Alaskan_Son

A few little tips re: dealing with those Hatch Wall fills...

How EXACTLY are you "adding a text item"?

I totally agree Johnny. Its been an annoyance of mine for a little while but I just never even thought to request that it be fixed. It really should be though. It may be the single most trial-and-error-prone operation in Chief.

As far as I know it has always been that way. Unfortunately, you have to close down the dialog box and then reopen it for any changes to the bounding box or stretch planes to properly register. We really should suggest that they fix that. If more people knew how to use those settings then I suspect Chief would probably be hearing a lot more complaints.

Create a circle, convert that circle to a polyline, and then either convert that polyline to a hole or use boolean operations (polyline subtraction) to cut the hole. You can also simply draw a square hole and then fillet the corners to make a circle. I'm away from my computer and I'm just rattling off some ideas from memory so there may be other ways but those are a couple that come to mind.

Thanks Ross, and that's funny... I wasn't sure if anyone would catch that or not. That was my youngest son. He didn't realize I was in the middle of making a video and I didn't feel like starting over so I just rolled with it.

Thanks guys!

Made this video at the request of another user. Just an easy way to cut an existing door symbol in half... NOTE: The video basically just goes over cutting a simple door in half but the same basic technique can be utilized to downsize and chop down symbols of all sorts. It just gets a little more complicated with more complex geometry and may require several extra steps if the symbol isn't a pretty simple rectangular shape. Maybe when I have a little more time I'll take it a little further for those more complex situations but for now, hopefully this helps some of you guys out and at least get you started. P.S. Thanks for the donation Ross. I appreciate the support : )

Steve, Is this what you're looking for? If so, I think your best bet is probably to set the wall to be a pony wall and only display the lower wall type in plan view. I only had a few extra minutes to look at it and I may hacve missed something, but I have attached the modified plan so you can take a look for yourself. I don't have time to get into all the details, but in short we're a bit limited with the display of railing walls and I've found that using a pony wall is sometimes the answer for those trickier situations. Hopefully this helps... Railing.plan

Ya, it may not work for all situations. You might need to just use the pad method and then mask the extra lines. Having said that, I'm pretty sure I've used the increased footing method adjacent to and even directly underneath garage door openings like you're talking about but I don't rightly recall the specifics. I'm away from my office now but if you post a quick example plan I might be able to take a look when I get back this afternoon.

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...