DBCooper

I watched your video but apparently no matter how loud I yelled at it you still couldn't hear me. So here are some things that might help... You will have better luck if you draw your walls going around clockwise. I can just draw out those walls using the temp dimensions and they will be exactly 5'. If you need to adjust the lengths, you will have better luck if you start with the first wall on the left and then go around clockwise to the last one on the right. You need to pay attention to which direction the walls move when you type in dimensions. When you click on a wall dimension you should see some tools popup that will show you which end will move. If you select a wall and change the end on the left, then this will also affect the wall connected on the left. If you then go the wall on the left and change the end on the right, you are basically chasing your tail and will never get the walls the length you want. This is what you were showing in the video.

The deck is either not building the deck framing or the framing is not being displayed. My guess is that it is not building the framing for some reason. Could be something simple like one of the rails is set as no room def or maybe the auto rebuild framing is turned off for the deck room. If you want something other than a guess, you should post the plan.

Roofs don't build to beams, they build to walls. One way to do this is to just move the bumpout wall so it is aligned with the other walls, build the roof, turn off auto rebuild roof, and then move the bumpout wall back out. Another way is to just edit the roof manually to line it up with the other parts. There are probably several other ways to do this but these two things above are probably the easiest.

Layout boxes and other polyline things have the "fillet lines" tool on the edit toolbar. A handy little tool that let's you set the fillet radius and either fillet a single corner or all the corners at one time. Images (AKA "picture file boxes") don't have that tool (not sure why), but you can still fillet them by holding down the "F" key while dragging a corner. I don't know if there is a way to set the exact radius though and it only fillets all corners.. Must be something with the way images work that is different then polys because you can't make the image box any shape you want either. I think this works the same in X15 as it did back in X12 although I did not notice if it had been broken at some time along the way. I wasn't sure if @DefinedDesignwas using actual images or sending a view to a layout so I was covering both bases by suggesting to hold down the "F" key. BTW, if you want to create an arbitrary shape for an image on a layout, you could always put it into a cad detail first, and then send the detail to the layout, and then edit the shape of the layout box. Boom, best of both worlds.

The fillet tool should work. Just grab a corner and hold down the "f" key. I think this should work on either images or on layout boxes.

Check your cad blocks. Maybe when you imported the cad it had some blocks that were imported that are using the layer. They can still be in the cad block management dialog even when they are not anywhere in the plan. If you still can't find it, then you should probably post the plan to see if someone is willing to help you look.

I bet the problem is that you changed the handles for the individual drawers already. In the cabinet dialog you have controls on the door/drawer page that are basically defaults for that cabinet. You can then go into individual face items and override the cabinet controls. So if you want the drawer handles to use the cabinet settings, you need to click on each drawer, click on the specify button, and then set the handle to "use default". Then if you change anything on the door/drawer page, it should change all of them.

Go to your window defaults and see if you accidently changed the vertical stacking level. If it's not that, then you might want to post the plan.

I like the desktop viewer. I'm not sure how big of a problem it is to send the client the unlocked plan files. If your afraid of them stealing them, it's probably not any riskier than just sending them pdf files. The one thing that I sometimes find is a problem is that the client has to have a desktop computer that can actually run X15 in order to run the viewer. And you need to have them use the X15 viewer if you are going to send them an X15 plan because the X14 viewer won't open it. You might want to double check their computer specs and make sure it meets the min sys requirements. The other thing that is important is that you need to use "backup entire plan" and send them everything or they might not have any materials on anything.

This could either be a system problem or a plan problem. Do all of your plans have this problem or just this one in particular? If it is just this plan, then it is probably something in the plan that is slowing it down. You can start deleting things and doing a "save as" to see if it all of a sudden speeds up which might tell you where the problem is. Common problems are things like too many symbols, auto rebuild framing is turned on, patterns that are drawing millions of lines, etc. You could also post the plan to see if other people are seeing the same problems. Maybe someone might find what is causing the problems. There is also a tech article about slow plans that might help: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00521/troubleshooting-slowness-in-chief-architect-plans.html

I think you have a problem with room definitions and defaults. Stairs will try to find the floor height in the room above them. In your plan, you have at least two open below rooms so the stair looks like it is using the floor defaults for the second floor instead. I would change the room so it is not an open below, setup your second floor defaults to the heights that you want, and reset your rooms on the second floor to "use defaults", and it should fix the problems. Also, just as an FYI, if you ever run into problems where you really can't get stairs to find the rooms you want (which shouldn't happen very often), then you can always turn off the automatic heights and manually set the stair heights to whatever you want them to be.

I don't think so. You could maybe turn off the layer or make it a doorway and draw what you want with the cad tools.

@KnotSquare In the first picture, you are showing the "all on" layer set and yet you are only seeing the foundation. In the second picture, you said you created a "perspective floor overview" and you are only seeing the foundation. When I actually opened the plan, I see that it was last saved on the foundation floor. This is not a layers problem, this is a floor problem. All you need to do is use the "floor up" tool.

I did not look at your plan because my guess is that you are just on the wrong floor. Plan views and "floor" overviews will only show one floor at a time by default*. *Lot's of caveats to this because of things like reference display and setting up floor overviews to show the floors below.

It looks like there are also some drawer boxes in the "cabinet specialty storage" catalog that would work. @scottharris is there some advantage of exporting/importing the symbols? All I did was copy it to my user catalog and then resized it there and it seemed to work just fine. Although I did notice that the box joints didn't stretch the way I would have wanted but I am guessing that could be improved by tweaking the stretch planes (or maybe just removing them entirely). I am guessing that the dove-tailed joints would have a similar problem.

How did you change it for plan views? If you double-click on the arrow tool, you can open the "general layout defaults" dialog to change it. You can also go into the defaults dialog and look for "layout" to get to this dialog.

My guess is that it has something to do with floor heights. Railings usually are relative the room floor height so if it is somehow floating in the air than it must be finding the wrong height to use. If you want a better guess, you need to post the plan.

I like using counter tops rather than slabs because then you can add a molding to it if you need to.

I think the only way to do that is to use a library symbol for the drawer box. When you click on the drawer in the cabinet dialog, you can use the "specify" button to pick a library drawer box. I think there are some manufacturer ones available but it is pretty easy to make your own.

For the railing, go to the "rail style" and set it to "rail to post" instead of "post to rail". Then you can set the post height.

Make your starter tread using a landing instead.

No symbols are needed for a recessed flat panel. All you need to do is go the "accessories" page and set the "panel thickness" to something less than 3/4". I like to use 1/4" to 3/8". Now your "inset panel" will be thinner than your stiles and rails and it should look like what you want.

Rene, those are some really good renderings. I just can't unsee the "New York" book that is backwards though.

That looks like you have a "pony wall railing" next to the stairs set to follow them. Just delete it and setup the railing through the stair dialog. If you need a wall to close the space under the stairs, just draw a new interior wall underneath them.

Ok, this was a bit of a fun challenge (even though it really shouldn't have been which is probably half my fault and half Chief). Before you try and move anything around, you should probably open up each cabinet and set the width back to 36" instead of 36 1/16". The cabinets are indeed overlapping the wall but they are still connected to it which makes them move when you move the wall. One way to solve this, is to just move the wall to the left something like 2' and then move the cabinets back to the right at least 4" to unstick them from the wall. If you move them over different amounts it might make it easier to figure out which one you have selected. Once the cabinets are not stuck to the wall, you can then move them into their proper position against the other cabinets. The most accurate way to do this is with dimensions. When you click on a cabinet, near the right side, you should get a temp dimension to the filler on the right and setting that distance to 0" will make sure it is up tight against the filler. You might need to click around the right side to get the right temp dimension and/or use tab to make sure you have the right cabinet. You will need to do this for both cabinets. Once the cabinets are both sized correctly and up tight against the filler on the right, you should be able to just drag the wall up tight against the cabinets. At this point, things should all be in their proper places. If you don't want the wall up tight against the cabinets, for example if you want space for a filler or extended stile then move the wall using the dimensions so that it is held away how far you want it. So your upper cabinet is still marked as not having a left stile but it has a left stile extend. In Chief world, this will probably work strange. You will have better luck if you give it a default left stile and then specify a left stile extend that is the amount that the actual stile will stick out past the end of the cabinet box. As for the custom counter with the backsplash, there is no good way to only have a portion of a custom counter have a backsplash. You can control edge moldings for each edge so you can always add break points and turn the molding on/off wherever you want. In your case, you may want to just turn off the backsplash by turning it off in your base cabinets, and then adding a backsplash manually. Hope this helps, if this isn't clear or you are still having problems, then just ask more questions.