Alaskan_Son

Newell, Since you asked, I posted this quite some time ago... I was just trying to be straight with you. As with many of your other threads it looks like you may have never returned to it, and certainly didn't respond to it. Anyway, some of those negative points were from me. Not because I think you are too small. On the contrary, I think you've got lot going on and it just seems like you treat this forum like a repository for free help to get that work done and nothing more. Truth is that I'm not sure I've seen any evidence that you're trying to learn or help others learn, mostly you just want to get work done and have us do it for you (at least that's what it seems like). In fact, I stopped responding to your threads a long time ago after I poured in time to help you out...only to have my (correct) answers completely ignored or otherwise unappreciated and like I said in the above post, I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way although I may be the only one who has been willing to say so out loud. Actually I just went back and read through a handful of your threads and was very quickly reminded exactly why I feel the way I do. So...in short, if you want a better reputation all you really have to do is take the time to participate a little better: Take the time to truly comprehend the answers people give you so that we don't feel like we're wasting our time. Invest the time to learn so it doesn't feel like we're just doing your work for you. Maybe do a little helping out yourself from time to time, but most of all... Just participate better. In my short foray into the past I found thread after thread where people were donating their own valuable time, legitimately trying to help you and you failed to participate even in your own thread. If you want help and if you want to learn you should be willing to take the time to respond to people trying to help you. Admittedly it seems you've gotten a little better. I don't think your reputation has gone down in some time though either. And lastly, just as a side note for whatever it's worth, I've given you positive reputation in the past as well...

Wow, that's a very creative solution Glenn. Thank you.

Maybe. Organization, searching, and editing would be a lot easier though. This is one case where Gerry's idea of allowing macros names to take arguments would really work well... %Electrical Notes(Note 1)% %Electrical Notes(Note 2)% %Framing Notes(Note 7)% ETC Where the macro would set the file path and the argument would set the file name.

Those are good ideas but I was actually talking about the possibility of using Ruby to ACCESS the files. Pigeonhole seems to create file types based on some sort of number system..."Note A" is saved as a .0 file type, "Note B" is saved as a .1 file type, "Note C" is saved as a .2 file type and so on. They are oddly named file types but they all seem to be nothing more than simple text files and Ruby can read the file just fine so long as you provide it with the file path. It might be a little tricky to set up. Just sayin' its a possibility that might be worth exploring for some people.

I just downloaded that. FWIW, a person could use macros along with that app. The notes are all saved as a ".#" (.0, .1, .2, .3, etc.) file types but Ruby can read them just like normal text files. Looks like a super handy app regardless. Thanks Richard.

Ya, that's not quite the same thing but I see what you're saying. The grid obviously adds a visual cue you don't have when you're simply using grid snaps. I was really just trying to offer an option that provides for an actually functional 3D grid in Chief.

FWIW, Chief draws walls from the top of the wall so if you want a truly usable, snapable grid, you have to use a 3D object for your grid lines (molding polylines in the attached example) and place them at the ceiling height of the floor you're drawing on. I personally never draw walls in 3D though and I'm not sure I ever will. If you want the clients to see the action in 3D you can always just tile your views.

Yup. It would be an A+ except he decided to leave off the "studs" from the top of the Lego pieces. He did model the whole thing out of individual pieces though.

Here's a Lego house my son made in Sketchup. I thought it was pretty cool so I wanted to share it : ) Lego house.calibz

Auto Place outlets WILL auto place GFCI over kitchen countertops for me. Thanks for pointing that out Chop.

If you're manually placing outlets, you can temporarily change the kitchen room type to a Bath. Once you're done, simply change the room type back to Kitchen. If you're trying to auto place outlets, I think the best you'll probably be able to do is to first auto place outlets, then: group select the outlets you wish to change to a GFCI open the SYMBOL specification DBX>Options and check GFCI click on the 2D Block tab and select the GFCI block You can also pull GFCI outlets directly from the library. EDIT: I don't normally use Auto Place Outlets, but after Chopsaw mentioned something from the Help files below, I tested it out and Auto Place Outlets should automatically place GFCI outlets over all kitchen countertops. Works for me anyway.

Looks like a decent video card. I think its just a big plan. I would personally just limit my time in 3D views on that one, and delete or turn off what I didn't really need. There are other methods of dealing with large plans that you consider as well such as completing different wings or floors in different plans and then combining later (if necessary). P.S. I edited my last post to add some information after you quoted it. Might be worth glancing at it again in case you can get anything more from it.

Here are my comments for whatever they're worth (in no particular order)... I tried your plan out on my desktop. Very slow for me as well. Working in plan view not bad (only a few seconds lag time for undo/redo operations) but working in 3D it was taking between a minute and a minute and a half for the same operations. I don't see any reason why your storage space would come into play at all. That should never have any affect on your speed. The SSD should make a difference...not because of the increased storage but because of the technology...data access is just much faster with an SSD. I suspect the reason for the slowness may have more to do with your video card than anything else you've mentioned. Part of the slowness on my end might be my RAM although I doubt it (I was getting low memory warnings with your plan open) but you seem to have plenty of that. I don't think the CPU usage displaying as zero is a big deal. Mine looks like that all the time when Chief is sitting idle. It will jump up when you're actually doing something but usually when you're looking at the task manager you've stopped doing anything. Trying moving your mouse around the screen on Chief wile task manager is visible or try zooming in and out on a 3D view and see what that number does. While creating a 3D view of your plan my CPU usage jumped up to 100% for a few seconds, dropped back down to around 30%, jumped back up to 100%, dropped back down, jumped back up etc. I think its bouncing back and forth between the CPU and the video card during those operations. At the end of the day, I'm betting it's either: A. Your CPU and maybe one of it's settings (the plan is just huge so there may not be much you can do) B. Your video card. Probably both actually. What are your video card specs? Remember that the video card does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to normal 3D views.

I like

Sorry, just realized my spacing is wrong, but you should be able to get the idea...You can do this pretty much automatically by building that with a couple additional floors with nothing but a joist layer (no ceiling height) and then changing the joist direction for one of the floors...I have attached a quick sample plan (please note that you could leave auto framing on with this system but I turned it off just to create the cutaway affect. Quick example.plan P.S. Nothing wrong with doing it manually like the guys suggested above. Just offering an alternative. There are other ways to "skin this cat" too but now you should have a couple.

In my experience its actually one of the more common reason for the "I can't figure out why..." problems many users have.

I'm assuming he is referring to a Nana Wall type SGD (sliding glass door).

The 2 biggest thing to consider with Text vs. Rich Text in my opinion... Normal TEXT can be controlled via layer settings so that the same piece of text can be displayed differently in different layer sets and at different scales. Formatting options are limited though and can only be set for the entire text box (i.e. its all bold and underlined or not bold or underline at all). RICH TEXT can be formatted at a charachter level but you cannot control text style by layer.

Re: formatting with macros. You can only format the entire macro so any real amount of formatting requires a lot of macros. So...for all intents and purposes, NO, you cannot control formatting in a text macro. Re: The rest... Store notes in the library Store notes in a warehouse plan in CAD Detail(s) Store notes in a warehouse plan in plan view(s) Store notes in the actual plan file in CAD Detail(s) Store note in the actual plan in plan view(s) Store notes on layout pages (dragged off to the side when not in use) Store notes in CAD Details in layout Store notes in text macros Store notes in referenced text file(s) Display notes from a CAD Detail Display notes from plan views Place notes directly into layout Am I missing anything? A couple other things I think are worth really considering when deciding on the best system: Do you work solo or will you be collaborating with other Chiefers? This is a biggie IMO as it can really have a huge affect on the way you might want to set up any referenced files. You may not even want to use referenced files at all if you don't want to set up a strict file management system. Is this a one time use plan file or will this plan file be used again in the future? Again, the answer to this question may affect how you use referenced files or whether you want to use them at all. If its a one time use plan, once the plans go out the door you don't have to worry about making sure everything is properly linked. If you're going to use it again in a month...might be a different story. Do you change up your file management structure very often? May have some bearing on the 2 answers and decisions from above. At the end of the day, I don't think there's any right answer. There are benefits associated with all the above. You just have to figure out what works best for you and your system.

You bet, and FWIW, on further investigation I have concluded that muntins don't actually have a depth. They appear to simply be a zero thickness "face". I remember now that I've needed to just manually build thicker muntins using solids...

Not sure what you mean by thickness. You can set the WIDTH here... but I personally don't know how to change the depth.

Name is Michael, but yep, Alaska is fine : ) I took a look at your plan real quick and I'm not sure how you placed those windows but they're just spaced apart a bit is all. All you have to do is go into Defaults>Window and set your Minimum Separation to 0". Then your windows should bump right up next to each other.

In short, there are only 3 ways I know of to get what you're after... 1. Center the lines manually in the window label. 2. Use a text box along with a referenced context macro and then you can center justify the text. 3. Use Ruby to center the text. This method doesn't work all that well though because Ruby can only calculate the number of characters in any given label and not the width of those characters (which can vary a lot from one font to the next and one character to the next). This can be improved by using a monospaced or fixed-width font however...Ruby cannot deal with half spaces either. This can result in some very inconsistent centering. Better than what you have otherwise, but not perfect. I think you should make a suggestion for center justifying text output from labels.

Are you using macros for the label or entering that information manually? Can you post a screenshot of the actual label in the window DBX?

Alex, if I'm understanding you correctly, I think you might be going about that in the wrong way. If this is what you're talking about... Then I would suggest you try to use actual window setting and mulled units... Otherwise you'll be stuck doing tons of potentially unnecessary CAD work to create the muntins, more CAD work to create the opening label, and if you make any changes to the window?? You guessed it...do it all over again. Sometimes the CAD work may be necessary, but this may not be one of those times...I guess only you know that answer to that dilemma.