DBCooper

The %manufacture% macro just displays the info that you put into the "manufacturer" object information. You have created an endless loop but apparently Chief already anticipated this and doesn't blow up. So yes, you will have to manually enter the manufacturer name for all of your cabinets. If you are using the same manufacturer for all of them, just group select them and type it in once. There are also a whole bunch of manufacture cabinets available in the downloadable libraries. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/3d-library/

Just like I thought. So when you want to use a custom counter, you don't need to set the cabinet lower and turn off the automatic counter. Just draw the custom counter over it. It will replace the automatic one and it will be the shape you make it.

In Chief, the cabinet "height" is always the box height plus the counter top height. If your cabinet schedule is showing two different heights, then you have probably done something that you don't need to (like making one cabinet shorter). You don't need to make your cabinet shorter to use a custom counter top. If you just draw the custom counter over the top of a base cabinet the program will use your custom counter instead of creating an automatic one. If you want your cabinet schedule to show the "box height", all you need to do is remove the "height" column and add the "box height" column. If you actually want to build all of your cabinets at 35" instead of 36", then just set the cabinet height to be 35" and your counter top thickness to whatever you want. If you set up your cabinet defaults this way, then it shouldn't matter whether your cabinet has an auto counter or a custom one. You don't put %manufacturer% in the object information. You put the actual name of the manufacturer, like "KraftMaid" or "Wellborn". You can use %manufacturer% to extract the manufacturer name when you want to put it into a label or a custom macro. All of this is just my best guesses, if these don't help you solve your problems, then I recommend that you post a plan (as suggested by Eric).

Next time you have to import a dwg, I would import it into a plan file, not a layout. While you are in the "importing drawing assistant", you can select which layers you want to import and you can even map them to whatever Chief layers you want to using the "advanced layer mapping". You can find lots of info on this by using the help button in the assistant.

Or, just place the light on a ceiling and then move it under the polyline solid. You will probably need to adjust the height though. Or, use a cabinet soffit instead of a poly solid because the recessed light should mount underneath it.

A pencil and some paper. But seriously, if you have better tools available, why wouldn't you want to use them? The new features don't just make the job faster, they allow us to do things that you would have never done back in the "old days". I mean who would have ever created a framing overview when drawing by hand? The fact that most people have software tools now that can do so much more has changed the world so that now these things are requirements, not just pretty pictures. Not that I have anything against pretty pictures because these can make a huge difference between getting a job or not getting a job just because your competition spent all of 2 minutes making one. I think it's pretty obvious that Chief has already made up its mind. I wouldn't expect them to change back unless they saw a significant decrease in income. I plan on sticking with Chief but if you think there is a better tool available (not just cheaper, better), then by all means you should jump ship. Best of luck. This is turning into a zombie thread. It just won't die.

So a couple of things that I can see in your new picture... - The toolbar to the left now has a double arrow (>>) symbol which I think means that you currently have some buttons that are hidden. I think this can happen if you push toolbars together and they overlap. - In the default toolbar configuration, the floor down button is to the left of the floor number. You can lay them out however you like, but that's just wrong. - The 3 dots show you that you have placed the floor down button into it's own toolbar (as well as the display reference button). You may want to group them all in the same toolbar so that if you move them around they will stay together. - You already have the display reference button on the right side of the screen so you probably don't need it in two places. If it's not obvious, I can get a little bit OCD about my own toolbars.

I don't think it matters what floor you are on and what floors are below. That only affects whether or not the floor down button is enabled, not whether it is displayed. I don't think your button is being hidden by another toolbar. You should see a little arrow/flag symbol on your toolbars if all of the tools are not being shown. I assume this is the same on the mac but I don't really know for sure. I think you probably accidently removed the floor down button. You could try going into "customize toolbars" and adding the "down one floor" tool back. Also, you can delete your other thread on the other forum.

It's actually even easier. If you just place a barn door and make it wider than 4', it will automatically turn into a double barn door. You only need to use the dialog if you want a double barn door that is smaller than 4' or a single barn door that is wider than 4'.

It's called a "throw". You let go of the mouse button while you are dragging it and it should spin the camera. How fast you are moving when you let go controls the speed of the spin. You can also spin the camera manually using control+alt+s. Do it again and it reverses. You can change the speed of the spin by changing the "incremental rotation angle" in the camera dialog (and yes I actually forgot how to do this until I did a search as suggested by @solver)

That's not a very easy question to answer because making your own symbols can either be very easy or very hard depending on what type of symbol you are trying to build. In simplest terms, a symbol is just a collection of 3D surfaces that will show in a camera view, a collection of 2D cad that will display in a plan view, and some other settings that help control how it works in Chief. The 2D cad may or may not represent the 3D surfaces. Think about an electrical switch. What you see in plan view has very little to do with what the 3D surfaces look like in a camera view. So editing the cad block for a symbol, or replacing it with a different cad block, won't really have any affect on what it looks like in a camera view. To build your own symbols with the 3D surfaces you want, you can use any tool or combination of tools in Chief that creates 3D surfaces. Poly solids, moldings, and other shapes can be very helpful. One of my favorite tools that a lot of people don't think about is cabinets. Cabinets can really be considered a building block tool and many things can be created using cabinet components as a starting point. Here is a tech article that has some good general info (and it includes links to some other related articles): https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00761/modeling-custom-3d-objects.html There is also a lot of good info on the symbols forum (which is also a good place to go for how to and free stuff): https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/9-symbols-and-content/ Be careful though because trying to design the perfect symbol can really be a massive time sink. Don't underestimate how valuable an existing symbol that is "close enough" really is.

There is no good way to explode a symbol in Chief. You can manually delete surfaces in a camera view and then create a new symbol out of what you have left (and what ever else you have added) but if you are trying to remove a bunch of surfaces this will be a big pain. You would be better off only exporting out the components you want to keep from 20-20 and then bringing them in to Chief separately. In my opinion (which is probably worth every penny you paid for it), you should not try to do your design in 20-20 and then use Chief for your renderings. You would be far better off using Chief for all of your design work, working drawings, and presentation views/walkthroughs and then only use 20-20 for what it is actually good at (pricing/ordering). You could actually do everything in Chief but you might have to jump through some more hoops to do your pricing (and convince the manager that this is the best way to go). There are a number of people I have seen on the forums that moved to Chief from 20-20 that might have some better advice about how to make the transition easier. I believe that there are some that only use 20-20 for pricing and some that don't use it at all anymore. You might want to post a new question geared more towards how you can use 20-20 and Chief together.

Assuming that you are using "text styles" (instead of custom text) everywhere, then you should be able to change most of them all at once. Just go into your text style defaults and then you can group select all of the text styles to change the font in one step. Then do the same for all of your rich text defaults (since they can't use text styles).

You could try zipping the plan, posting it somewhere online like dropbox, or strip things out of the plan until it is small enough to post.

You can also put polylines into a schedule. So you could generate polylines for the rooms you want to show and generate a schedule that shows the areas. You can even combine the polylines as needed to just show garage space, patio space, and living areas.

You have control over how living area is calculated. You can have it go to the outside of wall surfaces or the main layer (framing) in your general plan defaults. You can also change which rooms are included in the room dialog. You can use the "make living area polyline" tool to generate a poly showing the area you want and turn on the label showing the area. See if this support article helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00424/changing-how-square-footage-is-calculated.html

Dimensions can't be scaled in Chief. They are always drawn at actual scale so on a layout they will be in paper coordinates instead of plan coordinates. If you want the ability to scale them, then you should put in a feature request but my guess is that they probably won't make this a high priority. My recommendation is that you forget about what autocad can do and learn how to do it the Chief way. In the long run, I think you will find it is actually much more efficient. In Chief, you should put all of your dimensions in your plan. If you want some to appear in some views, but not others, you can control this through layers and layer sets. You can also control this using your dimension defaults and can save all of your active defaults for any view you want so this can become fairly automatic. In your bathroom case, you could set up a saved bathroom view with bathroom dimension defaults that will go on a bathroom dimension layer. Once this is setup, ideally in your template plan, then all of this can be very easy to use. More info about using dimensions can be found in these training videos: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/playlists/92/dimensions.html I also highly recommend this video series that covers saved plan views and active defaults: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/playlists/100/saved-plan-views-layers-annotations.html Good luck and welcome to Chief.

This may all depend on how you created the molding. If your crown molding is done through the room dialog, you may have a wall that is marked as not having a molding. You may also have a room divider or other wall and you may have one room without the crown molding. If your crown molding is done through a cabinet soffit, a soffit can span multiple rooms and the moldings can get messed up when this happens. I have sometimes used a countertop instead of a soffit to solve problems like this. As Chris pointed out, you can also convert a room molding into a molding polyline and then modify the shape or turn on/off the molding on any edges you need to. It would be nice if we could also do this for cabinet/soffit/counter moldings.

These might help you get started: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00284/using-the-reflect-about-object-tool.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00012/duplicating-a-floor-plan-on-another-level.html https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02917/rotating-a-structure-or-plan-view.html

If you are using a back clipped cross section, is your back clip past the wall? I have seen problems if my back clip was right on the wall. Do you have a large terrain model? Is your plan far away from the origin? I have seen problems from these as well. Other than that, I would post the plan.

Here is a tech article that might help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00516/sharing-a-plan-file-with-a-home-designer-user.html

See what happens if you remove the backdrop. Maybe it is affecting the overall scene lighting. Also, it helps to know what rendering technique you are using (pbr, standard, pbr with RTRT, CPU raytrace, ...). There is a training video with some good info here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/10205/3d-rendering-tips-and-tricks.html?playlist=102 There is also a blog article with some good tips and tricks here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/blog/rendering-tips-and-tricks/

"OIP" looks like it might be pretty easy, "OIP (1)" looks like it will be a little more challenging (if you want to match the ornate details), and "download" looks pretty tough (but I still think this is possible, just a lot of work). There are a number of things you can do directly through the window dialog, such as setting up the shape and lites to be what you want and then adjusting the casings to match what you want. Get to know how all of the casing, lintel, and sill tools work and what you can do with custom profiles. The next thing you can do is to attach symbols to the outside of the window using the "treatments" section in the window dialog. You will find some examples of things you can attach in the "millwork" library. When all else fails, you might have to create your own custom symbols for the millwork you need and just place it in the plan up against the wall. The other thing you can do is search for some of these millwork symbol online. If you are planning on purchasing some of these things, then there is a possibility that the manufacturer already has 3d models that you can download and import into the program. All of what I have said above is pretty generic info. If you want more specific info, then you need to ask more specific questions. On a side note, you should probably not mark your own post as the "solution", not unless you add enough information that someone else can figure out what the solution actually is.

I think David means that you need to select the view (or layout box) that you want to relink and then look for the relink button on the edit toolbar.

Here are some more things that might help: If you marquee select in base cabinet mode, you will only select base cabinets. If you marquee select in wall cabinet mode, you will only select wall cabinets. If you marquee select in full height cabinet mode, you will select all of the full height, base, and wall cabinets. You can change the main door and drawer style for all of them at the same time. If you have already applied a custom door style to an individual face item, then these will not update. If I want to select all of the wall and full height cabinets to change the crown molding, I will marquee select the wall cabinets first and then add in the full height ones by shift clicking on them (because usually I don't have very many). When painting a door style from the library, you can also use the scoping tools to apply that same door style to just a single face item (component), the whole cabinet (object), all of the cabinets in the same room, all of the cabinets on the same floor, or all of the cabinets in the plan. It will only change the doors that match the original one that you clicked on though. You can also use these scoping tools when paining hardware from the library.