Alaskan_Son

For solid colors In Chief we essentially have Material Colors (which you have turned off), Solid Fills, and Background Colors. Presumably because Materials already have a color, the Solid Fill style and Background settings are only available for CAD based objects. For your 3D materials, you're stuck using the Material Color (which again you have turned off) with the option of using a Pattern (line work) on top of that. I think the closet thing you'll get to doing what you want is to just use a hatch pattern with very close spacing. That being said, this pattern would be applied to every other camera view type that shows your pattern as would the solid fill style IF you could choose it. You can of course also just draw in some closed polylines at those limited locations if you really want that specific look.

I think adding Multiple Saved Defaults for Cameras and that adding those to Saved Plan Views/Default Sets would be a good suggestion. In the meantime, here's an idea you might consider as a stopgap: "Manual Saved Defaults" : Set up a series of different cameras that have all your desired settings and label them appropriately. Place them all in a strategic easy to find location in your plan. Create a special Plan View where only those cameras are displayed. When you are about to create a new camera view and want to use one of your "Manual Saved Defaults", switch to that special Plan View, select the appropriate camera, and click the Set as Default tool in your Edit toolbar. Now go back to your previous Plan View and create your camera.

There are ways to force the texture mapping behaviors that you're after. One of the easiest is to take the symbol that you've already created (the one with 2 different materials) and paint them both with the same desired material (probably the one with the normal texture orientation). Your symbol should now have the same material applied to all components. Now convert it to a symbol again. Your new symbol should now have the desired mapping but only a single material. What Chief seems to do when converting to a symbol is that the texture rotation on any given component gets applied as mapping and that any applied texture now maps according to that rotation. When you convert to a symbol for the second time, Chief only sees a single material but continues to respect thee original mapping, so the result is a symbol with only one material but with that single material properly mapped to the various surfaces. I've used the same approach for doing things like modeling decorative timber trusses and the like.

Not without a MASSIVE amount of custom macro work and even then you would have all sorts of quirkiness and would be investing in the certainty of perpetual problems to deal with. If you really want that capability, I would suggest you just purchase some cabinet manufacturing software (right tool for the job).

I might suggest some more concise, slightly faster, and less lossy coding to get the same end result: %box_scale.sub(' ft','\'').sub(' in','"')%-0" That being said, neither of these would handle any edge cases very well and would only work for very basic imperial scales.

Just sent you a PM

We actually have a couple ceiling cassettes in the User Catalog. Have you tried those? They're in Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing>Heating and Cooling>Heat Pumps

in my experience, it’s mostly just to find missing dimensions. I almost never scale anything.

I've framed houses for over 20 years, and I honestly wouldn't really care if the plans were 3/16" scale. I could also deal with 1/8" honestly. I would just need to remember my reading glasses. I think your idea of offering 1/4" on request is completely reasonable. I think the easiest and most reasonable option though is to draw at 1/4" scale for Arch E but just print most sets at 1/2 scale on smaller sheets unless requested otherwise.

If it requires using any parametric objects (walls, windows, doors, cabinets, roof planes, etc.) then storing in a single plan comes with all sorts of problems. That being said, one thing I personally do for relatively small options changes like a different kitchen cabinet configuration for example is just group select "Kitchen A" and drag off to the side a specified distance (say 50 ft. so its well out of the way). I then drawn in "Kitchen B". Option A remains off the side where I can easily group select (unless it already in an Architectural Block) and then move back the specified position to where it previously was. using this method allows for a way to at least store your various options in a single plan. Doesn't work so good for super complex changes though.

Hard to tell from just a video, but a couple possibilities: You have several things in that area and Chief is just having a hard time snapping to the one you want. The reason this isn't true for new dimensions in that the new dimensions know exactly what they are supposed to be snapping to. Editing after the fact allows you to snap to almost anything. You aren't releasing you mouse button far enough from other object. To snap to your wall's main layer when there are other potentially conflicting snap point nearby, I often find the need to release the mouse button much further down the wall. It will still ultimately measure from the end of the wall, but you release the mouse button in an area where there are no conflicts.

Please read my post again. A few key points regarding your specific plan though: Your foundation wall's Main Layer is "Grey-Blocks Running Bond". Your wall above is set to Foundation to Exterior of Layer "White Brick" with a Foundation Offset of 0" What you are telling Chief to do is to align your "Gray-Blocks..." to your "White Brick" with no offset and that is exactly what Chief is doing. If I were you, I would probably address this by just adding the appropriate Foundation Offset to your upper walls. This is exactly what does happen with the default Siding-6 wall and the default 8" CMU wall.

Here are a few key things to understand: 1. Foundation to Exterior of Layer is a setting that affects or aligns to the foundation wall below. It does not affect the wall itself in any way aside from being used for its alignment with the wall below. 2. Similarly, Foundation Offset only affects or aligns to the foundation wall below and is measured from whichever layer you assigned to the aforementioned Foundation to Exterior of Layer setting. 3. Perhaps most importantly, your foundation wall aligns with the wall above based on its own Main Layer. That is, the main layer of your foundation wall aligns with the following settings in the wall above: whatever layer you have assigned to the Foundation to Exterior of Layer settings plus or minus any defined Foundation Offset. NOTE: When using the Align With Wall Below tool, the opposite is also true, the wall above would align with the wall below based on those same settings, the main point though is that the foundation wall uses its main layer for alignment while the wall above uses the settings in the Wall Properties tab.

I don't see any of the problematic cameras you mention. In fact, the cameras I do see don't match you show either...

Can you post the plan? Even a stripped down version?

Can't say that I do, BUT I'm 99% certain AutoCAD has built in functionality for both converting vector based PDFs to DWG and for snapping to underlying PDF vectors. Most PDF editors have snapping and measuring capabilities as well.

You probably need to post the plan. Too many variables.

Not sure what you have going on there because I haven't seen the plan, but the slab should build through to the exterior as long as the main layer is framing. If you're using a pony wall with concrete on the lower half that's been dragged all the way down then you'll get what you're showing because Chief is holding the slab inside that concrete wall (even though you've pulled it down). Doing what Rene shows should force the desired behavior for even a pony wall though.

You have to select / highlight the layer before the Convert Selected Layer(s) tool will do anything... Once you do this though, you should get the following import... Its a terrain perimeter with a bunch of elevation points and lines at this stage, but if you create a CAD Detail From View you can get it all into CAD form.

Try importing as elevation data and all your points should come in that way.

I created a similar system, but rather than using referencing defined elevation points, it can actually pick up on underlying elevation data. In other words, drop the point wherever you want, and it will simply report whatever the terrain is doing at that location.

Not sure who you got that from, but I would just do a little troubleshooting to try and find out why it stopped working. If you have the values in a schedule, you should be able to export quite easily. Must just be a slight formatting or export issue you need to straighten out. Might be something as simple as getting rid of the unit indicator even.

There are several ways to do what you're you're attempting to do, BUT you have to consider the fact that Chief won't allow you to change the properties for a mulled unit when selected along with a normal window. That being said, the most all-encompassing solution is this: Drop a window schedule into your plan that only includes only a 2D Symbol column. There are other columns that would work as well, but the idea is to use a single column so that only one line item is generated by the schedule. Set the schedule to include all relevant window types. Select the one single line item in your schedule and click the Open Row Object tool. This will essentially let you edit every single window in the plan. You can optionally use the Find Object(s) in Plan tool if you want to select and edit for only a specific floor. In order for the above to work for mulled units, you will need to set all mulled units to Show Component Labels so that they are being listed (and therefore selected and edited) as individual units and not as mulled units. There are sneaky ways to make quick/temporary work of this as well, but that is a different thing.

Yup. All good notes. A few more that are worth considering as well: If you have Auto Refresh turned on for Auto Exterior Dimensions, you don't even have to generate those. Chief will do it automatically with no need to switch defaults. If you have Auto Refresh for Auto Room Dimensions turned on, you will only need to switch Active Defaults the first time your generate dimensions for any given room(s) In lieu of adding the Active Dimension Default Control you could also just create a special Plan View for this purpose.

Yes. Sound like perhaps you don't fully understand Dimension Defaults. I just sent you a P.M.