BryceEngstrom

 

 

I really would love to have control of the newels in plan or section and be able to pull dimensions to them for precise placement.  Please don't tell me we can do that already!!

 

 

Amen to this! You can have some control by adding CAD lines and snapping your wall breaks to these, but two major problems-

1. The walls constantly "healing" themselves if you want to edit them and having to place your breaks over and over again.

2. Any change of ceiling or floor level on a porch or deck causes all kinds of doubling of posts and other anomalies.

Would love to see some improvements in this area.

My E7100i sure has been finicky lately connecting via bluetooth.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Very frustrating because it used to connect flawlessly.  Called tech support and they really couldn't help me.

I find the Room Planner for as-builts to be fairly limited in its effectiveness.  For simple houses with not a lot of jig-jogs, varying ceiling heights, and other custom features it works very well and a lot of time is saved being able to import it right into Chief.  But anything even mildly complex and it doesn't pay to even try.  

Also, it has totally frozen on me a couple of times in the field, like an hour into the job.  Had to reset the tablet, and fortunately didn't lose anything as it seems to autosave with every input, but very nerve wracking.

A number of them are free in the Sketchup Warehouse-

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=ue0fc164e-2d2c-4de1-9736-99a2ba3b730c

Another thing I find with the Google Drive backup is that it seems to spend most of its time re-backing up my User Library File (very large).  I don't understand why it has to re-back up the whole file instead of just those portions of it that have changed.

Has anyone noticed this in your other cloud backup systems?

Be wary of Google Drive.  Currently I have a real problem when Google Drive is running in the background with Windows 10 and Chief X8.  I used it for months with no trouble so don't know if the problem is with Google Drive, Windows 10, or Chief X8.  I get a constantly annoying Assertion Fail warning after working in Chief for 15 minutes or so.  Never had a problem with it in X7.

Currently I have to keep Google Drive off and only turn it back on when I am not working in Chief.  Some kind of memory leak issue I think but currently unresolved.

Up to now I have been very happy with Google Drive.  I also use Carbonite as an additional layer of backup which doesn't seem to have the same issue with Chief as Google Drive currently does. Not sure how many other Chief users, if any, are being effected like this.

It's amazing how much time I will waste before finally taking the time to find a real solution.

Thanks guys.

Larry,

 

  There are so many different places in Chief where the text parameters can be defined that it makes for a mess.

 

Boy, that's the truth.  Good reason so clean up my templates.  Can already tell this is going to be one minor but constant annoyance I won't have to deal with any more.

Great new feature.  Something I requested.  Haven't even had time to realize they implemented it.  Will definitely go through my templates once I have some time.

Bryce,

Just a thought. While I know you are starting the plan in X8, any chance that your blank template is actually a resurrected plan from earlier versions? (check the Time Tracker) I have had some weird results from blank plans unwittingly moved forward through versions.

That is certainly the case.  But, the text doesn't start out that way.  Only when you re-open it later.  Are we expected to completely, manually re-do all of our layersets, annosets, myriad defaults, etc. with every new version?  Every new update between versions?  Shoot me now.

I was hoping the latest update would fix it too.  Drat.  I will start sending stuff in too.  This is aggravating. 

Again, it is definitely not limited to moving from X7 to X8.  It is most definitely happening in plans I started in X8.  Just had to spend another 20 minutes completely going through a plan and fixing dozens of instances.  It was a plan I just worked on a few days prior and I can confirm now that it wasn't between updates of X8.  Will send in a problem plan as soon as it happens again.  Never had this problem using the same version before, only bringing a plan forward.  It would be a huge PITA to go through all my text defaults and switch everything over to a new font, or having to use plain text (it does seem to be limited to rich text).  

This just needs to fixed. 

This has been happening for almost as long as I can remember, and it's been reported many, many times. I don't know why this can't get fixed permanently. It always seems to be too mysterious to track down.

Yes, I have noticed it before too but it seemed to center around either bringing a plan forward from an earlier version of Chief or from importing someone else's DWG file.  But now I KNOW it's happening in plans I started in X8.

This also happens in plans started in X8.  I am not SURE the problem is a result of a program update, only guessing.  And, I've been using nothing but Arial font for years.

I am seeing this repeatedly.  May be happening between updates.  As in, I haven't worked on this file for a couple of weeks, installed the latest update, and now this is happening AGAIN.  As in, I have seen this repeatedly in X8.  I have also seen it when importing CAD from other sources as well.

But, the attached screen shots are (1) some text I placed a couple of weeks ago, and now come back to it and all over the place I have to re-size the text box to get the missing letter, or letters, to show. (2) If I zoom in, before re-sizing the box, it looks like this, and (3) re-sizing the box to get the text back to the way I originally placed it.

Anyone else experiencing this?  Search didn't turn up anything. Super annoying to have to go back over all my elevations and make sure this is all fixed.

Stumbled across these when doing some product research for one of their products-

http://creativemines.us/technical/

Well you mentioned the request as idiosyncratic, so my response was to explain this isn't something particular to my needs only, but rather very common.

I would say this used to be common before 3D virtual modeling.  Pencils and hand lettering used to be the norm too, which is when we used to make stepped models out of cardboard.

I think it's all very creative and ingenious to jump through all these hoops to use new technology to emulate old technology I just have a hard time understanding why Chief would want or need to do this.  It seems like a very small number of users would ever want or need this feature, hence idiosyncratic.

 

So you know, its not a particular request - stepped terrain models with non-stepped roads and pathways are the norm.  Perhaps you didn't know that, but its probably the most common type terrain model among architects.

 

Here are a couple examples.

LOL.  Yeah, never saw a one of these in architecture school.   ;-)        Just don't see the need for Chief to do this.

Just the fact that they don't cut a clean hole is one thing.  HOW the shaft is cut is a whole other issue and I agree the options don't really allow easy creation of a shaft the way they are typically built.

Will send in a bug report just to add to the list I suppose.

There was a post on Skylights a while back where Scott and perhaps Bill Emery?  played around with the skylight holes etc , not sure they got it perfect though.

 

edit: found it..... it was Larry Sweeny , Scott did a vid.

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2183-skylight-problem/?hl=skylight

 

M.

Thanks for that.  Funny, reducing the framing dimension of the ceiling plane was one of the things I did try and got those "shards" Scott talks about in the early part of that video.  Add this to the seemingly endless secret handshakes people complain about with Chief.  I concur with Scott, this really needs to be fixed.

What are you trying to achieve? 

 

jon

Well, an automatically generated hole in my ceiling plane that doesn't have a huge gap between it and the shaft would be a good start.  Look at the lines being cut in the ceiling plane at the bottom of the section view.  WTH?

Seems like a very idiosyncratic, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too request.  A stepped terrain with non-stepped roads, features etc.?  To what end?

Are skylights really this bad OOB, or am I just missing something?  I have played around with the various settings and trying to custom adjust the ceiling opening but it's not even close to being clean.

Skylights.plan

You could also draw a cad circle and convert it to a "terrain feature".  make sure you change the elevation to at least one to be able to see it

I see this is true now too.  Didn't used to be the case.  You used to have to filet a square to get this to work because a circle used to be not a polyline.

Ha ha.  Maybe it should be called the "Roundish" garden bed. You can do a polyline garden bed, make it square, then use the Filet All tool at half the width/height to make it perfectly round.

Thanks guys.  I had been looking for that Global Symbol Mapping and thought it was a setting for the symbol, not the texture.  That seems the easiest and quickest fix for this issue.