capitaldesigns

Does anyone know if CA programmers meet with CA users and go over our ideas to improve the program ? I have heard people on this forum suggest that CA hire an architect to help them improve the program. I think that is an excellent idea. I believe it would be a good idea for CA to have quarterly meetings with new and existing users of the program and go over our ideas on how to improve the program. I know there is a suggestion website where we can write down our suggestions. I have done that several times in the past. I have never gotten a response from CA. I don't know if they read my suggestions or not. It would be nice of them to at least confirm they have received and read my suggestions. Another reason AutoCAD users have a harder time learning CA is AutoCAD has more intuitive commands. For example, In AutoCAD when you type in the command such as copy, AutoCAD gives the user on screen instruction at the command line of what do next. I type C then enter to start the command. AutoCAD tells you to "select object". You follow the instructions and select the object. Then you are asked <base point or displacement>/Multiple. If you are only making one copy you select your base point. If you want multiple copies you type M then enter. Next you are asked to pick the second point of displacement. After doing that you are done with that command. This is typical for all of AutoCAD's commands. If you are not sure of what to do in a command, AutoCAD walks you through each step of the command. CA gives the user no such on screen help. That would be very helpful to new users if CA would incorporate these on screen instructions. Also it would be helpfully to existing users that are using a command that they very rarely use. I would thing that it would be fairly simple for CA to incorporate on screen instructions similar to what AutoCAD has had for over 20 years. Thanks, Mike

I wonder why CA does not add these features to their program. When I am in the construction drawing phase of a residential project I can have 50 to 100 detail and section callout on the structural plans. Being able to have these callout more automated is a big time saver. This really stands out when comparing AutoCAD's routines to CA lack of such routines. CA is very good when it comes to drawing the floor plans, elevations and perspective views. But when it come to the construction drawings AutoCAD hands down beats CA. It's as if CA has determined that the construction drawing phase of the project is not that important. It seems as if they think that the construction drawing phase of the project is just a minor part of the project and not worth their time and energy to improve this part of the program. I wonder if CA believes most of their users do not provide the structural drawing for our projects. That we send them to our structural engineer to provide the structural plans and calculations and that all we provide is the site plan, floor plans, elevations, cabinets elevations and 3D perspective views. I do not know all of their users provide in your plans, but I usually provided all of the plans from the site plan all the way through the structural details. The routines that are provided in AutoCAD have been a big time saver for me over the last 20 years. I wish that CA would listen to their users and incorporate the routines found in AutoCAD into CA. If they did CA would be an all around great program, from design drawings to construction drawings. Wouldn't that be something. Thanks, Mike

I will look into that tomorrow. It sure would be nice if CA would give us these callout that are more automatic. I do not know how much others use this type of detail and section bubbles. Where I'm at in California we use them a lot. I will use 50 to 100 of them in anew house design. This should be very easy for CA to incorporate into the program. Thanks for your help, Mike

Where did you get those detail callouts ?

Here are the detail bubbles. The lines came out a little thin in CA. In AutoCAD you insert these automatically.

I can copy them from AutoCAD. It will take me a few minutes.

Please count me in on the meeting. Thanks, Mike

Does CA have detail bubbles somewhere in the program ? I have been looking I can not find any. I am assuming that most CA users use detail bubble to call out your details on the framing plans, foundation plans and sections. I am coming from AutoCAD background and AutoCAD gives the user many different options for placing detail bubble and section bubbles. I hope CA has these options as well and I am just not finding them. Can someone let me know where to find the detail bubbles. Thanks, Mike

I used MapQuest to create a vicinity map. I used a program call Snap My Screen to capture the portion of the map I needed for my vicinity map. I then inserted it into my layout sheet. I then printed as a PDF, then sent to my plotter for printing. The vicinity map image prints out way to lite. Is there away to get this image to print out darker ? Thanks, Mike

I am drawing a plot plan using CA line type with P/L embedded within the line itself. Is there a way to change the line type scale to make it larger ? I would like to space out the "P?L" in the line and make the text larger. Right now I am getting at least 50 of the P/L callouts on each property line. I Would like only 2 or 3 of them on each property line and if the callout could be several time larger as well. Is there a way to do this ? Thanks, Mike

Thank you very much David for the video. I was having a hard time figuring out where to go to resolve the ceiling/floor height issue. Thanks, Mike

I am new to this so I am not really sure why this is happening. I enclosed the room above the office and clicked on that room, went to the structure tab under room specifications and changed the Floor (C) to 148" from 149 1/2". I also did the same for the other rooms. I went back to floor 1 and double clicked on the break room where we are making the coffered ceiling. I now get a message in the BDX that " Ceiling values may not be changes as the floor above has varying ceiling heights". All of the boxes under absolute elevations and relative heights are grayed out except Floor (C). I went to each room above and they all have Floor (C) at 148". I clicked on all of the rooms around the break room to see if I get the same message in the other room. In all of the other rooms I do not get this message. I am missing something. I am not sure what I need to change and what floor to do it in. Can you take a look at my plan and let me know where I screwed up and how to fix so I can put a coffered ceiling over the break room. Thanks, Mike PTI_Technologies_Remodel_with_coffered_ceiling.plan

My client wants to add a coffered ceiling over the break room. I drew a rectangular polyline where I want the coffered ceiling to go. When I try to convert the polyline into a hole in the ceiling I get an error message saying the ceiling hole polyline is placed where the ceiling platform has 2 different heights, and tells me to move the hole. The ceiling in this small room is 10'-0" high. No multi-height ceiling. How do I fix this and what is telling CA that I have multi-height ceiling platforms ? I have included my plan. The area I am speaking about is clouded. Thanks, Mike PTI Technologies Remodel with coffered ceiling.plan

Glenn, I found the problem wall. It was highlight by a circle at the problem intersection. This building is 140,000 s.f. I have been working on some offices on the other side of the building. I do not know how all of a sudden a wall on the far side of the building got screwed up since I am not working on that section of the building. Thanks for the help, Mike

I just tried both of the methods you suggested and nothing happens. This happened right after I used the wall trim tool to remove 48" of a wall next to a corner. The corner walls next to the section of wall being removed appear to be correct. I have one of the remaining walls back from the corner so they do not connect. I then get 2 circles appearing where the walls use to connect. When I reconnect the walls together again the circles disappear, but the broken wall symbol still shows up at the cursor. I'm not sure what the 2 circles indicate. Thanks Mike

I am working on a tenant plan and I am getting the broken corner symbol at the end of mu cursor. I can not find the broken corner. Is there a way for CA to indicate which walls are the problem walls ? Or is there a way to turn off the broken corner symbol at the end of my cursor. Thanks, Mike

The problem I am having this section bubble on the floor plan needs to be further away floor the floor plan because I have several strings of dimensions. When it comes to the framing plan I need them to be closer to the plan since I do not add dimensions to the framing plan. The project I am currently working on is a one story addition. I called out the back clipped cross section on the floor plan. So the section bubble shows up on the floor plan and framing plan. When I go down the foundation plan I see that the section bubble does not appear. How do I get the section bubble to show up on the foundation plan? Thanks, Mike

Thanks Joe, That works. How do you show your section bubbles ? Do you create your own or do you use the ones provided by CA ? Thanks, Mike

Your right. I had purchased Chief less than two years ago. To date I have only did the floor plans, elevations in Chief. I then finished the rest of the plans in AutoCAD. I spend many time longer figuring out how or if I can do something in Chief then it would take me to do the same thing in AutoCAD. I am working on a small 400 s.f. one story addition that I am determined to complete in Chief. In AutoCAD this addition would take me two days at the most. That would include plot plan, floor plan, elevations, foundation plan, framing plan, sections, framing details, schedules, energy calculation and adding the structural engineers information to the plans. Right now doing these plans in Chief I have four days of work and I am finally ready to send the plans to the engineer. I still have to work on the site plan, details, schedules and energy calculation and then add on the engineers information to the plans. At least the energy calculations are done in another program. I'm sure the next project will go quicker than this one has and the one after that will be quicker yet. I ready to call it quits for the night. I need to get up early and pick up my father so we can go out flying somewhere. Should be a good day for flying. Thanks, Mike

You would thing that if other programs had these issues resolved 20 years ago and with old technology it would be easy for Chief to correct these problems. Chief really needs to hire some architects that are very familiar with other architectural software and get their inputs on what needs to change to bring Chief up to speed on what other programs can do. Then makes the necessary changes to the software to make it truly a great program. Its great to have all of the tools to do floor plans, elevations and 3D rendering. But when it comes to the working drawing phase of the plans Chief if very lacking, to put it politely. I wish that Chief would care as much about the working drawing phase of the project as they care about the design phase of the project. Thanks, Mike

I just tried that. I created a layer called "section bubble floor plan" . I then clicked on the section bubble in the plan and in the DBX I changed its layer to my new layer. I then turned off that layer and the section bubble still appears on the floor plan. I Have the new layer turned on in the framing layer set and turned off in the floor plan set.

Is there away to have the cross section callout only show up on the framing plan and foundation plans and not the floor plan ? The problem I am having is the floor plans has several strings of dimensions so I have to pull the section bubble out further away from the floor plan. I do not add dimension to my framing plan so the section bubble are to far away from the plan. So either I would like to not show the section bubbles on the floor plan or have the ability to locate the section bubble out further on the floor plan and in further on the framing and foundation plans. Also is there a way not to have the line between the two section bubbles be continuous across from one bubble to the other ? I like that line to only be 1" to 2" long. I do not like a lot of lines crossing over the framing plans since there is so many other line representing rafters, F.J., C.J., beams, drag struts, etc. Thanks, Mike

Thanks for the videos. That was very helpful. Thank You Michael. Regarding Michaelgia comment (Is that crickets I hear over at camp autocad?....) I does not sound like you have ever used AutoCAD. The one thing nice about AutoCAD is it much more intuitive then CA, As an example I will us the rotate an object around a specific point. First of all you have several ways to start a command. You can find the menu pick for the command, you can type the name of the command or you can enter the macro command (hot key). If you start typing the name of the command, AutoCAD is intuitive enough that it will give you a list of commands that start with those letters. Example, rotate. You type the first letter R of the command rotate, AutoCAD will give a list of commands that start with R. If you do not see the command you are looking for type the next letter of the command O. In this case the command rotate is displayed. Hit the enter on your mouse and you've entered the command. AutoCAD tells you what to do next. It asks you to "specify base point". You pick the point where you want your object to rotate around. It next asks you to "specify rotation angle" You can either give a specific rotation angle or just rotate your cursor around while the object moves along with your cursor until you click enter. Each command in AutoCAD will let you know what the next step of that command is. CA give you no such information. I will beat you that if you had someone that had never used CA or AutoCAD before and asked them to rotate an object around a specific point they would be able to learn how to do it in AutoCAD much quicker. In AutoCAD type in the name of the command then just follow the screen prompts. In CA go through the manuals or go through each menu until you think you found what your looking for. Even once you found the right command your looking for you still would not be able complete the command correctly because you would have had to have known that CA requires you to place the point that you want to rotate the object around first. How would you have instinctively know this fact. You more than likely would have not know this and you would have been lost. And this is only one of the commands in CA out of 100's or 1,000's. This is one of the reasons why experienced AutoCAD users have such a hard time learning CA. AutoCAD give the user a lot of on screen help while in each command. CA give the user no such help. If it wasn't for all of you on ChiefTalk a lot more experienced AutoCAD users would have given up on CA within a few months, me included. All of you on ChiefTalk that have taken the time to help us newbies to CA are surly the shinning stars in the Chief kingdom. I wish that all of us lived close enough to each other so all of us that have benefited from your knowledge and generosity could put on a party for all of you guys. That would be the least we could do thank you for all of your help. You are all truly Chieftains. Thank You Very Much, Mike

You have a soffit on the roof so the blocking is showing where it would go. I am not sure what you mean. There are no roof soffits called out on the plans. The section show no soffits. If that is the case, how do I set it up so that the blocking shows up on top of the top plates and between the rafters ? Thanks, Mike

I have generated a building section on an addition project I am working on. My questions are regarding line thicknesses, drywall not showing up in the section, R-30 attic insulation showing as 4" thick. There is a couple other questions that I marked on the plans. I have attached my layout sheet with the building section. Can someone take a look at the section and let me know how to change the line thickness of the P.W. Sht'g. and walls. Also why is the drywall not showing up. How to have the insulation in the attic show up the right size. I have already tried changing the line thicknesses in the layer display options. That worked for some of the lines, but P.W. roof Sht'g and walls did not change. Thanks, Mike 2016-23 .layout 2016-23.plan