Alaskan_Son

As Joe said, Chief doesn't provide the name:value pairs that you need. The macros you're using are special "Global macros" or intraChief string substitution macros that I don't believe are even run through the Ruby interpreter. Regarding your syntax: You're not getting the expected results because although you've defined your method, you've never actually called on that method. Getting wall heights into a wall schedule can be done by the way. It just requires a more complex system that is slightly less automatic. If you want to st up a private consult, I can set you up with the basics.

I don't think you're getting any responses here because most people who understand the issue are wondering why you don't just try it. Draw a single wall, follow Rob's advice from that other thread, generate a materials list, and take a look at a 3D view. You'll have your answers faster than the time it took to type of this response : )

Quite a few ways, but here's a pretty simple one: Drop a Room Finish Schedule into your plan, delete all the columns, add Area Interior and Area Standard. Set the schedule to Include Objects from All Floors and to Display Totals Row. This should give you 2 totals. Just manually subtract the one from the other.

CAD Detail is typically the way to go, BUT if you really want to put schedules in specific views (and there definitely are valid reasons to do so), all you have to do is put the schedule on a different layer and turn that layer off in other views... Also, just as a side-note, you should familiarize yourself with the Project Browser for quickly accessing your various views (specifically CAD Details in this example). I typically have my Project Browser tabbed along with Active Layer Display Options and the Library Browser...

A few solutions come to mind: 1. Create a special Layout Template specifically for these smaller schedules. It can even be nothing but a blank page with no borders or title block. Maybe only page numbers. 2. Just print directly from the Plan using the Print dialog. When doing this, I will typically zoom in so the desired area is centered onscreen, use "Chief Architect Save As PDF", and then adjust the Fit to Paper scale so that the preview shows it filling the page like I want. See response posted by@DBCooper below for a good way to set it up so you can more efficiently set the positioning, zoom, and scale by just printing from a CAD Detail (again this is still printing directly from the Plan). 3. Copy/Paste the Schedule to another program and print from there. This can be tricky though and may not be desirable since you'll lose any callout symbols or 3D views that may have been in your schedule. 4. Select the Schedule and click the Export Text tool to Export to another program. This has the same issues as Copy/Paste but also has a few benefits over the latter in the various export options.

A Plan Footprint is a special object type on Chief. If you're not familiar with it, search the Help files for Plan Footprint.

The Plan Footprint is controlled by the Layer Set being used in your CAD Detail, not the layer set used back in your Plan View.

We have handles for Leaders and for Callout Arrows but not for Section Arrows. A suggestion for the Callout Arrow to be used along with the Alt Key to pull a Section Arrow might be a good one.

I don't typically donate time to troubleshoot or advise on scripting issues on here anymore, but I decided to make a one time exception this morning: There are all sorts of little problems: source_information = %room.area.internal% numeric_part = source_information.match(/\d+/)[0] numeric_value = numeric_part.to_i result = numeric_value / 20 puts result 1. %room.area.internal% isn't a Ruby accessible object attribute (name:value pair). It's just a Chief Architect string substitution macro. If you want to use this macro in a text box placed in the room, the name:value pair you should be using is simply room.internal_area without the percentage signs. 2. The match method is a Ruby method used to parse a string. The internal area attribute however is not a string. Its a Measurement. If you want to use the match method, you first need to convert the source_information to a string using the .to_s method. 3. Just an observation, but you may not be getting the results you think. The .to_i method is converting your results to an integer which is the whole number rounded down. 0.999 would become zero, 559.9 becomes 559, etc. What's worse though is that because you're diving by another integer (20) the results of your calculation would also become another integer. So, instead of 559.9/20 = 27.995 you would get an even 27. This one can be solved by just converting to a float (which contains decimal values) and then rounding the result. This can be done a number of ways, but one of the easiest would simply be to replace .to_i with .to_f. 4. puts isn't used in Chief's text macro environment. It's simply not needed. If you try to use it, your results will by nil (empty). So, the corrected macro becomes: source_information = room.internal_area numeric_part = source_information.to_s.match(/\d+/)[0] numeric_value = numeric_part.to_f result = numeric_value / 20 result.round Although the above macro would work, it still has a handful of totally unnecessary code and could be reduced all the way down to: (room.internal_area.to_f/20).round

Are you sure you used the Hole in Ceiling Platform tool and not the Roof Hole or Hole in Roof / Custom Ceiling tool?

Have you looked at the Hole in Ceiling Platform tool to see if that does what you want?

To get additional items into the Material List, you need to use the Components tab.

What happened to... ??

Open the Garage and Porch Rooms up on Floor 1, click on the Structure tab, and under Floor, uncheck Build Foundation Below.

I think the answer to this depends a bit on HOW you are drawing up your site plan and on what needs to be shown on that plan. If its all CAD, then I would suggest you look into using the Plan Footprint tool in a CAD Detail. The Plan Footprint is essentially a layout-box-like viewport sent to a CAD Detail so that the house can be freely moved around on your site plan. If however you need to include a lot of 3D information, then that changes things a bit. I usually draw all that stuff in the current plan file and then if the house needs to move, just group select or Edit Area and move the underlying site plan stuff in relation to the house instead of the other way around.

Study the Materials List Polyline and its settings. Its a super powerful feature and is the best way to utilize the Materials List in my opinion. It can be used in concert with the various tools you already know about (Layer Sets, Layers, Material Definitions, Components, etc.) and you can even group select them to produce a single combined materials list using different polylines with different settings.

Non macro solution for quick totals: Much like we already do with schedules, you can optionally consolidate items by using only columns that will cause items to group together (like Group Similar Objects does). In your case for example, you could turn off the size and description columns to get a total count to display instead of individual counts. There are various ways you can use other columns to help consolidate items this way for quick calcs. You could also optionally copy and paste any given selection to excel.

I don't know, but not sure why they would. Anyone needing to work with the object in Chief could just as easily and much more effectively use a more appropriate file type like obj, dae, or 3ds. I don't believe there's any extra information in an fbx file that Chief could make use of and I imagine any software you're using to produce the fbx file could also be producing one of the aforementioned and less bloated file types.

We currently can't. I would either suppress the text and add manually using a text box OR (if the dimensions needed to be dynamic) use a single segment polyline with arrows and macros in the label.

When you choose to Interpolate Tangent to Edge, Chief attempts to build the terrain so that the resulting terrain contours have curvature that is more tangential to the elevation region. In other words, if viewed in a perpendicular cross section, the terrain arc would be tangent to the flat line created by the elevation region. The results vary a bit depending on how extreme the terrain slope and on your Terrain Surface Smoothing and Triangle Count settings, but here's an example to help highlight the difference with my settings pretty well maxed out for effect...

You can Control Select and temporarily block it. Move it up, then explode the block.

You can get the actual pockets by using Floor Beams instead of joists. It does however require that you Wall Type definition is set to have a Brick Ledge Depth.

Hey Tony, It sounds like what you are referring to is click-drag-release vs. click-drag-click To get the desired click-drag-click functionality, here's what I personally do: I simply click to start the operation, temporarily activate the Zoom tool (which suspends the operation), release the mouse button, pan or zoom as desired and then click again to finish. So assuming you don't change the Default Hotkey assignment, the whole operation to draw a line looks like this: L to activate the Line tool Click and hold to start line at desired point Shift+Z Release mouse key Pan/Zoom/Drag as desired Click to finsih

This is just how Chief handles room information inside the Room Specification dialog and only while it is open. The values that get reported to the Materials List should be correct.