TeaTime

You likely can't, and you shouldn't need to. Controlling what ends up on the Materials List can certainly be done largely via layers like you're describing, however you also have control over exactly how (and IF) each particular material is being calculated. Take the Steel Mesh for instance - this is an automatically generated material based on the Concrete that's being used in the foundations Rooms slab floor. So you can't just change the layer that a particular room's Floor is on. But selecting that material in the Materials List and pressing the Find in Plan button at the bottom, it'll take you to a plan view with the item(s) using that material selected - no guesswork as to where it's being used at. Then hit Open Object and check out the rooms Structure. Editing the Floor Structure to select the material, you can go to the Plan Materials list and change or edit the Concrete material being used in all of the selected rooms. Of course it's probably a bad idea to edit something like "Concrete" overall, but if you have existing rooms with existing materials you don't want to calculate, you can make a Copy of "Concrete", call it EXST Concrete, then edit it so that it's Material List Calculation is set to None instead of Volume. Same with the EDPM - just need an EXST EDPM material that's set not to calculate. This way it doesn't matter if the Layer is visible for new/existing components, you'll have one material being calculated and one being ignored.

Well sure but we're looking for solutions for another Chief user right now, not suggestions to the company that may or may not happen! I agree, having Locate options for all objects, not just walls, would be excellent. I may want that one object to just be excluded for reasons. But in the mean time, any time I'm doing a reno plan, I always save off an As-Built plan. It's just way easier - unless we're only demoing like, A Wall.

Nope, but Reference Display does. Y'all just hate that feature or what? lol

FWIW This can be done easily via the Reference Display as well using a special As-Built layer set and different labeling defaults in each plan.

Just tossing 2 cents into the pool here but "Hourly" is a very aggressive auto archive, and I think for a lot of people probably unnecessary. Auto Save is the thing that'll probably save you in instances like this where the system crashes. It's default is 5 min which is probably fine for most people, no harm in decreasing it though. But Auto Archive is just a duplicate archival save of the file that the program makes every time you hit the Save button. Setting it to Hourly means you'll get a new duplicate save for *every hour* you've worked on the plan. If you have a ton of hard drive space then no biggie, but I think most people are fine with just a daily archive.

No way I'm aware of. The Dimension tools aren't that smart, they just look for things they're told to dimension to. So if you tell it to locate openings, it'll locate openings. period. The only things that I can think of that defy this are walls, they can be set to No Locate, for rails and such. I don't think anything else has a similar option. One technique I'd probably suggest though is to use the Plan Reference for As-Built masking. You could have the As-built with all the openings as they currently are, then Save As a copy of the proposed design, delete all the existing doors and windows, place only NEW windows in the proposal plan, then reference the existing ones back into view. They've got a video on the topic, if you're not familiar: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5435/using-the-reference-display.html

Good call. Extend Slope Down is a great way to force it to lower the baseline to wherever it needs to be to make that height work -- depending on the heights though, again potentially not an ideal solution. A good one to keep in your back pocket for when its needed though for sure. FWIW I've been caught by that overhang thing a few times, myself. If you break a roof edge then immediately try to Join one of the two, it merges the collinear edges BEFORE joining. Pretty annoying, tbh. Gotta pull an edge back first to avoid the automerge.

This ^^. Increasing the In From Baseline literally pushes that transition point back, lowering the height of the upper roof plane. Just increase it an inch or so at a time until you dial in exactly how far back that transition needs to be. The only other way would be to lower the porch ceiling height, which would lower the transition height as well. But that's probably not ideal.

Road objects will always be flat side to side but slope in the direction they're drawn (only the Line/Spline ones, polylines just follow the terrain). So long as you're using the line/spline tools it should maintain general sloped/flatness - however if you're crossing over other terrain elevation data lines, it's going to be competing with that data. I'd recommend cutting away any terrain lines/regions that the driveway is crossing over, making a path for the driveway. Also, depending on the existing elevation data, you may also need to add in some elevation lines within the driveway to force it to behave.

This is a result of using a too-big CAD Block though, not a limitation of the tool - the shorter the repetition, the better curves you'll achieve. Obviously you'll still get really bad results when you force something bad but that aint how ducting works anyway!!

Could be an errant attic wall, could be the wall below with a bad Top height - hard to say without a plan to look at. But I'd start by asking: What's the shape of the selection when you select it in a camera view? Is it just the wall as we see it there on the Interior camera? Does it extend down to floor 1? What happens if you delete it?

OH sure, find the fatal flaw to my brilliant plan, will ya!! No, no it won't. If the Separation could be replaced with a fixture object then it would, but being an Opening it's a face item itself so other face items can't overlap it. Or they probably CAN but likely takes some special something.

Change it to an Opening, then click the Shelves: Specify button. I just tossed down 2 slabs, 4" wide, spaced 24" front to back and saved it as a Fixture. Then on the Shelf Specification, set Manual, number: 1, browse to library and pull that new fixture.

Hm. Can't say I've ever bothered trying but I'd figure the spreader boards could be done as a custom shelf, since they follow the width of the cabinet. Just tossed together something quick with slabs, replaced the the top separation with a Shelf, specified its thickness, 0" spaced from previous (top). Seems to work okay. I got nothing for ya on the edging though.

That's what I do in these situations, too -- would sure love to not have to though!

Depends on the Material. And even then the answer is likely "maybe". If you open the Board & Batten material, it'll have a Texture image, and then likely a Bump Map or Normal Map. If so, you can delete the Texture and just use the Bump/Normal map - but those also might have some texture to 'em. So just removing the Texture image may not entirely get you there but it'll get you close.

Nope, they're 3D objects just like chairs and tables and such. Chief has a tutorial on this topic: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5532/creating-a-custom-cabinet-door.html

I'd put money on this one. There's no default for the Temp Dimension options, Concentric Mode harasses your mouse cursor with the concentric icon -- the dialog on the other hand will quietly remember that you'd chosen "Center" instead of Start or End. I would add though that changing wall lengths in this manner is often an awkward way to adjust your dimensions. It's best to think about resizing the Room the walls define, not the walls themselves, as demonstrated in this video: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/5429/positioning-and-resizing-objects-using-dimensions.html

This forum's for Chief Architect not Home Designer, I don't think many of us are too well versed on the options available in that title, but this article certainly implies that you should be able to Export to a DXF or DWG file: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00111/creating-a-dwg-or-dxf-file.html

easier still is to open a camera, grab the Material Painter, but instead of selecting a material, check "Use Default" at the bottom - then set the Painter Scope to "Plan" and blast all your painted walls back to Default in a single click. Then redefine your walls type. If you define them first, the magic of instantly setting them all to default is pretty anti-climactic.

Sadly no -- typically too busy to devote the time it would take. Just gotta wait n see like the rest!!

The Wrench icon in the Used column is telling you it's used -- as a default. Base Cabinet Defaults are set to place Base Cabinets on the "Cabinets, Base" layer, etc, etc. You'd have to go through and change all those defaults to use a different layer to get them to not be "in use" in your defaults. I hadn't tried before now, but lo' it matters not. Setting Base Cabinet Defaults to use a generic "Cabinets" layer did in fact remove the "In Defaults" in use state, but as I kind of expected, it's now got the S denoting a System Layer. You just can't delete those things. And I don't think any amount of feature suggestioning is going to change that. The program is designed to operate with these things, there are just certain things that cannot be changed to suit our whims.

Wouldn't be a locked layer if it can be selected and opened. Definitely sounds like the program isn't drawing selection line-type things - no temporary dimensions, no placement overlay. Certainly sounds like a graphic problem to me.

TLDR: this is a known issue that happens a lot I don't harp on ppl about this often but you should update your signature -- if I remember correctly this issue was more common/pronounced in older versions, but it still happens in X15. Curious to see if we'll see any improvements in 16.

You can only delete Layers that aren't in use in some manner - look at the Used column, mousing over it tells you how it's being used. The fun part is figuring out WHERE. It'll just tell you its used in a default or some such vagueness, but as long as you can track down where it's being used and remove it, then it can be deleted. Unless it's a System Layer. Then the answer's simply "No." You'll be better off not messing with it and just Renaming the layers you care about and ignoring the rest. Putting a space or two at the beginning, or a dash or something, will sort them to the top of the list.