DBCooper

This tech article talks about how to make a symbol: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00344/modeling-a-subdivision-or-lot-with-multiple-structures.html Personally, I like using referenced plans too but sometimes a symbol can have some advantages. You can make the building symbol smaller by making sure you turn off things you don't need. Of course you do similar things with the reference display layer set so it might not be that big of a deal. The other thing you can do with symbols is quickly change cosmetic things like paint and materials and generate several symbols with having to make a bunch of plan copies. No easy way to change materials using layer sets (although that might be cool).

It might just mean that you are not currently signed in while in the program. Try going to "account" from the main program menu and signing in, or maybe even signing out and then back in.

It really depends on how you want your dimensions to work. Some people, such as a remodeler, may want to layout the as-built based on interior measurements but then they will show normal dimensions in their construction docs. If you are strictly doing interior work, then you might want all of your dimensions to always go to interior wall surfaces. You can open your dimension defaults and change your walls to use "surfaces" instead of using the dimension layer (usually the framing) setup in the wall type. Also, check to see if you have temporary dimensions turned on. You won't get a wall length dimension while you are drawing a wall when they are turned off.

You can also just place the refer as a free standing appliance and build the cabinet(s) that go around it. You will probably run into the same issue with dishwashers.

Try this: Open up your "general wall defaults". Change the "resize about" setting to "inner surface". Now as you draw a wall and see the temp dimensions, they should show you the interior surface-to-surface length. Same if you open up the wall dialog and look at the length. You may also want to change your dimension defaults so that they will locate wall surfaces as well.

Open the active dimension defaults. You should get them when you double click on the dimension tool. Assuming you want to use the manual dimension tool, look for the "locate manual" settings. Look for the cabinet settings and turn on "openings". I think this will give you want you are looking for.

You added a "break" instead of a "complete break". They do different things. You can use the "disconnect selected subsection" tool (like Greg suggested) and then pull the lower section out wider. You will need to add another "complete break" for the bottom part (or add another break and then disconnect it again). To get rid of the extra newel post, just shift-select the middle section and then you can open the stair dialog and turn off the newel post. Anytime you want to just change one stair section instead of all of them, you can use the shift-select trick to isolate it otherwise it will change all of the connected sections. You may have some other minor issues with the railing having a break in it because the stair slopes are not all exactly the same (see my picture below). This kind of depends on where you put the breaks. If you make all of the stair sections have locked treads and make them the same, you can probably solve this problem. You may not be able to get things like the wall trim and railing end to be exactly how you want them though. Chief doesn't really like it if you try to have a wall end at the middle of a stair tread and it seems to work better when the full tread is either all against the wall or none of it is. There is no easy way to notch a tread to fit around the wall corner.

It seems like the auto roof should be able to handle this. Your plan is no longer available to play with though.

It's pretty easy to setup your automatic dimensions to locate centers on interior walls. Just go into your current dimension defaults, go to "locate auto exterior", and change your setting for interior walls to use "centers" instead of "primary side". If you want to see "outside corners and center points" for exterior walls, I don't think you can do this automatically. You can always edit your auto dimensions and add extra locations (which will convert them into manual dimensions) but that feels like a bit of work and it seems like it would make your plans pretty busy.

As far as I know, you can't change the size of the dashed line shown for a garage door except by changing the height of the door. You could maybe make it a doorway, manually place a door panel, and then manually draw your dashed lines. Or, you could maybe put it on a custom layer and turn it off in plan view and draw what you want to show manually.

As far as I know, you can't select a footing to edit it. You can open the wall dialog and change some of the footing settings there.

I think all you need to do is add a "complete break" to your stair where the wall ends and then you can make the lower section wider. I did a quick look but could not find a tech article or video on it although I thought for sure there was one.

First, your pictures above are super small which makes it pretty hard to see what is going on. I am currently working on a laptop remotely and it's already too small for a lot of normal stuff. So basically I can't tell what the warning message says so I can't offer much advise. Second, there are two common reasons why you might not be able to convert a polyline into a terrain perimeter. One is that the polyline you selected is not "closed". The second, which what I think is going on with your plan, is that you already have a terrain perimeter in the plan. Chief only allows one terrain perimeter at a time. If some of the other terrain stuff is enabled but not the perimeter, then this almost always means that you already have a perimeter. My guess is that when you went through the import process that the program automatically built a terrain perimeter to hold the other elevation data you imported (only it's probably not going to be the size/shape you want). You might be able to get around this by building the perimeter first and then importing the elevation data into it. You also might be able to import the perimeter directly but this may or may not be easy with the data you are importing. Importing terrain can sometimes be tricky depending on the data you have. You could always post the DWG file for someone else to take a look at and give you recommendations on how to import it. There is also a tech article that has some info that might help here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00719/importing-terrain-elevation-data-from-a-dwg-or-dxf-file.html

A dogear arch can be set to left or right side only. Unfortunately, it can only be set to a 45 degree angle which may not match the slope of your stairs exactly. Also, if you are using a symbol for the door, it will stick out of the corner which may not be a big deal if it doesn't show. You can get around this by using one of the parametric door styles, like "panel" which will be built to fit in the opening. If 45 degrees isn't going to work for you, then you could maybe use a pass-thru which has the "shape" page and then you can get the corner you need. You will then have to manually place a door symbol and put it in the opening. It's too bad they still don't have the shape page for doors because that would be really good for cases like this.

As far as I can tell, the "interactive material editor" will only let you offset, scale, or rotate a material. These are all things you can also do in the material definition dialog but it can be easier to see what you will get when working in a 3D view. If the actual texture is not right, then this tool probably won't help much. From your first picture, it looks like the problem you are having is that your material is not "tiling" or "wrapping" correctly. I think you need to be pretty good with a photo editor program to make a material like that so it will wrap correctly and look good when mapped on surfaces. I know it can be done, but I am probably not the right person to tell you how to do it. This sounds like something that the "material builder" might be able to do. I have seen some pretty good things done as examples but I have not played much with it myself so again I am not the right person to tell you how. There is a video about how to use it that may help get you started you though: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/10301/custom-tile-materials-new-material-builder.html

As far as I can tell, this is how it is already supposed to work. If you delete W19, you will have a "hole" in your schedule and W20 should be the same. Now if you add any new windows, they might get added in the slot at W19 instead of at the end. You could drag it to the end, but unfortunately, it will then move W20 into the W19 slot. Also, there might be some other things you can do that will force the schedule to renumber even without you using the "renumber" tool. Not sure what all these are though but my guess is that this is what you are running into. Another thing you could do is convert the schedule into a normal text table which would remove any automatic behavior. You would then have to manually edit the table to add or remove any windows and you would also lose your automatic callouts.

See if this helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02963/features-introduced-in-each-version-of-chief-architect.html Then, you might want to try the X17 trial version to play around with it yourself. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/trial.html

You can create as many different materials as you like in either your plan or in your library. I don't think it makes sense to create copies of library materials with different position offsets though because these are going to usually be very specific to where you are using the material in a plan. I would only make copies of the library materials if you want to make them visually different for things like changing the scaling, colors, textures, etc.

FYI, I wasn't the one who gave you the down vote. Not sure why someone did, maybe they didn't like the cryptic title to this post? Personally, I like more descriptive topics (but not really long ones!) so that I can tell if I want to look further. Maybe something like "How do I edit my posts later?". Not sure if you can change your post titles later because I very rarely start new ones. As for making changes to your posts later, if you look at the top right of your post you will see 3 dots. Click on these and you will see the "edit" as well as a "delete" option. Sometimes it is better to start a new topic, such as when you want to bring up a new issue or question, and other times it is better to continue a thread, such as when you want to add some very related info to the original topic. It's really just a judgement call.

I haven't had any plans where the invisible walls get added automatically since they got rid of the "connect island rooms" checkbox. You should post your plan and someone might be able to figure out what is going on. Or, just turn off the layer they're on.

I don't think there is a way to do this automatically but maybe someone else can come up with a hack. You might want to send Chief a feature request if this is something you really want: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/

This is actually the forum for Chief, not Home Designer. The forum for HD is here: https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/ That said, Chief has a toolbar button and hotkey (F8) to turn the color on/off. Maybe you accidently turned it off?

Probably not but "flared" stairs might work good enough.

So typically what you want to do is first select the object that is located by the dimension and then select the dimension # you want to change. If you have a true point-to-point dimension, then there should be a marker at each end so you would need to select the marker first and then move it by typing in the dimension value. Sometimes other things can block the movement though. In your case, changing the dimension rounding (as suggested by Michael) will probably work fine but I wouldn't do that with more important things like walls where you want them located correctly or other things can get messed up. Another thing you can do in cases like this is just override the dimension value that is displayed.

A normal curved stair in Chief can only be a simple arc with one radius. If you need a J-shaped stair, you will need to have multiple sections with different radius. Might want to start with cad lines for the centerline just to figure out the correct path and radius to use. Good luck.