Alaskan_Son

I have to say I'm with Johnny on this. I too use Chief to model some pretty complex geometry and while I can agree that it's about learning to use the various tools and features outside their named/intended purpose but quite honestly even then, the tools can be very limiting and certain geometry can be extremely time consuming to model. I would actually go so far as to say there is a lot of geometry I would consider totally impossible for all except the most advanced, mathematically minded, spacially thinking users. Even then...the results can be very rigid, lumpy, or otherwise flawed or simply unrealistic looking. At the the end of the day we have to pick and choose our battles. There is a lot of complex geometry I don't mind taking a little time to produce in Chief but if we're talking about any sort of organic shapes, free form modeling, upholstery, anything with waves, etc...then the results are totally not worth the effort IMO. You're better off either finding a symbol that's close enough, making it in another app, or paying someone to make it for you in another app.

You bet, and you are correct. There is no accessible default setting for the Hatch Wall tool. It's something that has been requested multiple times. For now, I think the best you can do is set one to the way you want it and then use the Object Eyedropper tool to change future wall hatches.

Don't have time to go over it all in detail and I'm away from my computer but here's where I would suggest you start.... -Use the ceiling FINISH and define one of your layers to be a framing material. -Place any required joist direction arrows in the correct locations and orientations. -Build CEILING framing -Place new joist direction arrows for your floor framing. -Build FLOOR framing. -Make manual modifications as necessary.

I've never tried doing what you're trying to do so I haven't explored the options a whole lot, but I think this looks like a job for the Hatch Wall tool. The Hatch Wall will add a hatch that is the width of your main layer. If you want to also display the outside lines of the wall then you'll probably want to check Draw Rails also.

This question is kinda strange to me...did you even try? All you have to do is drop an object into Chief and create a 3D view and you would know the answer. I feel like I must be missing something. To answer your last question though, I personally use Chief rather heavily for creating custom case goods and such and so do a number of other Chiefers.

It might help if you were to tell us how you are currently getting this done. Then we can tell you if we have an idea for a faster way. There are definitely ways to speed this kind of process up but I don;t feel like spending 20 minutes expounding on it just to find out you're already doing the same thing.

This sounds like something for the Jerry Springer Show.

I agree. It's very simple. Rename plan, rename layout, and relink. You don't even need to use the same name. I've heard this recommended many times and I've never understood why (I may have heard it explained before but if so I forgot why). Anyway, my layout names often times do not match my plan name.

Took my system twice that long. Good thing I don't typically deal with very large plans. EDIT: Tested a 2nd and 3rd time. The 2nd time it only took 26-27 seconds. For the 3rd test I went in and changed Hardware Edge Smoothing from Low to None and that made no difference at all...still took 26-27 seconds.

I think that layer should be renamed to "Doors, Through Lines" because that's all that it is. It really has nothing to do with the actual header (framing). Very misleading IMO.

Wasn't able to find the time to explain all the nuances in great detail but hopefully this helps...

Sounds to me like you want to see the footers and not the walls? If so, just try putting those walls onto their own layer and just turn that layer off.

Just one additional little thing to think about here... One big thing that comes into play here is face count. Graham mentioned turning off layers but its really whats on those layers that's important. For example, you can draw 4 walls, a couple windows, a door, and a roof to create a small house and end up with around 2,000 faces. You can also very quickly and easily find a Viking cooktop with 20,000 faces. That means you can have a cooktop that takes 10 times as long to rebuild as an entire house or that you can leave 10 times as much house turned on by just turning off the cooktop. This same general premise holds true throughout the model. There are many items with lots of faces that can really slow things down. Those are the types of things whose layers should be turned off if we don't need them and it absolutely does make a HUGE difference sometimes. For those that doubt the effectiveness of tuning off layers you can very easily test this too. Drop one of the aforementioned Viking appliances into one of your plans and use multiple copy to create a good handful of copies (100 or so maybe). Now create a 3D view. It will likely take a notable amount of time to build that view. Now turn off the Fixtures, Interior layer in your camera view set and create the 3D view again.

I SAID elevation view but what I should have said and what I MEANT was wall framing detail. Try that and see if that works for you.

There might be other ways I'm not thinking of, but one way you can do that manually is by first rotating a stud in plan view and then rotating that stud in elevation view so that its a top plate. Then you can use Join and Lap Ends to trim a stud followed by multiple copy. Post that plan and I'll see if I can't make you a quick video showing you how.

The material type just needs to be defined as framing in the material definition dbx.

Usually yes, but not in that particular case. In that case, the siding needed to continue through to that point in order to correctly blend into an adjacent attic wall. There were other ways to make it happen without the siding continuing through, but the other possibilities resulted in extraneous lines on the exterior, drywall gaps on the interior, incorrect framing, and/or siding gaps on the exterior and I think there were other problems as well but it's been a while and I don't remember all of it. I do see problems like that quite frequently. Basically as soon as we start to have irregular, non box-shaped rooms we start to have the problems Johnny is talking about. Sometimes it's not the room shape either...Sometimes its an irregular roof connection or a situation where a roof starts higher or lower than the adjacent walls, or a situation where a wall shape lands somewhere outside a plain rectangle and a gable wall, or perhaps some combination of the above. Point is that as Johnny says, Chief can handle the majority of wall connections/intersections just fine. There are those situations though that Chief basically cannot handle very well at all. Enter The Workaround...

As Chop says, those lines are usually the result of a slightly incorrect wall setting. It might be one of the wall structure settings, a wall alignment issue, one of the wall's roof settings, etc. Very difficult to hazard a guess without seeing the plan. I usually fix these situations in one of 4 ways though... Fix the wall setting. This can be difficult to track down sometimes. You have to figure out both the offending wall(s) and the offending setting(s). Sometimes Chief just has a glitch under certain circumstances and with certain connections and in those cases I have to move along to some workarounds... Reshape the wall polyline(s) in elevation. Often times the extra lines are the result of Chief overlapping wall polylines. In those cases I figure out how the walls are overlapping, I create a CAD Detail From View in order to copy and paste a snap point, and then I reshape the appropriate wall(s) so that they are no longer overlapping. I use a Wall Material Region or Custom Backsplash (depending on the situation). You can often times fix the problem by selecting one of the 2 aforementioned tools, clicking once on the offending wall and just adding a thin material region to mask the problem lines. My last resort is to draw a polyline solid to mask the problem. There are a number of ways to go about this but I usually use a CAD Detail From View, trace things, and then Copy/Paste Hold Position my polyline(s) from that back to the elevation view and convert to polyline solid. Sometimes you can also start with the material region, convert that to a plain polyline, and then convert that to a polyline solid. I usually use boolean operations to speed up the above processes as well. The basic idea though is similar to the material region idea...just create a thin wall covering to mask the problem lines.

Mark's idea is a very good solution but I would argue that you probably SHOULD have something unique in your schedule that distinguishes the difference between those 2 windows or else your schedule isn't fully doing it's job. That's just my opinion though. Now, having said that, Chief does have one major flaw in this particular area. It does not seem to recognize differences in 3D views even when a 3D view column is added to the schedule. I've had problems with this myself in the past. For example, I could have a left hand casement and a right hand casement that are otherwise identical. If I opt not to include hinge information in any of my columns but rather chose to use a 3D elevation view to get the information across instead...I get 2 of the same window instead of 2 different windows. This should not be so.

I haven't used 3D viewer so I'm not familiar with all the nuances when it comes to layer display options but just a basic understanding of Chief tells me that you should at least be able to get what you're after by creating a 3D framing view, converting the whole model to a symbol, placing that symbol into a plan by itself, and then exporting that model.

%scale% is most useful once you print. Once printed (to paper or PDF) it will correctly report either: Your Drawing Scale if you place it directly into layout (this is almost always 1" = 1") Your Layout View Scale if placed into plan view (1/4" = 1' or whatever scale you're using). This is what most people are typically after. You can get the same thing by using the %box_scale% macro but this requires using the actual layout box label which is not always ideal.

You can do what Perry says, but the one you're using should work as well. As you say, it will change while you are zooming in and out, but it will print correctly.

..but first and most obviously...make sure you have actually refreshed the views. Unless they are set to Always Update, you need to manually update them. Just click on the Update Layout View icon or go to Tools>Layout>Update Layout Views and select the appropriate option.

You can drag/drop or paste the aforementioned characters in Rich Text boxes but not standard text boxes and not via Ruby. There are probably registry hacks that will allow direct entry of unicode characters but outside of that I think copy/paste or drag/drop are your best options. You can use Windows Character Map, Word, or a number of other apps as the go between. For what its worth, Chief is far from the only app that has issues with unicode support. It's a common problem in all sorts of apps. I have personally taken to just modifying fonts to add the characters I need. This approach has a few minor downsides but works well for me.

This isn't a problem with the spray can but rather a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Chief works. I don't have time to get into it right now and I think I may have already spelled it out in quite a bit of detail in another thread a while back but it's important to realize that walls are unique and the material can be changed in several different ways. All of which have their benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the ways just off the top... Using the Room material settings Using the Wall material settings Using the Wall Type material settings Using the spray can Using wall coverings Using material regions In addition to the ways you can change the materials, you can also check "Use Default". Specifically, when you use the spray can you are basically telling Chief you want this wall surface (or portion thereof) to be unique and so the materials will no longer be changed with changes to the wall definition. This is not a bug or a flaw but rather a feature and is fully intended. If you want the wall to obey changes to the wall type again, all you have to do is open the wall, click on the material tab, click on the surface you want to change, and check "Use Default".