tommy1

Todd, you're going to need to have your stair pass over the wall. This will cut the wall at the bottom of the stair. If you're wanting to do a cable rail like shown in your picture, I don't believe Chief has a panel to use that will look like that. You could however make your own panel but I still believe the best way to get that look is to do the cables manually and maybe even the posts. That's what I have to do to get the right look I need. I showed an image of a cable railing done manually in another post this week where he wanted the deck railing to match the stair railing.

Todd, I haven't looked at the plan but if you're not seeing the wall on the stair, then select the stair and open its dbx and make the stair have a fill of transparent. You need to have your cursor over the wall when you tab to select it.

I do mine manually using molding polylines. This way I can do my cable railing and posts any way I want.

Make your own custom crown mold profile if it is a 2 piece or whatever and add it to your library (if you want to save it for future use). I have to make custom crown molding for about 1/2 of our jobs. It's easy to do. If you want me to show you, call me or email me and I'll show you online.

You can customize your plan view to look anyway you want. Try downloading the trial version and play with it.

I suggest you post the plan.

There are many posts about this. Do a search.

Open the cabinet dbx and select the appliance, then hit the delete button. Sometimes you can click on the cabinet in plan view and tab to the appliance or fixture and delete it. Most appliance though I think need to be deleted from the cabinet dbx.

In the core library, look for Architectural>Molding.

This is what I typically do.

There are several approaches you could use. If you used a slab for the floor and you want a ceiling, then go ahead and place invisible walls (after the roof is on) and adjust the ceiling height. Now lower the floor so that you see your slab. Turn off invisible walls or put those invisible walls on a new layer to turn them off. For no room definition, either use a ceiling plane or slab for the ceiling.

No, didn't see everything but my comments were based on what I know about Annette. Reproducing plans from AutoCAD is sometimes not as easy as it looks. We get plans all the time from Architects by either PDFs or DWGs and I have to tell you that 40% of the time, elevations don't match the plan views or doors or windows don't match. We find sometimes that roofs don't work as shown too. I have attached a plan that we're currently modeling from an AutoCAD file (now a PDF) and have found problems. Look at the difference in the dimensions. It can't work, so now we have to find out what to do because there is cabinets going in that area. We have other areas where we have found that dimensions have been rounded off to the nearest 1/4" when others are right on. I've never heard of a problem with Annette not getting paid before and I've known her for a long time. If she's warning me about something, then generally there is a reason.

Actually, I haven't played with this since like Version 10. It's better now with most fonts and found that it's basically the same with most except for standard Arial which is what I use. If I want it to look bold, I make it bold.

Alan, you'll find that it differs depending on the text style you use. It's rather annoying. Use different text styles and see what I mean. Some are horrible.

Jim is right about the solid. I was wrong. When I looked back into a plan I did years ago, I used a roof to get the look. I was wrong and forgot. Sorry.

I have mine set to undo 10 times. Generally that's good enough for me.

You could use a terrain tool as Jim suggests. Same idea, different approach.

Sure it is. I've done it before when I absolutely had to show a slope.

If the area is "L" shaped, I would definitely use a solid from an elevation. Slope it in the elevation, shape it in plan view.

The exterior molding polyline was actually broken, or had a bug when X6 first came out. There is a thread by me about this earlier. It has now been fixed and was is posted on one of the update notes. The problem was that when you placed an exterior molding polyline, it was placing way too many breaks everywhere. Yes it was workable but a hassle. Glad they fixed it.

I was responding to your comment "If CA was a $200 software I might understand". That is a ridiculous statement. Look at consumer products and see what you get for $200.00.

I would think you're wasting your time here. It sounds like you're better off spending your money on the other programs. I personally don't have any problems with CA and its layouts, file management or updating BUT, I know what I'm doing with the program.

Keep in mind that if you sent a plan view or an elevation to a cad detail first (to clean up or whatever), then sent it to the layout that if you change the live elevation or plan view, it does not update the cad detail with that plan view or elevation.

I did say that but in other words at the end of my post. It will be found on the edit toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

When you do this, Chief will put it all in a folder. Zip the entire folder and email it. Be sure they unzip it before opening the plan from with in that folder.