Alaskan_Son

I would personally start by trying to save to a different location. Maybe to your desktop or directly to your documents folder and see what that does. Then try saving to a different drive...a USB maybe. Then go from there depending on the results.

Sweet. Glad you got it figgered : ) Please remember this experience in the future. Almost always best to post a plan along with your query when you're having a problem you can't seem to sort out.

...or contact tech support. NOTE: You could also try to reinstall Chief to see if that fixes any corrupted files.

Walls are 10m long on my end. I suspect you have one or more corrupted units.dat files. send me an email and I'll see if I can't help you out...

Make sure to close the plan file before zipping or trying to post directly.

Rudolf, do yourself a huge favor and just post the plan. More likely than not you'll have a good answer within minutes. If not an actual solution you may at least get to figuring out what's going on. I see time and time again where people waste HOURS and even DAYS in utter frustration only to finally post the plan and have the answer in a couple minutes.

Very nice of you to make a video Edward. Thank you. What you have demonstrated is basically the same method I would use myself. The only things I would add are that: 1. If your font(s) are all one size and your text has been cleaned up appropriately (I realize you hadn't taken the time in the video to finish that process), there really doesn't need to be much futzing with the top and bottom of your layout boxes. As long as your first box ends halfway between lines of text, you shouldn't need to do anything but align text with the second box and then copy, point to point move, and reshape (snapping to previous layout box(es)). 2. If you are pretty quick with your tools you can also use transform/replicate followed by a couple guidelines and align/distribute to make pretty quick work of the whole operation. Thanks again Edward. It's a technique useful for a whole lot more than just columns of text and would make a good addition to anyone's toolbox.

This^^^^ is Ed Zachary the first thing what came to mind for me as well. And by "plan view" I think Eric was kinda assuming you would understand this meant you would be drawing it all parallel to the Z plane. Just an aside to that, but I might personally draw all the beams as usual and only draw the trim per Eric's suggestion. That and/or using solid extrusions and boolean operations (could be drawn parallel/perpendicular to axes or not). After inspecting the picture above a little better, I'm really thinking the solids might be a necessity at some point. At any rate, it's definitely doable but it will likely require learning a good handful of other tricks along the way as well. Probably a good exercise.

Its actually the material definition that matters the most. You can use ANY material from the library just so long as the material type is set to Framing...

No...because the macro would never be executed without the redraw to start with.

Perry is absolutely correct. Soffits set to use a Gap material type (like Insulation Air Gap) will disappear completely--even in vector view. Gap material types work this way in various structure definitions. To be honest though, I'm not sure I ever realized they work that way with soffits before. If I did, I certainly forgot. Thanks for pointing that out Perry. Lots of good stuff in this thread.

Eric, Your tip on using rafter tail profiles is a fantastic one. Thank you. I gave you all the points I could this time around. The ceiling plane idea was a great one as well BTW.

If precision is what you're after you might just need to select those hip rafters and replace and/or resize the rafter tail profile.

One other quick tip. You can also block your reconfigured schedules and add them to your library for future use. Blocked schedules have some quirks though in that they disappear when blocked--not at first, but once added to the library or upon opening a plan that includes a blocked schedule. Anyway, because of this fact, it may be useful to add another object (polyline, line, etc.) to that block to make it easier to find the block and explode it after you drop it into your plan.

This sounds like a nice idea on the surface Joe, but even if we could do that with a macro, the macro wouldn't execute till that screen redraw so we would be right back at square one.

Yup. This is the method I use for this type of thing as well. Only takes a minute and allows you to leave the note "live" and in one piece. I do the same thing for multi section schedules or when notes/schedules need to extend across multiple pages of a document.

Hey, that IS a really good tip. Thanks : )

Here's another little bonus tip for you. If you convert an actual Schedule to text you can then modify that text box and keep the non-divided title line (including the double grid line even). I've never been able to figure out how or why the text box can work that way when starting with a schedule but not when starting with a text box. Wish I knew what sort of wizardry is going on under the hood with that one.

Amen brutha. Besides the lack of a rational need for one, a lack of want, and the insane price; there are still a ton of other reasons why they could actually be a bad idea that have nothing to do with the technology itself… things you might not think of until after you've made your poor decision… -Where are you going to put the thing? And how will it be affected by the glare from various lights and windows where you work? -If you are like me and have your desk covered with various crucial notes, brochures, folders, pens, pencils, calculators, staplers, etc. where the heck are you going to put those things? Are you going to be happy about walking somewhere to get to those items or turning around every three seconds to access them at your other desk? -Do you really want to be swinging your arms all across that big desk all day long? Or does a simple keyboard and mouse start to sound like a welcome reprieve? -Got cupcake frosting on your fingers?...

I have had core catalog downloads act funny myself. I typically just shut everything down and then run a library update to get whatever might've been missed.

Post an example and maybe I'll do a quick video. Ideally, a plan and layout with the desired text showing how you would like it to look and where you would like to place it on your layout page.

My terminology may not have been correct but this is actually what I meant when I said "paragraph wrapping". By the way, there is a pretty good method I have found for doing this type of thing. I might try to make a quick video when I have a minute or 20.

This is a good example of why I think it's so important to post examples. I was envisioning something completely different...more along the lines of paragraph wrapping. There are definitely a few different things we could be talking about including columns only, cells, paragraph wrapping, etc.

I would want either 3DS or SKP.