madcowscarnival

Alaskan son, that is a great trick. I've been trying Chrisb's solution, but it's such a change from how I've typed for years, I had to switch back (old dogs, new tricks and all). Ctrl + tab, enter is just what I was hoping for. Couldn't get the "OK" radio button to highlight with key combos, never thought to change option screen first.

OP are you still around, I can't tell the difference between automated bot comments or legit user questions? It should be as simple as defining your room heights on the plan (i.e. 12' main structure, 8' lean-to). Define your end walls as gable, then just auto build the roof. With a monitor roof, I believe the roof planes are typically the same pitch, so no need to define different roof pitches in the wall dialog box.

Chris, thank you. Wish it could be swapped to enter for new line, shift+enter to close, but I seldom type multiple lines. Michael, "enter" in my text editor currently just takes me to the next line, and with it being a text editor, "tab" just tabs rather than highlighting radio boxes (i.e. tab -> enter to highlight and execute the "OK" radio button).

I'm hopeful this can be done. Do not know how to search for it. Is there a way to close the text editor without using the mouse? Some combination of a key+enter etc?

The scale factor of 12 makes me think its units in your CAD program. When I export from Chief (no scale factoring) and open that directly in CAD, units are still set to decimal. Quick change to Arch and everything works great.

This morning, started working on the idea of importing CAD as closed polylines and, In the off chance that anybody in the future tries to cheat the system, I found a semi-cheat code. In CAD program, hatch the entities you want to apply materials to, with separate hatch entities. When you import into CA, select the "Hatch entities can be imported as solid-filled polylines" Nice! * import this into an elevation view for material painting on walls* When the drawing comes in, ctrl+select the new hatch entities (all can be selected at for action) -> Explode CAD blocks Without deselecting, use pline convert to Polyline solid. Huzzah, now the CAD-defined hatched areas are paintable to the limits of those lines with Chiefs superior material work. DB, I would not have given this a second look without your reply, thank you.

Thanks DB, I was hoping there was a cheat code or something to get around making and converting lots of polylines (individual windows/trim/etc).

Is it possible to "apply" a surface finish and color to a cad detail? A designer sent me his 2-D cad elevation and wants to know if its possible to apply surface finishes and color on that elevation. I do not want to redraw his file, would be a waste of time, but it would be great if I could quickly point-n-fill the various finishes. He's an old-school cad user, his program has some hatches, but no means to color. If there were discrete bounded shapes, I know I could convert to a solid then apply the finish. I tried making the full elevation into a solid, but that doesn't work, and I doubt it would recognize areas divided by lines anyway. Is there some other way to accomplish this, like how the fill tool in Microsoft paint works? Thanks all. Elevation finish-color.plan

I've never performed this operation before and don't know the correct way to search. I sent a camera view (general reference for a guy) to the layout. The "picture" on layout I want to scale down to fit in a smaller area on the sheet. However, when I use "hold C drag corner" resizing, it just resizes the bounding box, and clips the picture, which remains the original size. Is it possible to resize/scale down the camera view? Unlike the ortho view where I could simply send over at a smaller scale, the options in scaling are grayed out. Thanks all.

Tundra, thanks. Apparently that was not selected in my default settings.

I feel sure I've seen them displayed in plan view before, but: Is there a way to display the posts in plan view, just a little square that I can call out size? (County did not like my 4 ~ evenly spaced 6x6 posts at front railing w/ 2 ~ 2x10 header note). I checked to see if it was a layer I didn't have turned on but the all-on layer doesn't display them either. Hopefully just missing a setting somewhere, but site and internet search haven't yielded an answer to my specific question. Thanks all.

DB, thanks. I'd never used that parallel/perp tool before, just what I needed. Never had to deal with something outside of CA line/angle snaps. I am still on X11, don't use the program as a full-time product.

Extra question, just to reduce effort. Is it possible to precisely rotate the already fully drawn garage to this off-angle?

I have a client who wants a very specific front and rear wall dimension in a breezeway addition in order to order to orient a new garage with the driveway. This gives me a wall with an angle of ~99 deg - I've tried & the contractor has tried to talk 'em out of it, no dice. I did get the off-angle wall to snap to the corners of the breezeway wall corners, but I cannot figure out how to get a simple CAD line to snap perpendicular to that wall (perp is turned on in Pref->Snaps, and works everywhere else, just not this off angle). I'm going to try to create the square garage with CAD lines then trace walls over them. Is what I'm trying to do possible?

Rene, Thank you for the reply. Yes, here is a screen grab with a side by side. Autocad makes that leader "tail" automatically, when I move the text, the horizontal segment stays the same length and horizontal in relation to the text. Chief's single segment leader moves around with the text just fine (top). The lower leader on the right is how I would like it to look, but when the text is moved around, the joint stays put requiring additional repositioning. It's not a critical thing, just something I've thought about for long enough that I'd like to find a solution.