Alaskan_Son

Use the Adjust Material Definition tool...

I think you'll love it. Welcome to the community Robert!

Can you post a screenshot showing the "missing lines"? I suspect whats going on is that you're not getting lines that YOU believe should be there but that Chief will never draw. Its a little difficult for me to fully describe, and I don't understand all of it, however Chief seems to use PATTERN settings for many of its lines (which may not look like the TEXTURE), and edges for the rest. It will not draw a line where a true edge does not exist. For example, where 2 objects on 2 different planes occupy the same space...that inside edge won't draw even though you know its there. To get that edge line to draw, you need to make sure one or both objects actually have an exposed edge at that location. There are also some complex shapes that will have no lines show up because there is no specific edge to draw.

No too shabby Johnny!

Still a weakness in my opinion. That one single plug-in is like $750 and it really isn't all that great. Plus you have to deal with a handful of other plug-ins and their related expenses, updates, support, etc. and all those plug-ins may or may not work properly with futre updates of Sketchup and/or your other pile of plug-ins. Do you use Sketchup for producing plans? You might, but I can't help but notice the vast majority of people I've heard touting Sketchup's amazing abilities don't even use it. I know from a little experience that most of the hype is just that. Hype.

I would definitely recommend Chief then. You can pretty easily hit the ground running with it for simple 3D renderings of basic designs. Just be prepared to spend a fair amount of time to become proficient at it and to be able to draw up more complex designs, details, and plans. My take on Sketchup: It comes across as very intuitive for simple little things and as such is a little deceptive. In my opinion, its really quite cumbersome to use for anything of any complexity. I know of a handful of tradesmen who use it to draw up details, but know of very few builders or designers that do. In order to make it feasible for use as an architectural design program, you would almost certainly have to purchase, download, and learn a huge pile of 3rd party add-ons and even then, I really don't find Sketchup all that effective for most modelling. I actually find I can model most things quicker in Chief. Everyone will point you to Nick Sonder (a well know architect that uses Sketchup for his design work), however just ask yourself this...Why is there so much attention given to one guy who uses Sketchup as a full architectural design program? I think the answer is that its probably somewhat of a gimmick. There's no one architect famous for using Chief because so many do.

We use both and I agree with Eric. They are entirely different tools. Barely comparable at all in my opinion. What do you do for a living? And can you be more specific about how you would be using the software?

Yep. This works for drawing walls. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well for other operations. Steve, Now you have 5 options. Hopefully 1 of them will work for you.

Whatever you do, please don't attach the plan. It makes figuring things out much more difficult. Taking wild guesses is much more efficient for everyone involved ;-)

I couldn't open either

I was wondering how you would operate the scroll bars without your mouse and so I started messing around with it for a bit. By golly, you're right. Never knew this functionality existed... Left click to start operation as usual...Move mouse pointer out of view window...Right click off screen without letting go of left mouse button...Let go of left mouse button. Now you can use scroll bars and simply left click to finish operation. Very cool. Thanks for starting me down the path to this little hidden feature Joe!!

You can use the arrows keys to pan around the plan with your free hand. That's about the best I've come up with.

Hey, that's cool. Thanks.

Not a solution, but... That would be an insane amount of options to print up!!

To add a little detail to what Joe said... The Texture tab is used for standard renders and ray traces. The Pattern tab is used to control what displays in Vector views.

OR...you can simply marquis select them...Make CAD Block or Make Architectural Block...and then add them to library.

I think its because they are both polylines. The polygon is simply a polyline that has been automatically adjusted to the shape of a polygon for you.

Maybe add your vote to this suggestion... https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/5553-custom-dimension-tool-or-override-option/

Aww man!!! That seems ridiculously obvious now. Thanks Scott.

That makes sense Glenn. Thank you.

This feels like a really silly question but I've never run into it before now... Is there a way to acurately set the rotation of an orthographic elevation camera? I have a wall thats at a totally off angle and can't seem to figure out a way to get the camera perpendicular. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You're of course welcome sir.

I believe what you are missing is that during previous attempts at playing around with settings, you unchecked the default box next to floor structure.

Also, in order for changes to the default floor structure to affect all existing floors, those floors would need to have the floor structure default box checked.

To clarify something here. Unless there's something I'm missing (and I don't think there is)...You can't change floor structure defaults anywhere EXCEPT the place I described. Any other changes to the floor structure are for that floor or room only and are not changing any defaults.