Alaskan_Son

Try using a doorway (no casing or frame...just a hole in the wall) and a symbol for the door and jamb. I'm sure it's not exactly what you would want to see but here's a very quick and rough example. It doesn't actually have the door panel because I just grabbed the first symbol I found and it didn't have a door. You should be able to get the idea though. You would just have to find or make the appropriate symbols and add them to your library. Biggest limitation is that you would probably have to choose whether or not the door was shown open or closed (or it would require 2 different symbols on different layers if you wanted to toggle between the views).

It would help to see more specifically what exactly your situation is such as the shape of the structure, how and where the walls meet, the elevations of your garage floor and stem walls, etc. The best way to accomplish what you're looking for may vary depending on some of the above details.

Okay Chop, I can reproduce your problem now. I missed that we were specifically talking about symbols. I can move everything except symbols in the vertical direction in elevation views with the utmost of accuracy. I guess I hadn't tried moving a symbol like that in X9 until just now. I had tried lines, polylines, etc...just not symbols. Anyway, you are definitely correct. It's broken in X9 and used to work just fine in X8. Thanks for bringing this up and for reporting it.

I'd really be curious to see what's going on with your specific plan. I sent you a PM, but just to give you a little further update, I just tested in X9 and I can easily re-position things in elevation view, and in the vertical direction to within 1/2000 of an inch accuracy. I didn't test any further that that.

Join the roof planes on Floor A and then move roof plane(s) up or down to Floor B and join roof planes on that floor as necessary. Once you're done, simply move roof plane(s) back to their original floor.

I use the tab method as well as the dbx to move items in very small increments on a regular basis. Often times I'll open the dbx and and type "+1/64" or whatever my desired dimension is. What I think you'll find is that you can often move things the desired accuracy but it just doesn't show up in the dbx. It just rounds the number off to the nearest 1/16".

I'm not sure about Joe's system, but at least with my system, it is VERY flexible...its really the whole point of going with a DIY system. You set it up to the way you want it to work. And you don't need to use it for site analysis, it's for AREA analysis...any area. And you can use ANY polyline or even actual room areas. Also, a person could consider using room finish schedules in lieu of or in combination with the above. Those room finish schedules can be very versatile if you set them up specifically for your needs. You can set them to display only the desired rooms or room types, only from the desired floor, and only to include the desired columns. Worth a look though for sure.

Note that most of the suggestions I made in the thread I mentioned above would require very little in the way of any changes on Chief's end. Take a simple line for example...it already has an x and y position right in the dbx. and it can have a label if you add a node which converts it to a polyline. "Show Length" and "Show Angle" as well as callouts and Level Line Markers prove that dual labels aren't too difficult either. Point is that its almost all there already. My point...A whole new tool might be great, but if we could get Chief to provide a few minor things in the interim we could be getting this stuff done. The fact only a very small handful of people ever take the time and energy to champion and support the cause is really making progress slow in some of these areas. PLEASE consider getting behind some of these ideas guys and being a little more vocal with your support and maybe progress will be a little quicker.

This would be possible if Chief just gave us some things I've already requested in the past... Specifically the x and y position attributes and maybe the line labels. ...maybe consider offering a little support.

You are very welcome.

Those should move too if you were to upgrade to X9

No. It shouldn't screw anything up at all unless you've further modified my system to have one of those macros in that text box setting a global value (which is not something I recall ever doing in my videos).

If I am understanding correctly, I would probably recommend you make yourself some different tabulation boxes, reports, or whatever you want to call them. Rather than display a bunch of zero areas, you could simply not display them at all that way. You can have as many of those in your template plan as you need. The only thing you have to avoid doing is accidentally setting the GLOBAL value for any of those areas more than once. You can display those values as many times as you want, you just can't set those values more than once. Does that answer your question?

Hey Scott, 2 quick comments that might help you or others out. The reason labels need to be displayed is because in simple terms, Chief needs to be able to "see" them. You can set the text height to zero, you can set the actual label to display "" (I think I went over this in part 3 of my video series?) or drag the labels off to the side. They just must be visible. I think this is also something I tried to touch on in part 3 of my video series, but the reason you're having problems on the second floor is much the same as the reason labels need to be displayed...Chief needs to be able to "see" those polyline labels you have on the floor below in order to properly calculate them. What's happening when you move to the second floor is that when you open Text Macro Management, every macro is being calculated based on the polyline you have selected. In this case it was that deck area. Normally this is not a problem because once you close TMM, the labels in the polylines will take back over and correct all those numbers immediately. Because all those labels are on the first floor though, Chief can't see them, so the numbers are just reporting based on that deck area you had previously selected. You shouldn't need to cut that polyline and move it to the first floor, all you should need to do is switch your VIEW to the first floor then move back to your second floor. None of this is usually an issue when you print as ALL the macros should be re-executed at that time. It's really only a problem when you open and close TMM or use Insert < because whenever you do either of those things, EVERY macro is executed based on the item you have selected. Chief does this so it knows which ones are valid and which ones aren't. Anyway, all you need to do is "show" those labels to Chief (i.e. make sure they're visible on screen) and all should be well. Hope that helps. P.S. For any of you guys using my system, if I seem to have enough interest I may eventually continue the series to show you how you can cut your required macros in half or even in third and to take you a little deeper into the tricks available in Ruby. I touched on some of the methods required for the above in part 3 of the video series, but there's definitely more than can be done to improve upon the system.

Okay. I found an old .pl1 file and tested out my suggestion. It kinda worked...sorta...not really...Chief tried to open it but then gave this warning... Like you said...looks like those older files are just no longer supported. Oh well....I'm sorry...I tried. On a side note, I'm curious how useful those old files can be anyway. Chief has changed so much it seems like the plans would be a mess and you'd be better off redrawing anyway...although I guess you would still need access to the file to get the relevant information. Looks like keeping X8 on hand for a bit might be the only option. Sorry.

Not at my computer to test, nor do I have any .pl1 files but have you tried simply renaming them to change the .pl1 to .plan?

On the surface it really doesn't look too bad but there are definitely a lot of things that need to be addressed. I only looked at it for a few minutes but a few that stuck out to me right away... Your stairway doesn't appear to have proper clearances at your entry area. The tub/shower combo on your main floor has been resized and is actually too small...plus, it needs a plumbing wall (even if you were to flip the unit it still needs another wall) The tub/shower combo downstairs needs a plumbing wall as well (even if you were to flip the unit it still needs another wall) Once you fix the 2 tubs and plumbing walls you won't have enough room for the toilets Just a matter of opinion but the toilet and sink near the entryway should be flip flopped. I don't think you want the toilet in front of the door, and I also think it's just good practice to design bathrooms so that you're always washing your hands on your way out. and not walking away from the door to get to the sink. Anyway, that's my free bit of advice for the day. Have a good night.

Thanks for trying to clarify that. I'll take your word for it : ) I'm sure my situation was a little different...I had a pretty old printer but it always printed fine. One little thing about it though... I couldn't actually hook it directly to my computer due to outdated drivers and the fact HP stopped supporting it. The only way it worked was setting it up as a network printer through my router via the JetDirect server. Anywho, I can't say I understand it any better but I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

You're more than welcome : )

Just ran some very quick tests...for ray trace views, try setting the material to approx. 75% emissive...

Can you post a copy of the plan file? BTW, if you're trying to do a ray trace, my suggestions probably won't be a whole lot of help. That's a different ball of wax for sure.

Quite a few options here depending on a number of factors including the rendering type but here are a few right off the top (some may need to be done in combination with others depending on the situation) ... Simply turn the Terrain Perimeter layer off Set the material color to white and turn the shading contrast down to zero Adjust the material settings by completely deleting the texture file (no texture) and set the diffuse setting to 100% Set the terrain perimeter layer line style to the invisible line style (vector views) Give the terrain a zero thickness (if the edges are in view) Hope that helps at least get you started.

A plan file or at the very least a screenshot would really improve your chances of getting a helpful response.

Ya, I think that feature is new with X9. I had some pretty complex custom toolbars and toolbar configurations and it was really nice to have those automatically migrated.

Interesting. This seems to reinforce my suspicion that a good print server might make the difference. It introduces an entirely new driver and memory bank into the mix. What do you think BT? Could a print server be the difference and perhaps the answer? If so, that would point again to the printer/printer driver being the limiting factors and not necessarily Chief. I mean Chief might be the only program that causes seem people issue but that still doesn't necessarily mean it's a Chief problem. Chief just may be a bit more demanding than some of the other software and that demand may have increased further with X7 and onward. I don't know...just some ideas.