GerryT

Michael: I don't believe I ever said that Joe's method wound not work only that it was nothing special and that this could be done in the past with a little more effort as i had demoed via videos in the past and Joe acknowledged, (but wait you don't watch videos), and that Joe's approach was obvious as is mine. Even at that, this is only a improvement which for some still may be beyond. Maybe I mis-stated Analysis is now easier and were on the right path but not at the line yet. Didn't think Joe's approach was all that special or helpful -- so I demoed something different and more complete. Too bad your so close minded -- You just missed out. My videos point out just some of the additional features needed to make Chief world class --only for those willing to take the time. I think my approach is a small improvement but still beyond many as I pointed out. My point --- doesn't have to be? Bill: All the Demo files are on Dropbox and available for download. If for some reason they not available, just email me and I'll sent by another route.

OH I see the confusion. My previous statements were just a warning that the minimal suggestions (polyline labels ALONE) would not be the end all as proclaimed by some and in fact would make macros usage, in Chief, more disagreeable to most. as you have just demoed. I was exactly right-- see the videos for the problem areas remaining. All I'm saying is that this is a good start for those interested and does demo what can be done with even such a minimal effort by Chief. But unless more features are added, Chief is not going to attract the new designers who require competitive features. Time moves on, and I am suggesting that Chief position their self to the current trends rather than appealing to the the old.

NO. And you appear to be greatly uninformed as to issues discussed and obviously did not watch the videos, (open mouth before??) which is exactly why there has been so little progress in this area. Perhaps decidedly so based on your misconceptions?

With the public beta release of X8, a new feature was added that made data access in Chief more user friendly. Labels have been added to polyline derived objects which allow for data gathering via macros. It is far from a perfect solution but a step (small0 in the right direction toward total data access and maybe BIM. In my opinion worth the upgrade. While still much too difficult and convoluted, a possibility. To see how data collection and data analysis can be accomplished now in X8 see the videos below. https://youtu.be/nvVtAqIOFiw https://youtu.be/ctCfqteFQQ8 https://youtu.be/CXZya-DsfGs https://youtu.be/zeTmYGzlrUw https://youtu.be/D4pebuDMBGo If you like to see more capabilities and make data access seamless, Chief and myself would be interested in your suggestions and comments? You will need X8 to view the Demo Files and macros ----- UPGRADE NOW!!! X8 public beta is available now for current SSA holders.

Joe: I AM NOT KNOCKING WHAT YOU ARE DOING!! I encourage and Hopefully everyone interested will purchase your macros. The best teacher is experience. But i do know exactly what and how you are doing although I will admit there are many variations which I am just saying are 6 vs half dozen. And you can always argue your macros are different because of some immaterial detail. "The eye of the beholder" I am still willing to discuss the particulars with any one interested but I am guessing few are willing to address reality. BTW, the "no hook up" only works if you want to argue semantics. or your projects are virtually identical in form, which is what I was trying to avoid as impractical. "

Joe: Nothing special here. The technique can be used with any object in Chief that has the area or something similar attribute and a label . I demo ed this three years ago with roof polylines. Standard Polylines make this more convenient now because they can be blocked and stored in the library for reuse. but not much more so. There are also even more convenient methods using the console and custom methods. All have their drawbacks and for simple plans I doubt if more convenient than just paper/pencil. Note that i warned back then that this would not be the "end all " unless a name or ID attribute was also provided. and of course ignored. If anyone is curious or wants to pursue this i am still offering my gotomeeting seminars in which i will explain the procedure-- I will not write the macros for you. For those not inclined to learn anything new, Joe's method will work just fine, abet with some "hook up". Better yet, just demand this feature from Chief!! It's way past due to have area analysis and key notes in Chief.

Hmmmm Unless Joe has some inside advance knowledge that Chief is adding a writable name attribute to polylines, this has always been possible for the last two years. Not sure what this has to do with X8?? IAE-- if you want to see more capabilities in this area, be sure and express your appreciation of Joe's macros to Chief's tech support after they come out. The ONLY reason we don't have more capabilities in this area is because you don't!!

There seems to be a great deal of confusion on the use of macros in Chief. Most over complicate. To help clear up the 'fog", i'm going to offer a free one-on-one, one hour gotomeeting session for those interested to answer any questions as to: How macros work in chief? What are there scope and limits? What is possible and practical? The difference between ruby macros and Chief's name/value pairs (Global)? How to approach a problem and what resources are necessary? I will not write or troubleshoot your macros but will advise as to what is practical and the steps necessary to acomplish something. If interested e-mail me at: camacros16@gmail.com to set up a time . If we can get together I'll e-mail back a gotomeeting invitation for that hour. You will need a microphone to ask questions and the gotomeeting app. This is only for a limited time.

FYI: Residential electrical codes are not concerned with small appliances and lighting loads as they may not be representative of future loads and not all loads would be used at the same time. There are also specific requirements as how to handle heating, cooling,cooking, and motor loads. All is explained in the electrical safety code. If your friend is a licensed electrician he should be aware of this. There is generally no need to list small loads as they handled within the code calculations. The larger item load requirements are specifcally listed within the code. As to CA, it has no capabilities in this area.You would be better off using a external SS in the format recomended by the IRS code, then cut, paste into CA.The code is not difficult, but unless you take that the time to read and understand, I wouldn't go there. There are safety considerations there. Other then that, most just list the large loads by cut/pasting a SS from Excel, as required by the code and let a licensed electrician complete the calculations and size the circuit protection.

Formatting for labels is internal to chief (outside of ruby macros) and not changeable. Auto label uses a space separator as this is most common. width and height do not use separators in order to allow the user to format as desired.

I'm not sure exactly what format you want but I assume (?) you just want to use a space separator. Attached is a macro that you can use in a lable. Format_Label.zip

I would suggest that Chief just add as a Ruby attribute, the entire DBX data record for that object in what ever form it is now packed, and just publish the record protocol (data sequence) for that record type. The Ruby macro would then unpack the record to access any data required. Ruby is incredibly easy and efficient in this type of operation. In this manner Chief would not have to code each field individually, or mess with singleton methods,or even bother to address future revisions. Performance would be improved tremendously.That would eliminate a huge amount of programing as there must be several thousands of fields for all the object types. An almost impossible and VERY expensive task to address every attribute. I expect this data record already exist and could be made available almost overnight? The user then has access to any data it needs. read/write would be the "icing"

For what it’s worth (who **** cares) I agree with both Scott and Joe on this one but both are wrong in not considering the remaining problem areas - IMNOHO. Polylines w/label would only uncover a new range of limitations which would make area analysis still impractical in Chief. Notably, is the lack of a readable ID or name field to uniquely identify the object, as is available with rooms? Also the lack of a default label to allow one common default macro to read all similar objects. Lacking that, a macro for every object is required on every new plan and/or plan revision. Which is totally impractical? The other point is that roads, streams, gardens, fenced areas, overhangs do not lend themselves easily to polyline outlines. And polylines on top of polylines create an enormous amount of confusion. And they can’t turned off since their macros would then not execute. And in practice, using individual polylines, writing to global memory, requires as much "hook-up" effort,upon each new revision, as just the " pencil and paper" method. Also required, is the ability to quickly group select several objects together as one identity. To accomplish this: We need the ability to tag any object or selected object group, and establish a permanent connection to their attribute accessor methods in memory in a designated location and have those connections automatically re-established upon saving and re-opening the plan. The ability to execute a single macro or sequence of macros on demand from an icon similar to the library place icon. Using the above one could simply place a series of tables which would contain the calculation macros in your library, one for each different scenario. When the table is added to the plan, the appropriate macros are also brought in and the only remaining effort is to select and connect the appropriate objects/areas to global memory location. You might be surprised to know that this ability already exists, under the hood, as I have demoed, but has yet to be made available to us. – WHY NOT???

Did some poking around and we do have some capability but needs to be hooked up. I demo some of the concepts. http://youtu.be/ISPpRemL420 Refers to getting better data access. If your not interested in data access in Chief -- don't waste your time.

Hopefully that includes Ruby macros Currently only the ASCII set is allowed or passed through in macros. Although Ruby has always had Unicode support. This would be a huge advantage in allowing custom built spreadsheets.

FYI -- if you need two symbol callouts --i.e within a symbol shape , just use a regular callout symbol with a leader line and use a macro set to reference. Callouts accept macros. If you don't like the leader line showing, put it on its own layer and just turn off. It will still stay connected

Glenn: Only saying that you had to cut/paste from the material list to get the schedule you wanted in plan.It might be nice to have the ability to create such a schedule within the program automatically. Other than that -- Chief's buy list is accurate and convenient. Joe: I content that because of the way Ruby operates during the selection/label process with an ID passed to Ruby for each object selected. This means that some sort of ID is already available on the C++ side which could provide access on demand with Ruby for any object. Probably something that could only be done on a manual update/command as transfer of that much data on every screen update would bog down performance. IOW-- the mechanism is already in place, if we could get it hooked up. You might want to talk to Chief about this.

i don't know of any way, at present, that Ruby could produce a buy list without making a separate macro for each rafter which would be pointless. The reason being that there is no way to ID objects such as rafters in Chief. The name field was removed in X4 in lieu of the automatic_label for all labels except rooms. The material list, however, produces a accurate buy list but not in table form as you note. Just one of the deliberate and ridiculous limitations with Ruby data which make it mostly worthless.

Not sure what your looking for, but I believe that all mono-spaced fonts will look like typewriter characters? I use the courier New font which I modified, to include the Box Drawing glyphs in the lower range so that you can create spreadsheets and key notes with Ruby as per my previous video Demo. Is this what your looking for?

Ok -- I'll try one more time -- But the bar keeps moving I see that you are using a manual ceiling plane in your post. Chief has no elevation info (annotation) avail for manually inserted ceiling planes, either via Ruby macros or its Global macros. The height info avail is only for the room itself. As I mentioned, if you want to auto annotate a lowered room height, you can only lower the ceiling by lowering the ceiling finish then use the ruby attribute - finish_ceiling_elevation or the Global %room.height.ceilingfinish% Even if you put the global in the ceiling plane label, it's still going to only measure to the room ceiling finish and not the inserted plane height. Joe was referring to the fact that the macro return values are absolute. So if you have a second floor you also have to sub out the floor elevation. It does not matter on the first floor since the floor elev on that floor is 0 - normally. As to your second question it probably should but probably that was just a programming shortcut taken.

This comes up so often, that Chief should add this to X8?" clg.zip

Nope, nope, nope You can not use the ending return statement within a macro -- only within a method. Just use result = "Area = " + result.round(0).to_s + " Sq.Ft." without the next line Or just "......" or "Area = #{result.round(0)} Sq. Ft." this is b/c Chief wraps the macro within a "eval" statement before they deliver it to the script engine, -- & you can not use return there. You can only use "return" within a method. It is also the reason you can not use a "put" or "p" within a Macro but you can in the Console. Just another anomaly not explained by Chief which make this so cumbersome to use and understand.

My original intent was to explain the nuances of Macros in Chief so that the curious could properly evaluate the effort vs benefits of learning to use this feature. I was growing concerned that there was some perceived thought that this could be a viable path (or future path) to improved construction documentation in Chief. In fact, one has to balance the effort to implement against the benefits. I thought it would be good to quantify the outstanding issues so that others could make an informed decision. But it had the opposite effect. “Curiosity killed the cat.” Knowing how competitive this industry is, I do not want to create a false impression and lead others into investing in a false promise and wasting time that could best be invested elsewhere. So I withdrew the offer. Now, I would only host or participate in such a meeting if someone from Chief with some degree of authority would also participate and explain Chief’s position and their future plans in this area. And, perhaps, explain why this feature was made so limited. That isn’t going to happen – so I don’t recommend you waste time in this area.

You have every right to be compensated for your work. But it's up to the knowledgeable buyer to determine value. Only suggesting that they should consider the preset limits of the program against your claims. as to the "chosen" comment , I will not apologize or retract it. You are certainly aware of my low opinion of Chief's management and expect the true purpose is to simply deflect some of the criticism ( much of it unfair and not knowledgeable) on this forum. IAE, my offer still stands but I doubt if I will be associated further with this program, -- so my knowledge my be limited in the future.