Alaskan_Son

AWW MAN!!! I had a feeling that was coming

For auto roofs, set the pitch for each individual plane in the WALL dbx (Roof tab). The pitch is controlled by the wall where the baseline is located. So, for the gable in your pic the 2 roof planes would be controlled by the 2 side walls and not the gable wall. You may need to place breaks in some walls to get exactly what you're looking for.

Mmm hmmm. I know that's right...snap snap. Absolutely agree. Need to use the right tool for the job. I can rip a 12" beam in half nicely with my table saw but I have to remove the guard, cut it once, flip it over, cut it again, finish cutting the last bit with a handsaw or reciprocating saw, then touch up the cuts as necessary with a planer or belt sander. It's slow, tedious, difficult, somewhat dangerous and leaves a bit to be desired. If I want to do that more than once it's probably time to set up a bandsaw mill, chainsaw mill, or some other tool BUILT FOR THE JOB. In this case...I'd be looking at Archicad.

Take a look at this thread. You might find some useful information in there... https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/7825-auto-interior-dims-a-mess/page-2

David, I have to run so I'm only gonna give you a quick and short response... One of your walls at the entry is reversed. Simply click the Reverse Layers tool to fix that one. For the rest, open one of those walls or Build>Wall>Define Wall Types and change the actual wall definition to apply the material you want. That should fix it and it should behave much more stably that way. I think what's happened is that you've painted your "exterior room" and then when you add those invisible walls it simply confuses the program...it doesn't know whether to use the wall settings or one of the various associated room settings. In fact, you can simply open and close one or 2 of those walls and the materials will change. Change the wall type definition though and you should be good to go. Sorry, won't have time to dig any deeper than that right now as I'm about to head out the door. Hopefully that helps though.

You are correct sir. FWIW, I don't believe I would have constructed the roof that way, I just opened the plan we were given and threw the saddle in where it needed to be.

You bet. You'll probably have to mess with a few other layer settings as well such as placing first floor windows and doors on unique layers as turning those layers on as well, turning on your exterior casing layer...I'm sure you'll run into more. Point is though that its all in the layer control. P.S. One other trick I have used from time to time to avoid sending things to PS is simply sending overlapped views to layout. May or may not work in this situation but its a good tool to throw in your toolbox.

Yep. Layers. Put the 1st floor walls on a unique layer and turn that layer on in your 3D Framing set.

For starters, its because what I believe the OP was really asking for was a complex SADDLE, not a cricket... ...and I'm not too sure Softplan's saddle tool would have worked in this situation either. I will admit that the saddle tool might be a good addition to Chief though.

Build>Wall>Define Wall Types. Select a wall type from the drop down and then click delete. You can also reach the same dbx by opening a wall, clicking on the Wall Types tab and then clicking Define.

Not sure how you addressed your issue Jerry, but for anyone else with a similar question or problem, there are at least 3 quick ways to create new materials: 1. Right click on your User Catalog or on one of it's folders and then navigate to New>Material, give it a name, adjust the various settings, apply a texture, etc. 2. 3D>Materials>Plan materials or Shift + C, click either Copy or New and then define the material as you wish. 3. In a 3D view, click on the Material Painter>Plan Materials and proceed as mentioned above...OR in the Library Materials tab click on the little Add New Material icon... NOTE: You can access these same dbx's by clicking on the Materials tab of just about anything and then clicking on Select Material or one of the 2 material preview windows... There are also a number of ways to edit materials: A. Right click on the material if its in your user library and then click open object and edit as necessary B. 3D>Materials>Adjust Material Definition (the little rainbow icon) C. Use options #2 or #3 above and instead of clicking copy or new...click EDIT TIP: If using option #3 and the Material Painter to copy or edit materials you can quickly find the material you're looking for by first clicking on the Material Eyedropper, selecting the material you'd like to copy or edit AND THEN clicking on the Material Painter. If you do this, the item you previously selected will be pre-selected for you in the select material dbx. Hope that helps.

Gotcha. Sorry about that then. I just pretty quickly glanced at your drawing and then at the plan. I guess I didn't fully grasp what I was looking at. My bad.

It might not actually work. I was just throwing an idea out there. Didn't actually try modelling it. Maybe that's why Alan did what he did. Maybe it was ME who spoke too soon.

I would personally do this instead...

That's odd. Seems to work fine for me. I'll have to watch your video to see what you're doing differently.

Not sure...I've never watched that video. Per my experience and understanding though, textures will retain their orientation with regard to a symbols origin/axis (i.e. the texture will move with the symbol). It works for me anyway. I know because I just tested with Antoine's situation and I've created pretty complex symbols in the past where the wood grain pattern is different on each and every face...and those patterns remain correct no matter how I reposition my symbol in the plan. Here's a quick example... Timber Truss.calibz

Yep...OR just convert your object to a symbol and the texture should "stick" that way as well.

How difficult is it to learn Chief on a scale of 1 to 10?? I'd say right between 1 and 10...and I'm not kidding. Totally depends on what exactly you need to do with it, how much you care about the little details, whether or not you will be using other software, what design processes or software you're accustomed to, your individual techniques and tendencies, your design and/or construction experience, your expectations in general as to what a 3D design software should do for you, etc. In general I think the guys above have about covered it. Its really easy to get started but can take a substantial amount of time to master. I totally agree with David...Study things till you really grasp them. If you don't fully understand something you're just going to continually get hung up on it later and it will likely affect your understanding of other processes as well. The Users Guide is really a valuable resource and is probably worth going through, and the Help files are invaluable as well. Take advantage of them. I'd also add one more note...You will likely learn substantially faster and more efficiently by studying, taking training classes, hiring a tutor, and/or watching tutorial videos than you will winging it and just using the forum. I've kinda done both and I have to say the best things I've learned that have proven to be the strongest foundation and best reference were things I learned from the Users Guide at the very beginning and things I've read in the Help files when I have questions. The forum is definitely a close 3rd but IMO should serve as more of a supplement and clarification source than as a main learning tool...although, you will of course also pick up value tips and tricks from the forum that you can't find anywhere else which gives the forum a unique value all its own. I just really recommend you avoid making it your go-to learning source. I think a lot of people do it and it really just slows the learning process in a lot of ways and can lead down all sorts of rabbit trails keeping people from learning things correctly.

As Rich said, turn on the reference display using either the little icon in his attached picture, by navigating to Tools>Reference Floors>Reference Floor Display, or by simply hitting F9. You can select any floor to be your reference floor by clicking Swap Floor/Reference (just below Reference Floor Display) to toggle between the floor above or the floor below...OR, what I often find easiest...click on Change Floor/Reference (Control+Shift+G)... There you can switch the current floor, the reference floor, the reference floor layer set, and a few display options all in one place. Regarding moving the entire building. You can usually do that pretty easily by using Edit>Edit Area>Edit Area (All Floors). Once you select the tool, simply draw a marquis selection box around the building and then use the move handle to move everything all at once. You can also optionally draw a closed polyline of any shape FIRST, then click on Edit Area while the polyline is selected and that polyline will be used as your selection area.

Chopsaw probably nailed it. Cameras will always display if the particular camera view is open. Don't worry though, they only display while they're open and won't print that way.

I'm away from my computer right now but what about exploding the dormer and putting the various components on a unique layer and turning that layer off?

I've never used Adobe myself so I'm not sure how they handle it, but I know there are a good half dozen PDF formats and various ways they can be printed/saved. Most dedicated PDF printing/editing software will allow the user to control those settings however I think that with many built in PDF printers those settings are preset and can't be changed. My guess is that you could get larger file output out of Adobe too by adjusting some of those options (embedded fonts/images/colors, searchable text, security features, encryption, form field support, layering capability, transparency, resolution, enhanced readability features, and many others).I'm thinking maybe Chief set their PDF printer up to maintain many features and capabilities (some of which we may not use or need) but I also think that as the creator of PDF that perhaps Adobe still has a few tricks up their sleeves that allow for more efficient file creation. I usually use Chief's built in PDF printer but I use Microsoft's built in PDF printer for my Word docs and NitroPro for most of my other apps. I think I have one or 2 other PDF printers installed too. I guess I've never really cared about file size because most of our layouts are fairly small. I imagine for many of you who produce large CD sets that file size is probably a notable factor. I might just have to test the difference in file size output for all the printers I have installed...might be interesting...or not.

I fully understand that. The thing is that you can still inspect the resolution of a PDF (or image) by zooming in just as you can inspect a picture with a magnifying glass. In the original 2 page PDF I posted notice how you can zoom in as close as you like and the quality of the text never seems to diminish? That's because the text is vector based and lossless or infinitely scale-able. Notice how the quality of the images become pixelated though? That's because they are raster based or bitmap. What you are seeing are actual pixels. Those will not improve no matter what printer you try to send them to. You are essentially seeing the quality limits or resolution of what will print. Now zoom in on the high res PDF I posted last. Notice how the pixels are much smaller? That's because it has a higher resolution ...more pixels per inch. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter what your monitor is capable of, you can still inspect resolution by zooming in and per my tests, the resolution of Live Views is barely (if at all) better than Current Screen As Image...at least with the PPI of my monitor. It sounds to me like you're basically trying to claim Chief's live views are somehow vector based and lossless...like they are somehow limited only by the resolution or dpi limits of the printer. This is simply not true or else the images in those PDFs would behave exactly like the text does and would remain smooth and sharp no matter how close you zoom in...but obviously it doesn't. Like I said, there's some sort of finite resolution limit to those non-vector based live views and I'm just curious what it is. I don't think it's really all that high. If it was, the file size of layouts and PDFs would be huge whenever there were any non-vector images involved .

This is exactly as I understand it as well. What I'm trying to figure out though is what dpi the live views are limited to. My PDF proves that its not unlimited. In other words... I know what the Current Screen As Image resolution is. It's equal to my current screen size. I know what the exported/imported image resolution is. It's whatever I set it to be. I DO NOT know what the Live View resolution is. It doesn't seem to be all that much better (if any) than what I can get using Current Screen As Image with 1920x1080 screen. Live Views obviously have some finite resolution limit when its not a vector based view and it would be nice to know what that limit is.

Actually, I PRINTED a PDF at 4,000 dpi which is a higher resolution than any physical printer I have access to. The PDF printer IS my printer and so I should get 4,000 dpi ouput...which should give us the absolute limits of Chief's Live View resolution (unless its higher than 4,000 dpi of course). Even when saving and viewing that PDF in the most optimized version possible (zero compression and no image re-sampling) I get the same pixelation. I can prove the PDF is displaying the limits of the 2 views' resolutions too because if you zoom in on the text on that first page you'll see that its lossless (no pixelation whatsoever). Just for comparison sake, here's an example of a "high resolution PDF" and I might note that the resolution requirements aren't actually all that high..much lower than 4,000 dpi anyway. SAMPLE PDF.pdf