Opelsauce

DB - You are spot on with your comments about a preferable approach to the design process. I agree that the 2020 front end / Chief backend approach is bass ackwards but the new department head is adamant in his opinion that we need to give potential clients a more dialed in price and delivery schedule before we spend time further developing the design. 2020 is good for what it is, but our previous design manager who had well over 10 years experience using Chief is gone and I'm stuck as a relative newbie using Chief trying to convince him that Chief is part of the reason we have been successful. And BTW, your opinion is worth a thousand times what I paid for it. Joe - thanks for pointing me to Rene / Rabbits design shop, but I must confess to being slightly confused as to how one might find this and similar resources on this forum. Is it simply insider information from those in the know or did I miss the way to find superuser tips and resources? (kinda like the Chief training videos but produced by those with their boots on the ground)

Joe, Being relatively new to this forum, I have no idea how to navigate to Rene's (Rabbit) Kitchen Tools. I have come across a handful of his videos while researching other topics and found them helpful, but a search for style palettes turned up a long list that has yet to include kitchen tools. Am I missing something obvious / can you point me in the right direction? Thanks again for your help.

Thanks very much to the both of you for the prompt responses. It appears that my initial conclusion that we would not be able to edit the imported 3D content to satisfy our needs is unfortunately, correct.

Joe, When I place a native Chief block and select it, the icon I was referring to describes it as "Explode CAD Block". The option presented when I select the imported 3D block is the "Edit CAD Block" you may be referring to.

Great question but the answer is somewhat open ended: The initial goal is to place the imported design (cabinets, moldings, appliances, etc.) in a Chief room, then add lighting, adjust materials, clean up geometry so we can provide renderings for presentation to the client. Schedules and material lists generated from Chief are not needed for the imported content (since 2020 Design would handle that), but lighting, windows, doors, etc. would be generated from Chief when appropriate. The key for me it be able to revise parts of the imported 3D geometry to fix errors and modify content, including deleting portions if necessary. If we are able to achieve the above, then creating design development and construction documents would be the next (final?) goal. This ought to be reasonably accomplished because the imported 3D content already conveys accurate plan and elevation information. As always, your comments are appreciated.

Greetings, I am working on "co-existance" with 2020 Design in our office. The new department manager is a fan of 2020 Design's pricing and ordering capabilities but wants to also take advantage of Chief Architect's rendering capabilities. I have successfully exported from 2020 to a 3D DWG file and imported it into Chief with reasonably good 3D geometry results. The problem is that the content (cabinets, countertops, appliances, walls, etc.) are imported into Chief as a single 3D block which I have been unable to explode. I have not changed the proportions of the 3D box and have turned all layers to unlocked & displayed. Are imported 3D blocks simply not editable once brought into Chief? When I select the block, there is no option to explode it (blocks native to Chief show this symbol ). The closest option I get is to "open a CAD block window to edit the CAD block owner of the selected CAD block instance" but when I attempt to edit the CAD Block this way, not surprisingly, all geometry is a 2D polyline. I can change material assignments on much of the 3D geometry, but the changes are made to a wholesale group with no opportunity to change individual elements (for example, the stove will either be all black, all stainless, etc. but I cannot change the burner grates separately). Furthermore, I cannot modify any portions of the block to fix 3D translation errors. It seems crazy to me that 3D geometry can be imported but not able to be revised once brought into Chief. Any help / insight would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if it would be beneficial to provide the plan file, which is a little over 13 mb.

No, edit wall layer intersections forces cleanup between the existing foundation walls and the new foundation walls.

Thanks Glenn, I tried using a room divider run vertically as a short portion of the wall but that did not work as hoped. I gave your suggestion a try and while not perfect, it yields a very acceptable result after fiddling with the Wall Layer Intersection tool. I turned off Walls, Invisible layer so the dashed line for room divider didn't show which has no obvious negative impact on other areas of the plan. Thank you, thank you, thank you Glenn for your help. After using another CAD software for nearly 30 years (not AutoCAD thank God), I am pretty picky about the plan graphics portraying the design condition as clearly as possible. I would've been happy to post the plan but the file is huge, around 80mb, even though I edited it down to less than 1,000 sq.ft. (the designers here load up all kind of content into our projects). I spent a few minutes deleting extraneous areas of the plan and some complex fixtures, but it did not reduce the file size all that much. Any hints on how to cleanup a plan to minimize content for future postings would be appreciated. Mark Thompson Using Chief Since March 2022, So Lots To LearnChief Architect Premier X14 - Windows 10 - Intel Xeon W-2245 w/ 32GB RAM & Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (1GB)

Greetings, I am having a problem properly showing a condition where new foundation wall construction abuts existing foundation walls. Chief (of course) wants to force the wall intersection to clean up, but I have been unable to adjust materials to show where the new brick kneewall stops adjacent to the corner of the existing foundation wall using the wall intersection tool. I would greatly appreciate any insight on how / if I can prevent Chief from joining the wall together or at least how to get the materials to display appropriately. This is what Chief wants to show: This is how I want it to display: Thank you in advance for your help. Mark Thompson Sunnyfields Cabinetry Chief Architect Premier X14 Windows 10