Alaskan_Son

Not arguing for one method over the other. It totally depends on your individual needs and preference but for what it's worth, you can create a deeper footing by just resizing the footing in elevation too... ...and then add a couple extra CAD lines to display however you want... The benefits being that you don't have to have the extra lines in plan view if you don't want them and that your vector views won't have any extraneous lines either.

I've never used the pad or pier tools for a wider footing section like that. If you think about it...in reality those are pretty much always poured with the footers and so it makes sense to draw them using the footer. I think Pads and Piers are for more isolated situations where the concrete is to be poured independent of the footer such as under a specific post or point load or when the Pad/Pier is otherwise completely separated from other concrete or poured under (although with) a slab.

Gotcha. And this is where I was going with that...

How are you making those Johnny?

Thanks for the credit Mark. I appreciate it. It always feels nice...especially knowing when one of my cockamamie schemes is being utilized by someone besides me. I'm sure you know the feeling. Thanks again

Didn't take much time to explore WHY the lines are behaving like they are, but those are Ceiling Break Lines. You're right though, they're related to that front curved wall somehow. If you replace that with a straight wall the lines go away, if you convert that straight wall to an arc they show right back up again. Very strange indeed. I think you should send it in to tech support so they can figure it out and get it fixed.

You're more than welcome : )

Cut/Paste Hold Position to a blank plan, use Edit Area to stretch, and then Cut/Paste Hold Position back into Detail. Edit Area is currently the best we can do in Chief but it doesn't always work all that well depending on the structure of your line work and it definitely leaves a bit to be desired but it does work for many situations.

I've had this happen in the past. It was an overheating problem just like Graham is suggesting. I opened up my machine and cleaned all the dust out and the problem went away. Ever since then I've made a habit of cleaning my machine out fairly regularly.

Might be another way, but the first thing that comes to mind is to simply create a small room off to the side somewhere with the exact same name. Select that new room, click the Match Properties tool, check Room Name, and click Okay.

I honestly don't recall. Definitely think it's a good one for the toolbox though.

No way to auto scroll in Chief but here's what I personally think is the next best thing... Click once as usual to start your operation (draw, move, resize, etc.). This can be using any mouse button as necessary. Drag your item outside the drawing window and without letting go of your original mouse button, click once on one of your unused mouse buttons. Let go out of your original mouse button. You can now return to the drawing area and pan and zoom as usual. Just click again to finish the operation. NOTE: During step 2 it is best to click once using either your center mouse wheel or your left mouse button. If you use your right mouse button and you aren't completely outside Chief's window you may get a little popup menu. If you DO get the menu just move your mouse outside the menu box but still outside the drawing area and left click to get rid of it.

Kinda depends I suppose. I might use cabinets, shelves, or custom countertops, I might use p-solids, I might use regular solids, I might use moldings, and I might use symbols. More likely than not it would be some combination of the above. I'd probably just start with whatever came to mind in the moment, take it from there, and then modify the approach as necessary.

Many many MANY ways to accomplish this by using any number of various objects to create the parts and pieces some of which were mentioned above. There are ways to do this with a single cabinet too though. I'm not at my computer to post an example but here's the gist of one way... You'll need to first create a cabinet with a Custom Face on all 4 sides using any combination of panels, openings, blank areas, drawers, doors, etc. in order to create pretty much everything except the legs and that raised edge profile on the bottom shelf in your example. Take note of your toe kick height but just leave the toe kick in place for now. Next you'll need to create the tall legs. To do this, pick one of the cabinet feet from the library and drop it into a blank plan. Set the height to exactly match the height of your cabinet box (height minus countertop). Now take a 3D view, Convert To Symbol, add to your library as Millwork, and using the advanced options, change the bounding box height to the height of your toe kick. Now you can open your cabinet back up and add your newly created feet. Set the width and offsets to your liking. You'll probably find that you're going to have a minimum/maximum offset that will work due to the fact you'll need the legs to cover the automatically created corner cabinet framework. Lastly, add the raised shelf molding by adding it to the cabinet in the molding tab. Just use the plain rectangular base molding, change the dimensions as necessary, and set all the appropriate offsets. A few additional notes: -Now that you know all the steps you may find it easier to create the legs first and then modify the cabinet afterward. The order isn't really important. Just do what works for you. -You'll probably want to create a new symbol for the cabinet legs if you decide to change the cabinet height however you can use the same symbol if you decide to change the "toekick" height...just right click on the symbol in your library, open symbol, and change the bounding box height to match your new toe kick height. I would personally probably build that unit with tons of pieces just for accuracy, for the added flexibility, and in order to create vector views that have lines correctly drawn at all the various joints but the single cabinet method has its benefits and I thought it was at least worth mentioning.

I've come to think this problem might have something to do with the screen resolution of the machine the plan is being viewed on. I made a video on a very similar sort of issue recently and sent it into tech support. It's obviously not the exact same issue but it definitely seems like it could be related. In the video though you can see how zooming temporarily affects text. It just seems like this same thing may be happening on a bigger scale when the plan is being viewed on different machines. No matter what the problem is though, it's definitely something tech support needs to be looking into...

I could be misunderstanding Jared's request but I don't think I am. I believe the goal is to keep the drawing so that posts are drawn under beams, beams are drawn under joists, and ALL labels are brought to the front group. In your example it looks like you are essentially drawing the posts OVER the joists...that is all except the row I mentioned which it looks like you left alone. If the labels in that row had landed under a joist then once you moved the labels to the front of the drawing group then the posts would have been moved forward too and therefore they would be drawn above the beams and joists (incorrect). With reagrd to the beams...In your attached example the labels are still being drawn beneath the joists which is what I believe we're trying to avoid. Hopefully that makes sense.

Glenn, your suggested method kinda works except that as you probably know it wouldn't have worked for that 3rd row of posts down from the top had the label been in a different position and it also doesn't work for the beams. It kinda only works in just the right circumstances. The method I used was to overlap 2 layout boxes...one with the normal plan view and labels turned off and another with just a reference set...all line styles set to the blank line style and reference floor set to draw last. That method essentially allows all labels to be placed onto the front drawing group.

Jared, It just occurred to me that there actually IS a way to do this. I only spent a few minutes so I didn't thoroughly test or perfect but check out the attached files to see how I did it. Label Test.layout Label Test.plan

Aside from using manually placed text boxes, moving and rotating the labels is the only thing I can think of that will get you what you're after... Now having said that, I would personally really consider doing away with a lot of those labels and just using plan notes/footnotes and/or text boxes with arrows in this particular instance just to clean up some of the redundancy.

This looks like a bug to me. I would report this to tech support and see what they have to say.

Or...Don't use 2 separate cabinets. Just use one cabinet and split the face item(s) vertically to create the extra openings and center stile(s).

A little off subject, and I know you already made multiple versions of the fireplace, but just FYI... You should be able to rotate that beast using Edit Area (Control+H). Edit Area has had a few bugs associated with it over the years, but currently I think it should work just fine for that particular purpose.

You shouldn't need to enlarge each individual item. All you should really need to do is modify a few CAD blocks. Here's a short video I made on the subject a little while back...

Absolutely. Resize About is an extremely useful and I think oft overlooked productivity setting.

Sorry, wasn't trying to contradict the other advice. Only pointing out something that appeared as if though it could have been a large part or source of the problem that may have been overlooked.