefer, another 3d modeling program that you already know and use. And lastly, you could always request that Chief build one and include it in their libraries here: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/

Knowing where the origin of the drawing space can be useful for lots of reasons but Maureen brings up a good point that you don't want to be too far away from it. One reason I like to know where the origin is comes up when I am working on something in a cad detail and I want to use x/y coordinates to layout something accurately. It helps when you need to open a dialog that has coordinates when you know where the origin is.

I use it. There are a bunch of settings in preferences so that you can turn it off if you don't want it or change when and how it shows.

Maybe a video card or driver issue? If you are on X17, did you get the latest update. I know they fixed something having to do with nvidia cards.