TeaTime

Welcome! Searching the main Chief site for "sunroom" you'll find there's an article that gives some pretty good tips for this type of design. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/search/?default_tab=all&q=sunroom You'll notice too the search results give articles, videos, chief talk threads... it's a great place to start with most any how-to questions. Also, if you haven't yet, try to get in the habit of pressing F1 -- or the ? icon in the toolbar -- the program's built-in Help is SUPER handy.

@BrentJohnJohnit'll help to know what kind of roof -- are you trying to make a simple shed? gable? What's the plan? Both I'd just do manually but the approach will be slightly different.

Sounds like the CAD Block needs to be exploded first. Here's my method: Place the sink into a blank plan, it'll yell that it's supposed to be placed in a cabinet, accept it and place it as a standalone object. Go to CAD, CAD Block Management, find the symbol - it'll be the only one with a red +, select and press the "Insert" button. Click to place the CAD block somewhere, then select it. In the Edit Toolbar at the bottom press "Explode Block" - now you can select the outermost edge polyline. In the Edit Toolbar again, press Convert Polyline. In the dialog, choose Countertop and press OK. Specification will open automatically. Check "Hole in Countertop" and press OK. Reselect all the CAD, press Make CAD Block in the Edit Toolbar, hit Open and give it a good name. In the Library, right-click the sink and choose Open Symbol. On the 2D Block tab, select the new block name you just made and press OK. Now it should place into a countertop with a hole the exact shape of the sink.

I have seen this before, I've been told essentially "it just happens sometimes, its ok to ignore it." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Out of curiosity, what does it look like while on the Layout if you toggle the Print Preview on? You might have some aberrant line weight issue that you're only seeing because the Print Preview is showing the true line weights, etc., where the Layout view won't (by default).

Just a little FYI to expand on what Rob said, technically the program automatically saves materials within the Plan. Or, Material Data, might be more accurate. If you go to 3D> Materials> Plan Materials, you'll see every material that's been used in this particular plan, some will be used, some not. Literally every time you apply a material, the program takes the Library Material data and remaps it to Plan material data. What you're encountering is very common, because while the material data is stored within the plan, the supplemental material files are not -- by that I mean the Texture file and any material map files. Those are stored on the local computer and cannot be stored within the Plan. (well, I'm sure Chief could program it to do so, you can save other Images and PDFs within the plan, bit it would result in wildly huge .plan files). Backup Entire Plan is the most direct way around this, since it takes all those files and bundles them into a .zip file (or folder), as Rob showed. Though realistically you should be able to save all your custom material textures to your User Library folder (by default Documents\Chief Architect Premier X14 Data, but you don't want to sync that whole thing, you can re-map it's location in Preferences, General> Folders), and as long as Dropbox is syncing that location between your computers, it *should* in theory keep your custom libraries in sync. There's some potential hazards with that though, and every time I've talked to Support about it they recommend against it, so it's sort of an At Your Own Risk situation.

wait, so by "Render" do you mean Ray Trace?

Looks like a job for Tech Support. Probably your graphics card, might just need to download new drivers.

This article explains how to find the actual installed library files: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02899/manually-installing-core-catalogs-for-chief-architect-premier.html Deleting the duplicate installed catalogs will delete them from Chief. Just, close Chief first.

Lol Joe..... Evidently you did not! Lots of good info in that other thread.

Please, it's Tea the drink. I'm not much of a golfer. I mean at that point just turn off the auto fillers completely! Which I do anyway since I hate those holes. It would be nice if they have us auto filler settings. Well son of a gun I never looked at the BACK edges. Good catch.

I totally agree, lines/splines will always generate more consistent contours, but I wouldn't bother with all the rest of that. Once all the points are in the program will make its own contours. Sure they might be weird in some spots where there isn't enough data from the points. But that's when you come in with lines/splines and correct those contours so you don't have to figure anything out on paper or otherwise.

Oof. It may be a personal thing but I absolutely avoid Elevation Points whenever possible, but given that's exactly what you're given in this PDF, I'd do exactly that - the PDF certainly seems to contain enough of them to make for a decent Terrain. Since not a lot (if any?) of those nail points are the same height, I would probably avoid trying to use elevation lines/splines. I would just place Elevation Points starting with the perimeter points, then working inward. The big tip I'd give with Elevation Points is to place one, when its dbx opens, enter its elevation, but before closing out in the Text field, add the %elevationf% macro then copy/paste that point to each new location - this will display the Elevation on the plan so you can more easily double check the PDF with what you have in. (btw the display format on Plan View is controlled via General CAD Defaults "Displayed Line Length Format"...nevermind that it's not a line and thus has no length). Oh also changing the dialog's Number Style to Decimal Feet streamlines entering those values into the dialog.

100% what Mark said. It is very curious though that the Auto fillers aren't working there though - they're supposed to fill any time two cabinet faces are within a 3" intersection to one another, and those in that picture definitely are. Even if you're doing something more artsy or, whatever the reason and that corner cabinet needs to be at a somewhat weird angle, they should "just work". I'd probably send that in to Chief to have them look at it.

If they're custom made models, is the creator able to give you lower poly versions? There's usually a nice middle ground with poly count in 3D Models. Those things don't need 1.8 million surfaces each unless you're making some super close up focus shots of those things.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong, I think this is just how double-sided walls draw. I see the same thing with a Siding-6 wall. If you're not concerned about framing that bit you could always make a half-version of that wall type and force it to wrap around, then just push 'em together. Not the most elegant fix, but it works. I'd also recommend marking them as No Room Def though.

Yeah this is almost always the cause of this sort of bloat. It's not a Chief problem per se, you're just overloading the renderer. - The BOSS sign alone has 113,588 surfaces, a lot, but not too bad. - The "ova-sconce fixed" lights though have 261,590 surfaces. Each. There are 13. - But the biggest issue, hands down, are the FIVE "acuminate 2" hanging fixtures, each pushing 1,851,392 surfaces. All of these objects alone renders 12,771,218 surfaces For comparison, the rest of the model is only 61,078. Deleting these fixtures takes your plan from 237mb down to 9mb. As Chopsaw said, there are limitations to what Chief can render - the big issue is finding very detailed, well modeled objects, and then loading your plan with them. Those objects will look great in small contained scenes, but Chief renders the whole of everything. Either try to find less detailed models, or live with them being a huge drain, and manage them with layers etc as outlined in that article. Good luck!

X14 introduced a cool way to copy materials using the Material Painter that might make quick work of this sort of thing in the future, too. In a 3D view choose the Material Eyedropper and click on Drywall, and at the bottom there's a new "Copy Selected Material" option. It'll open a Drywall_2 material, name it, edit it, etc., then hit OK, change the painting Scope to "Floor" and paint the Drywall.

Sadly there's no great way simply because Schedules always naturally build downward, so if you stack them on top of one another they'll eventually overrun eachother. Laying them out horizontally is kind of the only answer there, and thankfully they adhere to their set Width so whatever notes you eventually add will only grow them downward, so whatever Layout Boxes you have setup will be good width-wise. Of course depending on how many schedules you have that doesn't make viewing them very easy, but it does guarantee they won't turn into a mess. And since you're sending one schedule per page, you can Send to Layout a big long tall strip of the CAD detail page with a single scheduled at the very top and save that in your template so that when the schedules fill out, it should just all show naturally. Using Ryan's tip of relinking, you should be able to effectively pre-send all your notes onto whatever appropriate page and once the layout is linked to the plan, they should just fill in. The only thing this can't address is if you want a Note Schedule on the bottom of a layout page, you'll just have to manually adjust those as they grow, no way around that.

I think it's missing Subfascia? Seems we're seeing the rafters and ridge, But without Fascia or Subfascia, you'll just be peering into the roof layers like that.

Oh. if you need that level of specificity you'd need different wall types for Floor 1, swap their Drywall layer with a new Dens-Glass material.

The fastest way is not to swap Drywall, just redefine it. Under 3D> Materials> Plan Materials, locate Drywall, Edit it and change it's name, color, Materials List properties if it needs to be calculated differently, etc. Then all Drywall will be Dens-glass. If you need to mix and match for Walls v Ceiling or different rooms, then you'd need to specifically redefine your wall layers.

Why not have all your Notes on one CAD Detail page in the plan? You'll effectively be sending the same view to each page, just cropped to show the appropriate schedule.

X10 huh... Open Defaults Settings> Text, Callouts and Markers> Text Styles, select Room Label Style press Edit and make sure Rotate with Plan is checked. Without that checked, text will always be relative to the screen, not the plan view/layout box.

These sorts of details are specified in the Wall Types, Floor/Ceiling defaults, Roof defaults, etc. So as you draw our your building it will build with all of these settings inherently present. The closest thing to automatically creating CAD Details is the "Auto Detail" feature available when in an Elevation/Section view. It will automatically create CAD elements such as Insulation blocks, concrete fills, framing cross boxes. Here's a video on the topic: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/46/adding-detail-to-cross-section-views.html