Bill_Emery

Larry, I like the design approach you've taken, there is nothing at all wrong with it. I just wanted to point out how it could be made to work better. Imodel, The wedge is a potential weakness (perhaps not much of a problem when using an epoxy glue); but it's necessary for the construction in Chief, but in real life the flat part could be machined out of a single piece of wood, leaving a single bevel. Kbird1, and others, There are a lot of ways to join the stair rail cap to the deck rail cap or the wall, but I have to say I like what Larry has done.

Here are the cuts required to make this work. This process would not be necessary if the walls were aligned, or perpendicular. The angle of the intersection make this process necessary.

Here is the same construction done with your molding You still don't seem to understand what is required to make this joint work. It is exactly the same construction as you would do with your miter saw. It requires two separate cuts to make the joint, a bevel, and a miter. I have attached the plan file miter solved.zip

Here is a similar molding made to level out properly

No, it's not just a compound miter. It needs to be two separate miters. If the flat end is brought around far enough to meet the flat portion, the width at the miter would be longer, and not meet correctly in terms of width. The ascending portion must flatten out for the miter to work. Chief is doing the best it can by matching the width, but the height of the ascending portion varies because of the angle of the cut. We run into this all the time in trim carpentry. Leveling out is an essential part of making things match up properly. You must add a short flat length of molding in the direction of the ascending molding for this to work It must be done in two stages: level out the ascending section so it will match in width and height, then make the flat miter which will match in width and height. Moldings can only match if they have one plane in common. You have a situation where there is no plane in common. This is not a Chief problem, but a failure to set up the miter properly.

This is not a miter that would join correctly in real life. You have to level out the the top end of the ascending molding in the same direction, and then miter it into the level railing at the top.

I'm like Levis, I like to show the features in the background to give the section context, so back clipped sections don't work for me. There are a number of work arounds for this: Attic walls filled polyline solids Putting trusses on separate layers, and just showing the one at the cut line. Carefully placing a backclipped section and a regular section in layout to create the effect. I do all of these on a fairly regular basis; but this tool eliminates the need; and it's so easy.

In the past I've used attic walls to keep the view clean, put trusses on separate layers, and have sometimes resorted to filled polylines; but this feature is doing what I need without all that extra work.

Doug, I never knew this feature existed; but I've always had to use time consuming work arounds to eliminate unwanted framing in section views. This feature allows me to control display framing display without a lot of extra work. In my opinion it's a feature worth keeping. It's only been a day, but I am already relying on this tool to get a good clean cross section with trussed roofs. I'd always been envious of how users of other programs were able to easily get a clean cross section with a single truss showing.

I had not seen this option before. It's great for eliminating the forest of truss webbing in cross sections. I'll use this tool on almost any job that has trusses.

I'm usually copying tables from Excel, and find that it works much better if I copy to text, rather than rich text.

I've had this happen (not lately), and I'm using a nvidia GTX 780 mobile card.

I've found that I actually have to break the polyline where I want it separated even with the "edit polyline parts" tool selected. I'm guessing that this could be a little bug.

This is a little indirect, but.... convert the countertop to a plain polyline, then select the "edit object parts" tool and group select the points or parts you want to move. Make the move, or various moves, and then reconnect for a closed polyline. Then convert it back to a countertop.

See this thread: http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?t=59483&highlight=radius+roof+plane There are two methods; auto roofs, and polyline subtraction.

see this link: http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?59483-Radiused-roof-edges-I-give-up!&highlight=radius+roof+plane

It is possible to copy the door from the Chief library to the user/doors library and change it's Y origin. this will make it correct in 3D views, but will not alter the position of the 2D block in plan.

i still run version 10 occasionally on vista; it's been years since I set it up, but I believe that it runs in the XP compatibility mode.

I've started with a detail from the detail plan file, and copied it into a section view. I've used the point to point tool to bring it into place, and have adjusted it to fit the current drawing adding more notes along the way. I don't need to go to this amount of trouble if I just want to use the detail in its original form. I just cut a section, and place the detail in a blank area or the section view, and just use the section to gain the automatic call out.

I don't see any advantage of cad detail from view; I generally get a lot of unwanted garbage. My detail might start its life as a cross section in a working plan that I trace over and make appropriate notes. I then copy the detail to a indexed grid in my plan view of a file called details. When a detail is needed I can copy and paste it into my working plan, or another blank plan in my working directory and adjust it as necessary.. I like copying the details into a live section so I can use the new automatic call out feature. I can copy it to a blank part of the section view if I don't need to adjust it, or I can use point to point move to index it over my live section view.

You should be able to right click on your desktop to get the option to open your graphic card properties; you should be able to choose which card Chief uses.

When I get the Autocad message you posted above, it's just a warning. I have the option to open it anyway.

Richard, To avoid confusion I tell my clients to first open the viewer, go to file>open; and then navigate to the shared dropbox folder. This way they will only see the plan file, and not the textures.

Hi Glenn Thank you for posting your list of hotkeys. I do have to say it made my head spin, I'm much like my dog in that remembering anything past one is a challenge. I have to rely on a menu structure and visual clues to get what I need. For me the point is that we all learn in different ways. I'll never remember more than a few hotkeys. I've posted them all over my monitor to no avail. i believe that this is one of the reasons that Windows 8 has failed. It gives us hidden menus with no visual clues. It offers us improved hotkeys; but that's just not the way I learn.

With windows there are nearly 300 hot keys; I use a few. With Chief there are 130; I use a few. Nice to know that they are available; but if someone asks me to remember three things, I'm lucky to remember one. My dog told me she could count; but anything past one is very confusing. The thing that programmers and developers don't understand is that visual prompts are extremely important to many of us. This is likely why DOS is a dead language (way too much to remember).