Alaskan_Son

In that case... 1. Make sure to draw some extra lines outside your template area (perhaps an entire border) just to make sure the whole thing is included in the print job. 2. Under Drawing Sheet Setup change the scale to 1 to 1. 3. Again...Print To Scale

2 things... When sending to layout, send at a 1 to 1 scale... When printing, print To Scale, NOT using Check Plot at...

There's other free* open source 3D CAD software out there too. I would respectfully suggest you use one of those many options instead if you really believe what you're preaching. Consider all the time and tens of dollars you've put in so far as part of your own personal donation to the cause. It seems you hold other people's investments of time, money, and/or talents in fairly low esteem, is yours different? *initial software download might be free but somebody, somewhere, and at some time has or will pay for it in one way or another. It's a simple matter of fact. With all due respect, you're just fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

Yep. Plus, that toggle is located under a subsection called "Troubleshooting". Here's what it says in the Help file... The Troubleshooting settings can be used to troubleshoot performance in 3D views. • When Use Enhanced Lighting is checked, Standard rendered views generate lighting effects that require a video card that supports OpenGL 2.0. Unchecking this box may speed up Standard rendering times somewhat; however, the quality of lighting effects will be reduced. Not available if your video card does not support OpenGL 2.0. See OpenGL and Hardware. • Software Rendered Overlays helps address specific errors that can occur with certain video cards and is checked by default. In some rare instances, this may slow rendering time somewhat. Note that it will become checked automatically if the program encounters certain error conditions. • Command Flushing - Select an option from the drop-down list to control how often the program flushes cached video memory. “Rarely” is selected by default and will produce fastest rendering times on most systems, but “Frequently” may be helpful for older video cards.

As I understand it the Enhanced Lighting toggle is simply a video card troubleshooting tool and SHOULD NOT be toggled off under normal circumstances. The correct way to control that shadow effect is by adjusting your ambient occlusion settings as Kevin suggested. Turning off Enhanced Lighting is going to have other unwelcome side effects.

I always include in total

Sounds to me like you need to reinstall your printer drivers. Doesn't sound like a Chief Architect issue to me.

Chief said not long ago that they are still working on those maps. I don't think they're actually available yet for all that many materials. It sounded like the goal was to get most of them ready to be released along with the final public release of X9.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say you have to use a different view type. You have to use a different rendering type, my bad...I corrected my post to reflect that. And I didn't mention that step because I figured it was a no-brainer. Michael's example that prompted the question was done in the standard rendering technique.

As you pointed out, it doesn't work with a vector view. You have to use a different rendering type. If I need a vector view like that, one thing I've done is convert the whole house to a symbol, flip the symbol on it's side, and then use a normal section view. This gives you the ability to add text and other notations as well but it's no longer live. You can also do as Rashid suggested and use a watercolor with line drawing on top. If you turn all the settings down to their absolute minimum settings and toggle textures OFF, you dang near have a vector view. Text and notations for orthographic overviews can be added in layout, can be added by overlapping views, can be added in a photo editor, can be added in a PDF editor, or using any number of other methods.

3D>Create Orthographic View>Orthographic ___ Overview 3D>View Direction>Top View 3D>Camera View Options>Cross Section Slider

I for one appreciate that you want to take the time to learn and figure things out on your own, but the truth is we could take an hour or more writing up post telling you all the things to check, asking questions about various settings, etc. then you could spend another half hour checking those things and answering back, then we could spend another 15 minutes answering back, etc. and we could still miss one minor detail that was the key to the whole thing that woe would have probably caught just by looking at the plan. There are just WAY TOO many settings in Chief to work that way. There are simple wall settings...about 100 of them, there are wall connection details, wall layer intersection details, room structure setttings for rooms above and for rooms below (floor heights, ceiling heights, floor structure, ceiling structure), foundation settings, I could spend all day just going over the possible settings and possible errors for any given item. Now from what I can tell you have a few roof planes, as many as a half dozen different rooms and as many as a dozen different walls all coming together in those areas...you do the math. It's just far more efficient to take a quick look at the plan, point you in the direction of what you're doing wrong and the areas you should focus your studies on, and let you take it from there.

Did you also purge the associated CAD blocks??

I'd be curious to see that file. Could you possibly post the DWG/DXF file?

Issue 1... Use Edit Wall Layer Intersections. Issue 2... Make wall longer (long enough to keep short wall from snapping back to corner, place break, make short section of wall a different wall type (or simply reverse layers) and then drag wall back. Here's a quick video. It's silent because everyone in the house is still asleep and I didn't want to wake them. You should be able to get the gist though...

Or if you want it to be automatic, use this...

No. Check it out. I think it's either 30 days or 30 imports.

BTW, the paid version of that extensions is only $79.00. Well worth it IMO if you need a bunch of those symbols.

The extension I pointed you to works with Sketchup Make (free version) and is available as a free trial (full featured). I actually have that installed right now. Here's one of those symbols imported into SKP, exported to Chief, and then exported to you as a CALIBZ... Sanitary tee.calibz

What site is that?

I'm not sure why there would be 2 DXF files if one wasn't 3D though. Are you sure you're downloading the correct DXF and using the correct import option (3D symbol vs drawing)??

Try this Chop... http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/3D_PDF_importer_for_sketchup-main.aspx import to Sketchup then export to Chief.

Might not be possible in the version you're using, but for anyone else who may have the same question... Try making one (or both) of those prow front walls a "High Shed/Gable Wall".

Try unchecking "Use Room Ceiling Finish" in your roof dbx.

Hey Brad, I never really studied your question very thoroughly till just now, but I just took a better look and the problem is crystal clear to me... There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what Chief is doing. It looks like all that's happening is that YOU have modified the text box. In doing so, you have placed extra characters and spaces which has thrown the tabbed alignment off. It's word processing 101. You just need to add/delete tabs and spaces as necessary to align things to your liking. Am I missing something?