DBCooper

I think it would be pretty hard to pass along a virus using a ".plan" or ".layout" file. If someone tried to add a virus to the file, I would think that Chief wouldn't even be able to open the file. It might be easier to add a virus to some other kind of file though. In any case, a virus scan could always be done to be sure. It would certainly be easy to add a link to something that might go to a web site you didn't want to go to though. Maybe I am being a bit naïve, or just very lucky, but I have never had any problems with this forum. Would love to hear from any other users if they ever did.

So in Chief there is a big difference between things that are strictly cosmetic and things that are really structural elements. You can change cosmetic things rather easily but this may not give you a correct model or an accurate material list. For example, just painting a wall with a brick material won't actually make it a brick wall. The dimensions probably are not going to be correct in this case. For adding flooring on top of a concrete slab, I would add a new floor finish layer in the room specification dialog (as suggested by Gary). For walls, I would not add drywall to a wall using a wall covering. I always treat wall coverings as strictly cosmetic details, like wall paper or a wall paper border. If you need to add drywall to a wall that doesn't already have it, I would do that in the "wall type definitions" dialog. Hope this helps.

Try holding down the control key when you move it.

So the saved plan view has has "pony wall display" settings to control how pony walls will look in plan view. The pony wall also has these settings. If the pony wall is set to "use default" it will use the plan view settings, otherwise it uses what you set in the wall dialog. This is kind of like when you draw a cad line and go to the "line style" page and change the color or line style. When you do that, the line won't use your layer settings.

In your layout, go into layer display options and turn off "layout box borders" and "layout box labels". If you drew cad on your template page using the layer for "layout box borders", then put it on another layer. There are several other ways to do this, but the above is what I think is best practice. Also, just as an FYI, using all caps on online forums is considered yelling and generally frowned upon.

Have you tried adding keyframes and setting the speed to something faster? It seems like you have full control over the speed in every section of the walkthrough so I can't imagine why it would slow down unless you set the speed slower. If you post your plan, then maybe someone could take a look at it to see if they can figure why it is so slow.

See if this tech article helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03074/warning-critical-error-writing-preferences.html BTW, never had this problem myself but this was the first thing that came up when I searched for it.

So if you are using "edit active view" from a plan view, you will not have the new "below grade" page in the dialog. If you use "edit active view" from your open elevation view, you should. Also, if you just select all of your elevation cameras in plan view, you can use "open object" and you should see "below grade" on the camera dialog. If this doesn't help, then you should really post a picture of what you are seeing or contact tech support for more help.

I don't think you can do that with the automatic lites. Have you tried custom muntins?

Are you using "edit active view" while in a camera view? What type of camera view? You should also be able to use "open object" on the camera.

Left click and hold the button down, drag the mouse around, and then let the button up.

Click and drag until it is how you want it. You can place a door into any of the 4 door orientations.

X15 will let you drop your posts down to the ground. It won't put any footings under them though.

Try "reflect geometry" on the 3D page.

So if you are using X15 right now (25.0), then you are using the beta version (even though it doesn't say "beta" anywhere in the program) which means you are indeed a beta tester. You should report any problems you find so that they can try to fix them before the official release. Or, if you don't have the patience for dealing with problems like this, then you should stop using X15 until it is released. There is no guarantee that you won't find these problems later though. My philosophy is that the earlier I find a problem and the earlier I report it, the more likely that it will get it fixed sooner rather than later.

So schedules can either include objects from all rooms or from just one room. There is no automatic way that I know of to create a schedule for a group of rooms. You can create a schedule that includes only objects set up to be in their own custom category though. So you could take all of the electrical objects that you want in your schedule and mark them as "master suite electrical" and tell the schedule to only include objects that are marked as "master suite electrical". See this tech article for more info: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-03120/creating-custom-schedules.html

I think I agree with you and Michael. I would just define the porch room using invisible walls and then just manually place the posts where you want them with a beam across the top. Whether you use framing posts/beams or poly solids I don't think makes much difference unless you care about the material list. No automatic way that I know of to make the railing draw the beam using a dashed line the way you want (although you might want to send in a feature request for this). One other thing, if you want better control over where the program puts railing posts, instead of using a doorway, you could add a wall break. The main problem with this method is that the program will try to merge the walls back together unless you change something about them so that they won't merge. Some people like to flip one of the walls but I don't think that will work very well if you are offsetting any of the railing bits. I will sometimes just use a different layer to keep them from merging.

How did you get "percent opening" into your wall schedule? As far as I can tell, this is not a built in schedule column. Nevermind, it looks like this is something new they added in X15. I don't see a way to include windows but not include doors. Looks like it might be all or nothing. You might need to ask Chief about this.

There are some in the bonus libraries. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/3d-library/index.php?r=site/detail/1064

I don't think you're missing anything. That's just the way railings have always worked. The wall type definition is not used when they are drawn (but it will get used if you have a portion of wall above or below the railing). So now the question is, what do you want it to look like? Maybe someone can come up with a good workaround.

It might depend on what types of views you want it to show up in. For example, the easiest way to create a sign is to just use a picture of one, make it into a material with the the texture set to stretch to fit, and then paint it onto a poly solid or soffit or something. But if you need it to show up in a vector view (or as cad), then using 3d lettering might be a better way to go. There is also a tech article on making signs with 3d lettering: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00709/creating-a-sign-with-3d-lettering.html

No reason for the snark Michael. If you don't want to use print preview, then don't. Personally, I find it very helpful.

Does your material have a texture assigned to it? On the left side you have a vector view and on the right you have a render view. Vector views show patterns and render views show textures. This means that your material might not have a texture. In the wall dialog, you can also switch the preview to use "standard" and it should show you if you have a texture.

I think you are underestimating the value of print preview. It doesn't just "show you the sheet of paper" (that's what turning on "drawing sheet" does and maybe you are confusing the two?) Print preview will actually show you all of your text styles, line styles, and line weights using the proper scale for your drawing sheet. I have found that it always matches what I will print pretty closely. I have never actually wished for the ability to display it on the screen at 100% so that I could use a ruler to measure if it was correct. I probably wouldn't trust any measurements made on the screen even if I had this though. If this is something you want, then you should probably ask Chief for it. For now, I highly recommend using "print preview", and not just turning on "line weights" or the "drawing sheet" because neither of these will do the same thing (or are very useful in my opinion).

You might get some better suggestions if you let us know how you plan to use the program. For example, is your primary goal working drawings? Do you care about presentation views? How many plans do you do a year? Chief has suggestions for a recommended system here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/sysreq.html#recommended They also have a blog article with more info here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/blog/computer-for-design-and-gaming/