Alaskan_Son

You are correct. Totally customizable in Windows as well. Not nearly as complicated as that article makes it seem though...

Not sure, but in general, I think it's just a faulty presupposition. Regarding the date specifically, I can't say for certain, but I can pretty much guarantee you that Chief is just pulling that straight from the operating system and that there is no Ruby involvement at all. Having said that, you can skip Chief's global macros and do that with pure Ruby as well using the Time class in a custom text macro... Time.now.strftime("%B %d, %Y") Where Time.now retrieves the current time from the operating system, where %B displays the full month name, where %d displays the day of the month, where the comma is displayed as a literal comma, and where %Y displays the year.

@Chopsaw, what makes you think those built in macros are using Ruby at all? I’ve tried many times in the past to explain this here on the forum, but I feel like it’s not getting through to it’s intended audience. You have Chief Architect, you have Text Macros in Chief Architect, and you have Ruby that can OPTIONALLY be used for Text Macros in Chief Architect. Ruby is nothing more than an optional tool. Anything between % signs is processed solely by Chief. Only if the macro is set to be evaluated is the text passed through to Ruby and executed as code. On a side note... Chief did change how this works to a certain extent starting in X12 and actually seems to pass any VALID code placed between % signs through to Ruby, but this is a new development and doesn’t change my statements above. Just because we have a macro for something like %scale% doesn’t mean Chief is using Ruby to produce the results.

You bet. Glad the video(s) helped. I honestly didn’t even remember what was on them and didn’t watch them. They just looked like they would apply.

Here are a couple videos I made some time back. I think one or both of these might have what you need... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiUkIHRVDxA

As Eric alluded to, uncheck "Flat Ceiling Over This Room". Also, uncheck "Use Room Ceiling Finish" in the Ceiling Plane Structure tab.

We also have the Object Eyedropper and the Fill Style Eyedropper. The latter won’t do exactly what you are asking for but based on your question I think it’s some thing you should be aware of anyway.

Interiors doesn't actually have any better anything. It's simply a dialed back version of Premier. Premier has everything Interiors has plus some. Check out that thread Mick already referenced above...

It looks like you're still trying to reference CAD work. Just reference the live plan view. No CAD at all.

If you're insistent on using the CAD Detail From View method to generate your As-Built mask, then your best bet is to start with a layer set that already has everything displayed like you want it with regard to line styles and colors (BEFORE the CAD Detail From View). Don't wait to change till after the fact. If you want to make the blocks explodable, you need to create completely new symbols out of the distorted objects using Convert Selected To Symbol and use those instead. The newly generated symbol will use a newly generated CAD Block instead of simply stretching the existing CAD block which is what happens under normal circumstances. What you really need to do though is try to abandon using CAD Detail From View for those As-Built Masks. Use a live plan. Create an As-Built version of your plan, save it, then Save As a Proposed version, turn on your Reference Display in the Proposed version, and have it reference the As-Built version using a layer set with light gray dashed lines.

Yes. You're going about it all wrong.

Away from my computer, but you can see everything you need to see in the screenshots you posted. The method I spelled out doesn’t require any custom macros, doesn’t require putting the room number in the Name column, and would result in an accurate Room Number in the Number column. Your example does not have an accurate room number in the Number column and results in a second room number with the name (presumably generated using a custom macro in the Default Room Label). I just find it totally undesirable to have room numbers simultaneously listed in 2 different fields and in 2 different locations in the room label, and even more undesirable to have the room number AFTER the room name. My suggestions above offered an easy way to solve these problems using nothing more than standard built in macros. There are additional options with custom macros but I was just throwing out a quick and easy solution that didn’t require going that route.

The room numbers in your schedule don’t match the room numbers on your plan.

See if this helps at all...

Not sure what exactly you mean by system macros, but I assume you're talking about the available object attributes or name:value pairs. You can access those using the OOB ObjectProperties macros provided by Chief. Joe also posted some slightly modified versions of those macros here... Not sure what exactly you're referring to either Chop. There's nothing special about the version of Ruby Chief is using. They're currently using Ruby version 2.4.0. What is it that you would like them to publish?

Give it a shot and you'll see what I mean. If you're using %floor_number% as the prefix, the schedule has to be placed onto the current floor and include only rooms from that floor. If you set the schedule to include all floors and place it on floor 1 for example, all the room numbers in that schedule will use 1 as the prefix and the numbers won't match whats being shown in your room labels themselves.

There are a handful of different custom text macro solutions that could be used and that I would be happy to write for a fee, but for your particular use case, you don't really even need any custom macros. Simply create a text box that looks like this... #%room.schedule_number% %room.name% %room.internal_area% sq ft In order to get the floor number you just need to either change the prefix in the schedule to the appropriate number for the floor it represents or you could also optionally use %floor_number% as the prefix which would work for all floors, but you would need to place each schedule on the appropriate floor for that to work correctly.

You can also get into the habit of placing objects onto custom layers so that you can specifically toggle off layers for objects you really don't need to see in any given view. For example, do you really need that chandelier with 500,000 faces while you're only modeling a cabinet in the bathroom downstairs? I sometimes use working layer sets that are set up very specifically for this reason.

When you import SKP files into Chief, they are no longer SKP files, so it's not the file type causing you problems. It's almost certainly the face count as Tommy suggested. Sketchup has a handful of Polygon Reduction plug-ins you could try, but better yet would probably be adjusting your modeling habits. If you need super accurate symbols then there's only so much you can do, but as much as possible I would consider these quick tips... Only model the details that you actually need. Take a toilet for example...If you never need to show the lid open, don't model the inside of the bowl, don't model the inside of the tank, don't model the seat, and just make the main body, the seat, and the lid all part of the same solid object instead of 3 separate objects with faces that will never be seen. All those extra internal faces are just unnecessary. You could very very easily model a toilet that looks the exact same as another this way but with only 10% of the faces. Only model TO the level of detail that you actually need. Take these 3 following symbols for example... They're just some generic rings. The one on the left is 1728 faces, the one in the middle is 288 faces, and the one on the right is 72 faces. The one on the left was modeled using a perfect circle for the extrusion path and a perfect circle for the extrusion profile. The one in the middle was modeled using a perfect circle for the extrusion path and a hexagon for the extrusion profile. The one on the right was using a 12 sided polygon for the extrusion path, and a hexagon for the extrusion profile. I just turned up the smoothing angle as necessary to help reduce the edginess (see attached files)... 3 rings.calibz If I were trying to model a standalone marble centerpiece for a high end rendering I would probably use the symbol on the left. If it was a floatie to toss into a pool I might use the one in the middle, and if it were part of small chain with 40 links then I would likely use the one on the right. For the latter example, you can see how a chain with 69,000 faces could pretty easily be reduced to 2,900 with hardly a noticeable difference.

Yep. You're right. Got it. Thanks. And yes, the first 2 are for the same.

Does anyone know what these particular attributes were added to framing objects for, how they were intended to be used, or where they pull their information from? @Dermot or anyone else at Chief maybe? concrete_volume......................... 0 cu ft form_area............................... 0 sq ft rebar_count................................. 4 rebar_extension......................... 20 in rebar_size.................................. 5 stirrup_count............................... 8 stirrup_overlap.......................... 5 in stirrup_size................................ 3 They all seem like they could provide us with some handy information but most of them also seem like they would need information from other objects. Any help in understanding what these are would be appreciated. Thanks.

For clean, simple, crisp looking elevation views that are super easy to set up, I typically use and recommend Plot Lines, using Pattern Line Defaults, Pattern Line Defaults set to gray and a very small line weight, and using Sun Follows Camera. Here's a quick video...

I could be wrong, but I think this is what the OP is after (exaggerated for clarity)... Does that look about right? If so, there is no easy way to do this automatically in Chief. Manual roof planes only; using either a baseline running at an off angle in plan view, or by using the Baseline Angle in the Roof Plane Specifications.