Alaskan_Son

Mark, I think you could make your life a lot easier in this particular area by simply creating a CDFV and Copy/Paste Hold Positioning lines from that back into your live view.

This is one of the few remaining things I have on my cabinet wish list. What I currently do is one of a few things depending on the situation... For cabinet openings or face frame measurement details I usually do one of the following: -Make a copy of the cabinet and either drag it off to the side or paste it into a new plan, remove all the doors (make them "openings"), remove the shelves, create a CAD Detail from View and then detail accordingly. -Place a cross section/elevation camera perfectly flush with the face of your cabinet(s) which will essentially delete the door and drawer fronts, give it a very short back clip distance, and detail accordingly. You will have to use point to point dimensions but they will actually snap to the openings. I usually just set the marker radius to zero but you can also place cad lines or put the point markers on the own unique layer and turn them off. -You can also place the elevation camera as noted above and then create a CAD Detail From View to further clean it up and make dimensioning a lot easier. -You can do a combination of the above methods even copying lines from a CAD Detail From View and then Copy/Paste Hold Position back into the live view for better snaps. For measuring to doors/drawers: -I think the fastest and easiest is probably to either create a CAD Detail From View and just use that, OR Copy/Paste Hold Position any or all lines from that back into the live view. I personally have never found the need to dimension to door or drawer fronts though as I always just dimension the face frames and then we decide on an overlay. For easier snaps you can also create a CAD Detail From View at any time, dimension it with Point to Point Dimensions, group select those, Cut/Paste Hold Position back into your live view, and then either make the marker radii zero or put the markers on their own layer and turn that layer off.

Hey Johnny, I didn't get around to studying that plan well enough to verify exactly what was going on, but from the looks of it, you nailed it with the balloon wall setting suggestion. Good eyes!!!

Hi John, I finally had a chance to open your plan up and take a look. I didn't actually understand what you were talking about with regard to the collinear wall but now I see... I wouldn't call anything you've demonstrated a "fail", and I wouldn't describe Chief's solution as a workaround. Rather, I would say that's it's simply working as it was designed. Unless Chief comes up with somethung different than the room divider (which I think is unnecessary), what we really have is just a zero thickness invisible wall. The thing with walls inside Chief is that they want to make automatic connections. The reason for the super short section of collinear wall is simply to control where that automatic connection is taking place. Without the auto connections we have a very different program. Also, just to reiterate...A simple material region would also work great for what you were trying to accomplish, and with a lot less potential conflicts.

I'm not at my computer to open up the plan, but here are my quick thoughts… I'm usually able to make those types of connections work but they are often times a little tricky. The thing that I think is probably easier for those tricky situations where all you are doing is changing floor material is simply using a floor material region.

If you want your CAD blocks to change more globally, maybe consider putting into a separate plan or plans (and maybe into CAD details in those plans) and just link views from there to your layout rather than placing them into individual plans.

That's not a bug, just the way it works. It will not replace anything in your library...only instances that are in your plan. If you drop that old block from your library into the plan you'll see that it is automatically assigned a new name. Probably something with an "_2" added to the block name.

Will one click automatically place, resize, and organize those views in your layout and add masks, labels, macros, other notations, etc.? I don't think so.

You should automatically get a cantilevered truss situation so long as you have "Trusses (no Birdsmouth)" checked and a "Raise/Lower From Ceiling Height:" of more than zero.

Thanks Glenn. I remember seeing that option before but never played with it. I agree, what you have suggested is a much better method. My first post should probably just be ignored. I would just delete it to avoid confusion except now that you've quoted it, that would be even more confusing.

You just need to do the math. It depends on your frame and sash settings and the window manufacturer's frame and sash construction. All the minimum separation does is tells the program the minimum distance you want between any given window frames.

Just drag cameras back and/or forth as necessary. Easy peasy.

Comments can be entered in the comment field for the window unit itself through the components dbx. For a mulled unit, it would depend on your label settings... -If you are displaying in your schedule as a single unit than enter in the components dialogue box for the mulled unit. -If you are displaying in your schedule as individual units than enter in the components dialogue boxes for the individual windows (select the mulled unit and then hit tab to select each individual window).

You're welcome.

May be another way, but just change all the layer colors to black for that particular view.

There may be another way, but I would adjust via the Windows, Labels layer Text Style in your layer settings.

The break line tool you were looking for would only show up after your roof plane was selected...down in the edit toolbar at the bottom of your screen or in the toolbar that pops up when you right click.

Item #1: I would probably just use a distributed object for those brackets using any number of methods for the distribution (including a polyline distribution path). Its a lot easier to add, delete, or otherwise change the layout on a case by case basis. Item #2: Might be another way, but just size your railing section appropriately, cut and paste into a new plan and create a symbol. You will be able to much more easily control your symbol than you could your wall. Item #3: Like you did, I would have probably used polyline solids as well (just a tool I'm pretty comfortable with) however I would probably convert to a solid and use the boolean operations to clean it up a bit. Having said that, this thread is worth a look... https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/8456-ca-work-on-this-moiw-multiple-openings-in-a-wall/page-2?hl=arches In short, you can pretty easily use a wall and window/door openings for this as well... OR a post to beam railing in conjunction with symbols or polyline solids for the arches.

No. Unless you've deleted your window frames or made them less than 3/4", making the separation zero would give you a 1-1/2" mullion. 3/4" frame + 3/4" frame = 1-1/2" between sashes.

It would help to see exactly what those sheets looked like, but if it helps answer your question at all, anything that you put on page zero will be on ALL pages. Anything that you don't want on all pages would probably best be saved as a CAD block and pasted onto individual pages as necessary. If you use the template or SAM method you really only have to place all those blocks once. You can also use several layouts and then just combine as one PDF, but you can only have one layout open at a time so this route can be a little more involved. You can open multiple instances of Chief and Cut/Paste Hold Position to other layouts too...Just requires some extra steps.

The 3 key is activating the same break tool you have down in the edit bar. Is it possible you were just selecting the wrong tool?

Not at my computer to post and example, but I've used orthographic top views in line drawing mode for this purpose and often times in conjunction with the cross section slider. Depending on your end goal you may need to overlay the resulting rendering onto a standard plan view (or visa versa) and turn off layers as necessary...especially if you want to add notations. Oh ya, almost forgot. You just need to convert your lines to some sort of 3D objects first. Maybe copy paste in place all of them and then use the convert polyline tool. Put them on a unique layer while they're all selected too.

Ya, now that you mention it that's how I recall they first teach you to select things in the users guide. I quickly abandoned that technique pretty early on though and now I only ever use it when I'm having a tough time finding a particular edit tool. I'm wondering now if I should consider using it more often. It's really not a bad technique and might be quicker in some circumstances. Thanks Mickey...Is Mickey your name?

Hey, that's an interesting little trick. Thanks. BTW, just realized holding down control does the trick as well.

You are correct Glenn. That's pretty much how I understood it to be. My explanation may have been a little oversimplified though. I only said Johnny had to suppress interior casing because they wouldn't work as they were in his particular plan. I just didn't want to suggest adjusting casing down to a size that was smaller than what it was actually supposed to be. The real problem is that you can only manipulate those numbers so far and they won't allow for a good handful of real world settings without a little manual work.