Alaskan_Son

For your issue with component specs and cabinet modifications... Have you considered or explored adding your own custom sub categories and columns?

For the countertop issue. Use custom countertops and you can remove the fillet. Couldn't get much easier than that. I'm away from my computer but isn't there a setting that controls the automatically created fillet anyway? Maybe I'm wrong...I don't know, I use custom countertops almost exclusively.

Not sure I understand you "back of the island" issue. Can you not simply modify the face items for the back of the cabinet, use a wall, use a polyline solid, use a custom countertop, or maybe use a very shallow cabinet for whatever your needs might be? Maybe it would help if you were to post an example.

For the material issue... Use the material painter in Object mode, or even room or plan mode for that matter and change all the component materials at once.

Lots of suggestions when I have enough time to sit down and write them up. For starters though, you can easily create a blind corner by... A. Setting your defaults to automatically create blind corners. Edit: Just got back to my computer and I see that automatically created blind corners do indeed display incorrectly in the schedule. Never noticed that but I also don't do them that way... B. My preferred method...Adjusting the left or right stile widths... C. You can build them like most manufacturers would build them anyway...with an opening, separation, or blank area on the blind comer side.

Are you sure you're referring to actual hatching or are you perhaps just referring to the fill? If its the fill you're referring to, you'll need to check "Print In Color" in the Print Layout dbx. The Walls, Hatching layer only controls hatches that are added via Build>Wall>Hatch Wall.

View>Scrollbars Make sure you have it checked/toggled on.

First things first... HOW exactly are you printing? Can you spell out the process you're using? Are you printing directly from plan or from layout? Are you just printing, printing image, or printing to PDF? Have you checked the drawing sheet setup dbx?

Good advice Graham. Turning off shadows alone might make X8 workable. During one of the Windows 10 upgrades I think it was, my laptop switched to using the built in GPU for a while which really slowed things down for me. Before I figured that out though, I was able to make things workable again by turning shadows off...made a major difference for me.

Not sure what you did wrong, but the convert polyline method should work just fine. Still works like it always did. Maybe your polyline was accidentally overlapping multiple roof planes? FWIW there are actually several methods a person could use to the same end... 1. Draw a polyline for your hole, click on the roof plane, click on the polyline subtraction tool, and then click on the aforementioned polyline. 2. As Greg said...Select the roof plane and then click "Create Hole". 3. Draw a polyline for your hole, click "Convert Polyline" and then select "Hole In Roof / Custom Ceiling" from the list. 4. Build>Roof>Skylight. Draw the skylight, open the DBX and uncheck "Skylight".

Yes. I understand Glenn. My comment still stands. The reason we have to use another column (or a custom column) as I also suggested is BECAUSE we cannot change the "type" for doors or doorways...which is what we would have to be able to do to edit the term "doorway".

As Jerry said you can change the Color Off setting in Preferences to Grayscale but if you prefer white I'd stick with the Black and White setting. You'll just have to adjust this setting for your wall fill color to make it a little lighter... When you have Color Off set to Black and White, the program will automatically change all fills to whichever of the 2 is closest to the fill you have assigned. Therefore, adjusting the color so its a little lighter will make it closer to white and therefore it will display as white. Just adjust it little by little till you hit that sweet spot where the fill switches to white.

You can't actually edit the "type" for doors or doorways. Probably best to get rid of that column and either change the name of and use one of the others or add your own custom column to the list.

I think that would probably work just fine and thought of that myself. Those extra floors and multiple levels can really be a hassle though (both to manage and to display) especially if a person isn't all that proficient with the software...even if they are proficient it can be a pain. I think the best solution probably depends on exactly what you want/need to display, which tools you're most comfortable with, and whether or not you think you might need to modify it at any point. While we're on that subject I'll throw this tip out there... Using the solid method or the roof method a person could (and probably SHOULD) save a copy of the original solid or roof (or molding or p-solid or whatever) before boolean operations, converting to symbol, or other non-reversible modifications, that way they wouldn't have to rebuild from scratch in the case of any changes. They could just revert to the original building blocks. Could just save a little time.

I don't think you're missing anything super simple. I finally got back to the office and took your plan for a quick test drive and after playing with it for a bit here's what I found. Whether the plant images will display or not seems to depend on: A. Whether you're using AND displaying a color fill or not... OR B Whether the camera is set to show shadows or not... Which leads me to believe that the fact images can even be displayed in a vector view may be more of a side effect to the new shadow, lighting, and color abilities that were added in X8 and maybe not a feature in and of itself. Also..."Display In Color When Possible" will cause your images to be full color regardless of any other color settings you have. When that box is checked, the images will be in color even when your color display is off. So, if you want your plant images to be in black and white, that setting needs to be unchecked AND the color display IN PLAN must be off when you send the view to layout. Simply turning off the color display in layout will not do the trick by itself. To sum up, I believe the plant images displaying might be more of a fluke than a feature (I guess only Chief knows) and I still don't think plant images are the way to go for vector views. IMO they don't really look that nice. I would be using 3D plants, plant CAD blocks, or CAD blocks created using 3D plants. Anyway, hopefully that helps you.

What David is saying is that under Options you can designate it as... -Not recessed at all (uncheck recessed) in which case the casing will sit on top of your outermost exterior layer. -Recessed to Sheathing Layer in which case the casing will recess to the surface of your first exterior layer. -Recessed to Main Layer in which case the casing will recess to the surface of your outermost main layer.

I actually already had watched the video when I responded. There are at least a couple things you didn't do or that I couldn't see though. 1. Whether you had always display images in color on or off. I guess that one might not matter though as you had it set the same for both plans. 2. I'm not sure I ever saw you send to layout in the problem plan with color fill unchecked and color DISPLAY toggled on.

O ya... There's also the plant image settings that could possibly come into play but I doubt it.

You're welcome. You really got me curious now and I want to test when I get back to the office. Just to make sure we are on the same page here though… There are three different things to look at with regard to color display. 1. The setting to always display images in color when possible. 2. The color fill checkbox when sending to layout. 3. The actual color display (in both plan and layout). Make sure to explore your settings for all of those.

Wish I was at my computer to test... In your other plan do you have images set to always display in color when possible? If you do, it's possible that they are still allowed to display (albeit in grayscale) when you have colors toggled off. Just a thought.

Larry, your plants won't show if you send as plot lines because they are based on images. Images will not create any plot lines. If you need to send as plot lines and still display plants, maybe consider switching to 3-D plants or overlapping a non-plot line view for just the plants. I'm away from my computer or I would test this, but I believe it has always been that way unless Chief made a special exception for plant images that was recently removed with the latest update. No matter what though, the plant image could not create plot lines. The image itself would have to be the exception. And by the way, the reason they show in color is that you are seeing the colors in the plant image. Once you turn colors off there are no plot lines to display.

You can set any symbol to act as an electrical item, and you can change the CAD block for any symbol to an arrow. Between the 2 it seems like you should be able to get exactly what you're looking for. At the most it might require putting the item on a unique layer, turning that layer off for 3D views, and unchecking "Include In Schedule" for that object.

You're more than welcome sir.

Yep. hotkeys are fantastic. I customize them and use them extensively (I rarely...if ever touch my mouse) in excel, word, and my PDF editor, and I use them quite a bit in Windows as well, but for whatever reason I don't use them quite as much in Chief. I think its because I have to use the mouse so much anyway that I don't feel they save me quite as much time as they do with other programs. I definitely still use them in Chief. Just not quite as much.

We've had that ability for some time now. Oldest version I currently have installed is X6 but we had it at least that far back. I think we had it a lot further back than that too.