TeaTime

Sorta - here's what I'd do, start to finish:

In a Wall Elevation, draw a polyline rectangle and shape and break the top edge

Use Change Line/Arc to create a few curves

Copy/Paste, Paste Hold Position and Convert Polyline to make one of them a 3D Solid

Then Disconnect Selected Edge on both sides

 
Then you can use Convert Polyline to make the top, curved line a molding polyline, set it's size as needed and its material to "Lighting White", and voila!

Though the benefit of the ponywall is that the base attaches to the lower wall, so it essentially automatically recesses -- I set my lower wall to have 1/16" drywall, just to avoid seeing framing:

Huh. Ponywalls would probably be the easiest...depending on what your walls look like.

Though honestly that's such a small detail for renderings I'd probably just apply a low, thin Wall Covering a little darker than the wall color, then just mock up some detail elsewhere.

Rope Lights wont be able to do this - you'll want to look up 3D Molding Polylines. I'd draw in in as a CAD Spline and convert it to a molding, set it to a Lighting material that has an emissive glow.

I'm thinking this is something coded into the door logic -- I tested making a generic panel, a 3D Solid, an inch thick, 90" tall, 28" wide. Convert to Symbol - placed just fine, 28" wide door. (made of concrete, Perfect!)

Did the same at 26" - 26" hinged door.

Tried a 24" -- yup, 48" bifold.

I think the logic there is that if you're selecting from the Library a small enough panel, the assumption is that you wouldn't want to use that for a single panel door - 24" is too small. The only thing that size panel makes sense for is a bi-fold. Of course this is specifically when selecting the panel in the Library and just placing it right into a wall. Since we're not selecting a door TOOL, it's making an assumption. If we were to edit our door defaults to use that new 24" panel, that's a different story.

57 minutes ago, Archnot-Boltz said:

Why would you go from having to do nothing to now having to create another dang library item to find?

See I just don't consider it big enough of an issue to even warrant making a new library item. I'll use a dimension to set it x" from the wall, then use that dimension on my plumbing plan to show where the pipe needs to be. No big deal.

I'm not comin here to argue either, I'm just pointing out that the program doesn't force code for anything else, it kinda did here and we were just used to it, so when it changed it felt like something got taken away. But imagine if we hadn't had that at all this whole time - "Add a bounding box to custom toilet symbols" would be a thread in the Tips forum. That's all.

Now that being said I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't agree that snapping could be a little more intelligent at times, so I'm right with you there. If the bounding box only acted as a snap and did not block other objects from being placed, or even for the object itself to be placed - this would be a non-issue for everyone.

Not that I'm aware of, though it's not a bad idea. 

I'd just use the Zoom tool to draw a box tight within those clip lines, to auto zoom into that area, then in Send to Layout, be sure to use "Current Screen"

It's just not made to do that.

As per Help:

• Uncheck Display Totals Row to suppress the bottom row stating the total area for all objects in the selected schedule. Only available in schedules set to include Door, Window, or Room categories, and only when one or more “Area” columns are included.

5 hours ago, A-H_Ryan said:

Chief turned off this feature stating that it was preventing people from placing toilets. 

This seems a mountains out of mole hills complaint to me. The program holds our hands at times, but not all those times are necessary.

In this instance, there are times were a library object simply wouldn't go where it needs to go. Furthermore, the extended bounding box around toilets also interfered with placing any other object around it - I personally like being able to place a toilet paper holder within a reasonable distance of the toilet.

It's just a trade-off, we're either able to easily place toilets but not easily place other objects around them, or we have to do some manual measuring to place toilets but have full freedom around it.

5 hours ago, A-H_Ryan said:

chief needs to stop creating more work in a program designed to save us time.

In my years I've come to learn there's a middle ground to be found here. If you don't help enough then you don't serve much of a purpose, but help too much and you've become a hinderance. 

2 minutes ago, DBCooper said:

I played around with this a bit and it seems like backdrops don't really work that well with elevation views.  It looks like they are getting stretched to fit the original box size based on what is in the view and I couldn't find a way to update it.  You might want to report this to Chief to see what they say.

Slowpoke

2 minutes ago, DBCooper said:

You might want to make your own "backdrop" by just using the image as a material on a surface that sits behind the house.  Maybe someone else has better ideas?

that's what I'd do -- slap a Billboard Image back there and get your layout printed.

Huh. I don't ever have backdrops in my elevations so I've never seen this before, but it seems to be stretching Backdrop images "to fit", but it's basing the size off the "Entire Screen/View" size.

I made a quick random plan and sent it Current Screen to make sure that it got as much backdrop as possible, but

but add a Terrain and

Yeah I'd send this to Support.

9 minutes ago, DanDeBroeck said:

The light reflected by the moon originates from the sun. Try moving the sun around below the horizon until you get the desired moon appearance.

I've noticed too that when you click Toggle Sun, it doesn't turn off the sun, it moves it down so that the moon is lit from the bottom.

So like Dan says, if you manually drop it below the horizon, it should be side-lit.

12 minutes ago, DrawingABlank said:

There is a setting in preferences that may help going forward. It is 'highlight overridden dimensions'.

Ah I always forget about that setting! Good call!

Point to Point Move can locate the CAD within an Elevation view - but they have to be set to Plot Lines (it looks like yours are, but you might open the Layout Box specification to check).

Draw a CAD Line across where you want their floors to align, then for each layout box, select and use Point to Point Move to move the lower corner of each view (Point A) down to the line (Point B).

It's hard to say without seeing the plan, but Dimensions in Chief don't just bug out and show random numbers. They may round a little funny when you get REALLY fine measurements, but not ~20 INCHES like we're seeing here. That's a massive difference.

My suspicion is that 79" dimension was manually overridden. Open it and check the Segments panel to see if Suppress Dimension is checked and a Leading/Trailing value was added.

I prefer Plan Reference for this sort of thing. Keeping each plans defaults, materials, etc separate makes things much easier to manage in my opinion. used to be a major pain if they're on a slope or something but X15's made that a breeze.

35 minutes ago, KenL-sdd said:

If they are not framing materials then the deck won't frame

This is only half-accurate - only Joists need to be specified as Framing, otherwise they won't generate as framing, rather you'll still get a solid slab of that material. The top Planks layer will always generate as planks, regardless of what material is used.

4 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

What I think Steve would need to solve his probelm is an Automatic Heel Height checkbox. 

At first skimming this thread I was thinking "this is a wild thing to complain about! "why do I have to enter a heel height?"?? The fact that we CAN now is amazing!" but I totally agree it would be good to have the option to automatically sync to the VSD. Would sure save a lotta time.

Though, still, manually transposing a value is so much better than having to do the math myself.

There's just different ways the different dimension tools locate things.

Here's a Manual vs Interior vs Centerline, for example:

"how did this happen?" is tough to answer since dimensions draw differently when using different tools AND when using different Views/Defaults. So there's several variables, the Plan, the Defaults, the tool, these all affect how these things will behave.

Look at your current view's defaults, you can adjust how the dimensions will locate walls in the given plan view.

Note that Manual, End to End, Centerline, and Interior tools all have separate settings.

When you open the Deck room, I'd check two things:

1. On the Structure panel what's the Floor Structure, "Planks, Joists" look like?

    Is it Checked Default? When you press Edit does it seem to be set normally? (should just be two layers, #1 Planks, #2 Joists)

2. On the Deck panel, 'Automatically regenerate deck framing' is checked?

Yep!

Open the cabinet, select the Door and change it from Auto Right to just Right

Auto Right means that it'll change to a double automatically at 24" (by defualt)

Joey's on point - unless you want them mirrored on a SH, then that won't work.

You'll need to use the Custom Muntin process to create two separate CAD Blocks, one per lite.

Same this as this thread: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/38959-roofs-multi-pitch-intersections-how-to-add-exterior-wall-that-roof-intersects/?tab=comments#comment-294354

Just need to pull that exterior wall in and set just the inner portion to Roof Cuts Wall at Bottom.

Save a copy. Use Edit>Delete Objects to delete everything but walls and framing. If it's still too big use Backup Entire Plan to create a .zip file.

"Sill Plate" only affects the wall if it's set as a Foundation wall - the missing plate in that image isn't a sill but a bottom plate which is specified in the Wall Type, so we need to know more about that wall to make any guesses. I think we'll need to see the plan.