Alaskan_Son

Yup. Then try to draw those doors opened, or view them from various angles inside and outside or with lights and shadows in affect, or in section views, etc. Really not very realistic, accurate, or usable IMO except for maybe a few very limited views. It might work for the occasional situation though. The biggest challenge though IMO... When I'm modeling something, I always aim to create the object so that it does a good job representing the subject matter not only in standard views...but in plan views, and more importantly--vector views (and other line based views) as well. Personally I can't stand to be limited to using only standard views.

Sounds like you were being sarcastic but I personally love the new icon.

That plus the fact that most things that are possible with one version of premier also work the same with other versions of premier. It could result in a crapload of redundant information. I completely understand and sympathize with your frustrations Mick. I just don’t think there’s an easy answer. The best solution might be your idea of requiring users to enter their current version info. I mean, Chief should have that already anyway. The only small downside I can see is the fact some people might not want to share that information for fear of being ostracized or for fear of the inevitable “You should upgrade” after every query. Pretty minor detail that I’m sure people could just deal with if you ask me, but a consideration nonetheless.

Definitely possible to create that in Chief, but a few quick notes/warnings... -Regardless of whether or not you want to use the picture or model it all from scratch, you will definitely have to at least model the frame and probaby even the doors themselves if you want it to look any kind of realistic. That alone would be a difficult task for most users. -If you want to use the image you're going to have to do some very careful cropping and I would personally probably even go so far as to change the image to make everything except the scroll-work transparent. Again...not an easy task and by the time you go that far you may as well have just modeled the scroll-work from scratch. -I can tell you from experience that the scroll-work is very difficult in Chief. Doable, but difficult. End of the day? Even the most proficient Chiefers would have a hard time modeling that door. I could personally do it, but to reach any kind of quality that I would be ready to put my name on, my time would likely end up being measured in hours as opposed to minutes. If you decided to make a go of it, good luck. It will probably be a very good exercise but be prepared to spend a lot of time on it.

Check the rendering technique options

Those settings live with the cameras/views themselves now.

You say this, but I haven't seen any examples from you. If its really that easy, can you just quickly render a scene and post an example?

Its not the wall fill that is this problem. Its the actual floor or room fill. From the first example plan: From the second example plan: In other words, its not the wall, its what the wall is DOING. Change the wall to no-room definition or make it at or near zero inches thick and the "fill" goes away. Actually, in the first example, simply dragging the invisible wall a few inches further would also fix the fill problem as well as the much larger functional problem that existed with that extra small top tread.

I think your estimation of this situation is correct. The shelf ceiling wasn't made to drop a ceiling structure inside a room envelope so much as it was made to drop a room envelope within another room envelope.

You can also do something like this... stairway2 mod.plan

The shelf ceiling has its uses, but in a situation like this, it is very difficult to control. It will automatically hang on 2 or 3 of the surrounding walls but will always frame over at least one wall. I have yet to figure out the program's logic as to which wall(s) it chooses to cut short. Anyway, you can get the walls not to cut short at all by utilizing an extra single layer wall with a very small (maybe .01" thick) Insulation/Air Gap layer. That way the filler wall gets cut short instead of the main wall. This works pretty well much of the time but definitely not all of the time. Depending on your design, I think you'll still find that using the shelf ceiling tool for this type of situation may prove to be more hassle than its worth...

Lance, the object eyedropper DOES "copy" (load) polyline fill information. As I believe Robert rightly pointed out though, you aren't trying to copy fill from a polyline, it looks to me like you are trying to copy fill from a box. I agree though that boxes should work the same way polylines do in this regard.

This^^^ is where I would put my money as well but there could be any number of video card and video card driver related issues as well.

A few ways to do this but one of the best... Add the necessary layers to your ceiling FINISH definition. From the bottom up: -Ceiling finish layer -Framing layer -Insulation / air gap layer Here’s a video I made a little while back. It was made to address a different issue but probably worth a watch anyway...

Post a plan with the symbol in it describing how you would like it modified and I'll see if I can make you a quick video.

You don’t actually HAVE TO do that. You can also go into your Plan Defaults and check “Ignore Casing...”

They aren't all "molding tools". You have the following 3 tools Make Room Polyline: This will create a plain unfilled, unbroken polyline that follows the inside (normal rooms) or outside (exterior room) surface perimeter of the room. These can be used for any number of purposes but are commonly used for things like area calculations, to convert to floor material regions, to convert to other architectural objects or for moldings that ignore openings. Make Living Area Polyline / Make Standard Area Polyline: The name and function of tool varies a bit depending on which type of room is selected. For exterior rooms it is called Make Living Area Polyline and will create a hatch filled polyline that follows the main layer perimeter of all areas set to be included in living area calculations. For normal interior rooms it is called Make Standard Area Polyline and will create a hatch filled polyline that will extend to the exterior main layer surface of exterior walls or to the center of main layer of surrounding walls depending on the Include/Exclude From Total Living Area Calculation status of both the selected room and the adjacent rooms. Again, this tool can be used for any number of purposes but is most commonly used for area calculations. Make Room Molding Polyline: This tool is the only true molding tool of the 3 and will create an unfilled molding polyline that will automatically remove any existing room moldings, place breaks at all openings included at the set molding height, and automatically suppress moldings and the aforementioned openings. Again, this tool can be used for a number of purposes but is typically only used for moldings. Its automatic behaviors don't make it very well suited for much else IMO. Beyond those 3 we also have Expand Room Polyline. This tool will expand the selection area to overflow into adjacent rooms by ignoring all invisible walls and railings. If you click on this tool you will be given the option to create any of the 3 polyline types I went over above but for the new expanded area. Hope that helps.

It actually has nothing to do with the dimension defaults...only the grid snaps. The fractional accuracy displayed in dialog boxes cannot actually be changed as far as I know. If you hold down control to force a line to an off length you should still see the fractional accuracy display to the 128th of an inch...at least for lines. Not all objects can actually be resized to that accuracy though. Take windows for example...you can only resize to 1/16" accuracy and therefore you won't see any denominators beyond 1/16" for those.

-Soffits -Polyline solids -Roof planes All valid options, but you can also use: -Moldings -Ramps -Even a terrain converted to a symbol... If you really want flexibility and accuracy though, I would strongly recommend you get familiar with using SOLIDS and boolean operations (solid intersection, solid union, and solid subtraction).

It actually depends on what kind of object you use for your keynotes and what information you want to display. Some information CAN be automated such as subfloor height, finish floor height, finish ceiling height, room name, floor number, as well as a number of other values provided by Chief’s built in global macros. It’s certainly not automatable to the extent I would like to see but a few things are possible.

Agreed...at least as an option. Like so many other good suggestions, it needs to actually be posted in a usable form in the suggestion forum or sent in to Chief if we want Chief to even consider it. Otherwise, I can pretty well guarantee its never ever gonna happen.

Lots of ways to handle it... You can paint the walls (could be done with "Blend Colors With Materials" toggled off or on depending on the situation). I do this all the time. When I hear people tell new Chiefers "DON'T DO THIS" I think they're doing a disservice. Better to teach people how to use the tools properly than to tell them not to use them at all. You can create a new "Drywall" or "Siding" material for each color you'll be using. This new material can then be applied using paint can, or by changing material in room definition, or by changing material in wall definition, or by changing material in wall type definition...all of which have their upsides and downsides. Again, you can optionally simply paint your material with "Blend" toggled on which will automatically create a new material for you. You can use a Wall Material Region. You can apply a Wall Covering. In the end I don't think there is any right answer. Just learn how the tools work, and then decide what works best for you and your particular situation.

Your problem is in your wall definition. Chief only wraps the outermost layer around the end of your wall. Your outermost layer is 0" thick so that's what you're seeing.

...or toggle the Ceiling Surfaces layer off... ...or use the Cross Section Slider ...or use the Delete Surface tool Kinda depends on exactly what you're after. Floor Overview should probably cover the vast majority of situations for most users though.