TeaTime

That's a very lengthy way of saying "Cabinets in Chief Architect can only be Box shaped objects and cannot be shaped in the manner depicted"

No schedule or Object Information, so nope. As far as I know everything with space planning is all hard coded, and you're absolutely right it's adjusting size because the intent is not how you have your boxes arranged in your screenshot, rather it's reducing size because it's going to build walls where the boxes meet. ex: take something like this: and turn it into this: It's giving estimated room sizes - your job is to just mash the boxes together and let the program magically make a house. It's just unfortunate that room boxes aren't editable in any way. Great if all your rooms are perfectly rectangular though.

I think Joe nailed it, albeit perhaps he wasn't entirely clear. Documentation is accurate, "Every time a file is saved, the current archive file is overwritten.", meaning that it will overwrite the current archive on an hourly or daily basis, or "previous save" will save a new one every time you save. So Diane has it set to Archive Hourly, but if she's only hit the Save button once, she'll have an up to date Auto Save but a very old Archive. Note the Time Stamps on her first screenshot: The point joe was making though was: There's a BIG distinction between Auto Save and Auto Archive. Auto Save happens automatically, every x minutes, and always overwrites a single "auto_save" file, where Auto Archive history will only be built as long as you're manually pressing Save. If you're working on a file for several DAYS, I hope you've been hitting Save here n' there. If not, then Auto Save is your only parachute in case of catastrophe. Not ideal, but at least it's something.

You bet. Walls can individually be set to balloon frame or hang the platform above inside each room, etc. gives a lot of flexibility.

Assuming you followed this article? https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02899/manually-installing-core-catalogs-for-chief-architect-premier.html Step 4 talks about Referenced Files, that's the textures. You might follow the steps there to browse to that location on your system to see whats there currently, but it sounds like those files just aren't there.

Yeah don't do that. Pretty much ever. I'll double-down on my previous suggestion, if you have Floor 1 defaults set to a 9' ceiling height, then copy/paste/hold position the walls up to floor 2, set that whole right side to Open Below, and adjust all interior walls as needed, setting ones you only need to build up to 10' as solid rails, while others that need to reach to the roof can remain normal walls.

I recall seeing somewhere a suggestion for something like this by creating a "blank" second floor. Set the Floor 2 default floor structure to take the place of the Ceiling framing for all the rooms below. Plus it sounds like there may be some different height walls up there, seems like that would give you a lot more specific control of those kinds of things.

Hey, I know it!! But yes as Joe mentioned (and I almost did before), you'll want to be sure to drag that Next Page button over the Change Page one so they'll combine into the same toolbar. The little dotted handle next to it indicates its a totally separate toolbar.

Yeah, it's not the most obviously located tool icon

Still no specific method built-in, but this topic comes up often enough:

Press F1 (Help > Launch Help). The program has rather robust documentation on every feature.

Not really. There's no good way to do this. The program simply doesn't have an option or setting to make this happen automatically. Quite frustratingly, the opposite is rather simple: simply draw a wall under your stairs, or set a half-wall to "Follow Stairs". Done! For this though, you'll need to manually break and re-shape the bottom of the wall. I would do this in a cross section looking at the wall from within the stairs ex: In that elevation you can break and shape the wall. It'll even snap to the underside lines of the stairs, which make it easier: What it WONT do is cover the underside of your stairs, or more importantly, the exposed underside of your wall That can be covered up with a 3D Solid, Soffit, Custom Ceiling plane... But hey, you're already in an elevation to do this, so might as well create a 3D Solid while you're there.

Checked under Edit Active View -- Selected Defaults

It entirely depends on the scene and the view settings. As mentioned before, resolution is going to play a big part, but as will lighting settings (shadows, reflections, etc). 30 fps is pretty typical and will certainly make for a smoother video, at the cost of more frames / longer rendering time. Similar to CPU Ray Tracing, it makes the most sense to record smaller resolution versions before going all-in on a full res version. (if that's even necessary.) I'd also consider turning off as many rendering options as possible while you dial in the path, speed, etc. Just consider that when it says it has to record x# frames, it literally has to render each frame back to back, so the more complex the scene, the longer each frame will take, and it all compounds.

Glad you got it. For what it's worth, open the ponywall and look at the Wall Types panel, there's a Display in Plan Views section. Set it to Lower Wall and the Edit Wall Layer function will allow you to adjust those layers.

Try the Edit Wall Layer Intersections button it'll let you pull each Wall Layer of each wall. You might have to mix techniques, pulling layers together while pulling other wall layer back. Play with it.

Exactly that. It's not causing this at all but that wall also isn't following it's default heights (I'm assuming others probably aren't either) which may lead to some strange behavior. I'd recommend resetting all walls to default top/bottoms through Edit, Reset to Defaults

That's pretty abnormal, would need to see the plan to see why that's happening

That gap is common in exterior type rooms. Its the roof ceiling surface being placed under the full rafter depth, you don't normally see that because there's usually a wall there covering it up. If those roof plane's stud thickness can be reduced then that'll take care of it. But a quick fix is actually in the porch room specification. Under the Roof section there's an option to Use Soffit Surface for Ceiling. This reduces the rafters over the entire room, instead of just at the eaves.

It's also adding an extra 1/16", per side. maybe not that important but I'd avoid adding an unnecessary 1/8" to my interior walls if I can help it. definitely easier to adjust the color of the drywall than it is to change the Dimension rounding. Of course once a room is painted this color is overridden anyway.

This has always bugged me, but wall layers only draw one line, starting from layer 1, it draws the top-most line, 2 draws the line between layer 1 and 2, and so on, but that leaves the very last wall layer in any assembly missing the innermost line. That's what that special layer is for. If you set it to some other Line style or color, you'll see the drywall surface line change.

You'll want to raise the height of the upper roof planes - or lower the front one in order to create that separation we see in the photo. Don't use a Hole in Roof for this, just break the edge and pull it back. This should be done on both roof planes, the photo shows the lower shed is split into two. Pulling a smaller edge through the entire plane will split it. > For the upper roof plane, break it in three places to create a triangular shape in order to properly Join the roof planes. Lastly, the new gable roof planes are up on Floor A, not a problem per se but it makes it harder to work with them all. Move them down to Floor 1 and Join them all up.

Start off simple: in the Camera view, is your "Walls, Attic" layer on? I've put myself in a tizzy before not realising that layer was off in my camera view layer set. Next thought: are those Roof Planes or Ceiling Planes? Because walls won't build up to Ceiling Planes, but they will to Roof Planes.

Gutter will follow all edges of the roof plane, it's just that they default Off on the side edges, and On on the eave edge. When you open the roof plane, make sure one of the sides is the Selected Edge, then on the Gutter panel you can force it On.

FYI Unless you provide a Backup .zip file, the PDFs won't be inherently embedded with the file. You can mark them to be Saved with the file though This obviously causes the .plan file's size to get pretty big though so I don't recommend it. Onto the actual trouble here -- first issue you have to solve before anything is this: You can hunt it down but honestly if you've been fighting it I'd probably just reset them all. You can do this easiest through Edit> Reset to Defaults. Set All Rooms Floor Heights/Ceiling Heights, then essentially start over. I remember this plan from a Week or so ago, I think something that wasn't mentioned was when changing floor thickness like you're doing, you want to lock the Bottom of the platform, forcing it to build Up By default it keeps the top of the structure, i.e., the Floor, at the default floor height, pushing the structure down, potentially messing up the ceiling heights below. I would reset, start on Floor 0 and move your way up.