Doug_Park

I don't think it was set up that way out of the box. Probably one of the default materials got changed in the plan you are using.

Build>Distributed Objects

Be precise in your model. Using the rounding for dimensions to hide sloppy work is more work in the long run. If you want a model accurate to 1/8" then set your dimensions to be at 1/16" and adjust the model so that you don't see any 1/16" dimensions.

If you have an elevation or 3D view open you still have the project file open. Close all of them and the last one you close should trigger the message to save. First go to one of you open windows and save. Then close all the open windows. Or you can simply browse to the file and open it again. A small secret in Chief is that you can get multiple floor plans open at the same time by opening the same file multiple times. This doesn't create a copy of the plan just another view to work in. Useful for certain operations.

Keep it docked.

I've always wanted a problem dialog that lists all the issues like this where a dialog message is annoying and possibly popping at a bad time. What I would like is that all these annoying messages go away, but you get something like an alert icon next to your cursor and then a modeless dialog with the list of problems can be brought up. By clicking on a problem you would then be taken to the location of the problem with the offending area circled and possibly the offending item highlighted. If it was an issue that you don't want to ever deal with you would then have a check box to say ignore this issue. In theory it would be somewhat of an extension of the plan check feature that we have now, but better.

One has to accept with computers that as soon as you buy something it is already out of date. That system sounds nice.

It is my suspicion that the tradition of using all caps in drafting stems from the difficulty in producting legible lower case characters by hand. I'm curious about the continuation of preferring all caps in CAD. Is it a matter of that is the way it has always been done or are there other good reasons to continue using all caps that I'm not aware of?

Chief supports certain touch screen gestures like pinch to zoom and two finger pan.

One should always calculate the return on investment of a computer. Today's computers are quite capable and even most of the lowest level computers available are capable of running Chief. This includes many Windows tablets. The real question is whether the computer you are looking at is fast enough for you. I have never had a computer that was fast enough for me to not notice that for some operations that I routinely do that it didn't keep up. The last device that kept up with me typing was and IBM Selectric typewriter. Even typing this message I had more than one noticable dealy between hitting the key and seeing the text show up on the screen. I'm running a very high end laptop so it should keep up. But it doesn't. I'm not a particularly fast typist either. So at the end of the analysis one has to decide just how much delay you are willing to pay to reduce.

Not sure about the scenario of closing and asking to save. I always treat that as a saftey net and kick myself if It ever hits. We have had bugs in older versions of Chief where this wasn't working under very specific and difficult to reproduce scenarios. I'm not aware of a problem with X6 but would not rule that out. If you can figure out steps to reproduce the problem we would love to know what they are. Auto save is based on a timer. By default it saves once every five minutes. So in theory you should only lose at worst the last 5 minutes of work. An auto save is not automatically done when you close the program, unless for some reason it hits exactly at that point. I would recommend continuing to have an off computer and ideally off site backup system in place. Don't rely solely on the archives that Chief makes. If your hard drive fails, or your computer is stolen, or some other catestrophic event occurs like your office or house burning down, you will really want that off site backup. With today's network based backup systems it is easy to set this up.

As far as file access goes, Chief does as well as any application. The issues with accessing files stored on a server are: 1) The reliability of the network. A reliable network will do fine. An unreliable network can be a major problem. 2) If you are sharing the same files you will either need to use the File Locking mechanism or use some other librarian type software to ensure that only one person at a time modifies any given plan. We have several customers who work on servers quite successfully. Many of them have at one time or another been burned by someone turning off File Locking. It takes some discipline to be successful in this sort of environment. If you have multiple people sharing files, synchronization tools like drop box seem unlikely to be a good choice.

In the past few years low power and high performance for 3D graphics cards has been a major focus of the 3D video vendors. Partly this is to support tablets and smart phones. The result has been that some vendors, such as Intel have really upped their game in terms of performance resulting in a lot better 3D graphics performance for low end laptops and tablets. I would look for something with the dual Intel HD and NVIDIA graphics. This gives you both good performance with low power consumption and excellent performance when power consumption isn't an issue.

Save to COLLODA and import that way. The toolkit that we use doesn't have a 64 bit version that works for Mac. The vendor of the toolkit has been unresponsive to our requests to make it work.

You can rent. http://www.chiefarchitect.com/software-rental/

http://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/ssa/

http://www.chiefarchitect.com/resources/viewerrequest.php

DRM is more effective than you might think. Just because a site say's they have a cracked version of software doesn't mean that it is a clean crack. I have seen more than one case where a crack was incomplete.

From a compatibility standpoint the only feature in Viewer that isn't supported on the Mac is the display of Windows Meta Files. Since PDFs or PNGs are a much better option for vector graphic files this doesn't come up as a problem for most people.

Our evidence is independent of DRM vendor informantion. DRM vendors are in business in the first place because of a long history of flagrant abuses. For some reason stealing intellectual property doesn't seem to register with a fairly high percentage of the population as being a crime.

DRM is a topic that leads to a lot of debate. We have the evidence to prove to us that it is worth doing. It is unfortunate that it is needed, but that is the world we live in.

Contact support. Teigha is the organization that provides the library that we use to import and export DWG and DXF files. It used to be called the Open DWG Alliance, but they changed their name a few years ago. An error of this sort is something we will need to look into. Contact support and give them the plan and steps to reproduce the problem.

How vs. what is a really poor model. Layers control some of how as well as what. Annotation sets control the defaults. Let's go back to basics. I'm pretty sure many, hopefully most understand each of these concepts. If you do then you should be able to easily grasp the concept of annotation sets. A default. This is a property of an object that you can set that is used when you create the object. It could the layer it is on, a text style, a size, or any of many other things. Using a default makes it quick to create a large number of items that share similar properies. A dynamic default. This is a special type of default that if changed will change the value of all objects that refer to this particular default. Dimensions among other things use these for certain properties. When a dynamic default is in play changing the controlling source default value allows for a powerful, but potentially confusing, way of controlling how things work in a plan. Saved Defaults. This is a collection of named defaults. One can select one of these and make it active. Overriding what was previously active. And then if you want another set of defaults to become active you can select that saved default as well. Selecting a saved default doesn't change the values of an object that has already been created. If the saved default represents a dynamic default that will not change the values of objects that use a different saved default. A layer. A layer in Chief is similar to layers in traditional CAD programs in that they control the appearance of lines, color, style, weight, and whether they are drawn or not. By logical extension an object in Chief, including 3D, will display or not display based on the layer setting. Also there are a few other things, such as whether the object is locked, Text Style, and whether an item is generated to a material list that layers also control. A layer set. This is simply a collection of layers that have a specific set of properties. For example a layer in one layer set may be on, while in another it is off. Or in one set the lines may be red while in another they are blue. Current CAD Layer. This is the layer that objects such as lines, circles, etc. go on when they are created. Because these items don't have defaults this is a stand-in for CAD defaults. For the most part the layer controls the appearance of these objects. Currently active defaults. This is the set of annotation releated defaults that are currently in effect. There is only ever one set in effect for a particular view. Currently active layer set. This is the layer set that is currently being used. There is only ever one layer set in effect for a particular view. Annotation set. This is a collection of items that set the currently active defaults for annotation related objects. They also have an option (option means not required) to select the currently active layer set. Recall that changing the active default doesn't affect the appearance of already created objects. Generally speaking annotation sets are designed to control how annotation type things, lines text, arrows, etc. are created. Once created they use the settings that were in effect when they were created until those settings are changed on the individual object, or in the layer they reference (possibly as the result of changing tha actvie layer set) or if they are using dynamic defaults they will pick up changes to the named dynamic default that they reference. Views remember active defaults and active layer set. In any given view, floor plan, elevation, cad detail, layout, the currently active defaults are remembered along with the currently active layer set. This means when you switch to a view you normally don't need to select the annotation set or the layer set as the active defaults and and active layer set that were in effect when the view was last closed will be reinstated. Annotation sets make the task of switching which saved defaults are in effect for several different objects a one step process. Also, for cases where you may need to change the current layer set, such as a plot plan or electrical floor plan, they can be used to change the active layer set. If you don't use annoation sets the powerful fall back is to manually change the active saved default and possibly the active layer set. This is still a low click count operation. At the most a dozen or so clicks and possibly less if you only want to change the default for text. Prior to having this switching defaults was a many click process that could be 100's of clicks and was very error prone. Annotation sets and saved defaults are about saving clicks and reducing errors in setting up the defaults in preparation of creating annotations.

In Chief there is only ever 1 active set of defaults. Annotation sets allow you a quick way to choose them. Annotation sets control defaults. That is their primary and most powerful function. I hope I'm being clear here because it is core to understanding what they do.

Annotation sets are defaults. This is the single most important point about them. They are designed to set defaults for annotation objects. Nothing more nothing less.