GeneDavis

All these remarks, and thanks again for all of them, have me wanting to change from CB to something else, but as someone who began in high school doing ink-on-linen mods to old, old drawings, I am partial to the hand-lettered look. The guys I do work for really don't care what I use as long as they can read it. So, for the fonts I have here on my PC running Windows 10, I looked things over and am going with Graphite STD. Clear no squiggles, not as "hand" as the others, and looks good for numbers, which is the most important thing, IMHO. Attached is a quick study I did for comparison.

Worthy comments. Thanks. As can be seen in the screencaps, Chief Blueprint is quite compact when going lower-case, which I like in plans. Compact seems good to me. The other font shown there is My Hand 2, a free one, which for its lower-case just has shorter capital lettering. It might be a nice alternative for someone using caps with lowercase. You can see from the highlighted text lines that Chief Blueprint needs a deeper text box even if doing all uppercase, because its lowercase letters include font descenders for letters like j and y. My Hand 2 will stack more compactly.

For me it's become Chief Blueprint, and while I used to use all caps, it got looking a little loud and blitzkriegish to me, so I've gone to ordinary capitalization, first word in a phrase or sentence, and all caps for things like model numbers.

Ah, the workaround I need. Thanks. Not just the schedule but the room plans also and elevations, so as to show the callout numbers.

Bathrooms on floors 0 and 1, kitchen on floor 1. I did a room-only schedule for the kitchen and don't want to lose it by generating an all-floors schedule for the bath cabs. I know I can go bath by bath and generate a room-only sched for each, but I want to combine them as they will all be on the same layout page. And no, I have not tried it yet. Maybe it's as simple as clicking OK.

NUMBERING should be a part of this, too! If I specify a glass door, hinged or slider, whatever, to be included in the window schedule, I want it numbered D01, not W12. This requires linkage between schedules, schedules that may not be generated yet, but I have confidence that the wizards of Coeur D'Alene can do it. Even numbering them GD01, GD02, . . . would work and be better than giving them a W number ID.

Thanks! I screencap'd a pic from Home Depot site and made one that works nicely, relearning how to snip for good tiling, then went back to resize a copy of the large that's in the OOB set.

And if I could edit the texture to my needs, I would do it, but I don't know how to do this edit. This, in X11.

I'm watching training vids, going through everything I can find. Am I missing something?

Grain wants to parallel a face's longer side?

Why would one need to know header height above finished floor. Finished floor height typically changes from room to room as finishes change, and if finish is carpet, things get fuzzy .

You draw everything at 1:1. It's easy and fast. Depending on the detail and the annotation to be there to communicate things, you'll decide the scale for display on layout, and that scale will determine the annoset to use. Superzoom details might need 1-1/2"=1'-0", most might use 3/4", but whatever, you'll always DRAW at 1:1, and annotate at the appropriate scale.

YouTube videos! Lots of them.

Thanks! Got it.

Hey, thanks all! I am liking that lighter approach that Chris and Michael have shown, but am stumped as to how to get the pattern lines lightened in color from black. Roofs and siding are far too busy to use black in these black and white renders for my goal in elevation views. I am able to change the color of the pattern lines to whatever I want but when I turn color off I am getting black. What is the secret here? Does Chief have a tutorial about how to change all this style stuff when going to elevation views in layout?

Thanks. Do you change sun angle for each elevation to get the shadow effects you want, i.e., change north to south so a building's north elevation gets sun? Do you bother clipping the tree images somehow so as to get 2D trees behind the building so foliage appears above the roof? Edit: Send those trees to the back drawing group! Duh. How do you get your foundation to be lines only and no color? Have you just done the walls in white, or is there a setting for my concrete gray walls to go white in elevations.

I searched here but couldn't find. What techniques or settings make these pop?

But if you check that option, you retain the framing even if you don't delete the room. I guess I'm asking why would you want to keep all planking, framing, posts, and piers and have no deck "room."

So in Rene's setup, using "Smith" as jobname, and "Lot2ElmSt" for both a .plan and .layout file, we would have folders within "Smith/CAD" for each session of revision, right? Thus there are multiple plan files, each with a linked layout, each set stored in a folder ID'd with date and progress level?

By deleting the room I presume one removes on of its walls that keep it closed, or just disattach one enough to break the room-wall polyline. What circumstances might there be for one to use this option? If your deck is to have Chief-generated railings, I cannot see this in play unless doing the wall disattachment works, as for example, a deck with stairs to ground, and the wall for the stairs opening not continuing through with a doorway. But if you wish to use this option, don't you then have to use CAD to show the extents of decks in plan views?

So for plans, FILENAME never changes, but the folder structure does as revisions keep happening. Right? What is the top level folder called 19 about? And as for layouts and linking, does 190927-AB have a layout file?

Or use Dropbox. Many Chiefers use it for all their plan and layout files.

Default seems to be arrows in. Can this be toggled to arrows out?

I modeled these in Sketchup and imported into Chief, but in doing the con-docs for foundation, I just drew CAD 2D rectangles and annotated them for the foundation-level pads. Chief has pad and pier tools, but they don't work for this instance of an upper-floor bump being column-supported and bearing on piers and pads. What is the preferred way to work in Chief to achieve this? I can do it with p'line solids, moldings, slabs, and annotate all in CDs with CAD details and plan notes, but I am wondering what is the most efficient way to model it. I don't want to miss out on something.

Did a screened tub on a deck with outdoor shower adjacent. Here's one to show the client the view from the tub. Her name is 3D Warehouse, and she blew my Chief file up to twice its size. The out-of-box backdrop looks almost exactly like his private woodland lot, with its stone driveway in same place as for realz.