BenPalmer

I think they do that because some people may not have the option to download the old version in their locker or may not want to download the full version, so they provide the 'viewer' option that all people can access.

Knowledge Base Article for additional reference: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00279/opening-legacy-files.html

Unfortunately no. It is not backward compatible. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01209/message-this-plan-cannot-be-opened.html You would need to be running the same or newer version of what they are running. Or on future projects, they would need to run an older version. Once a file is saved into a newer version, it cannot go back. Hope that helps.

Totally agree the pricing now is reasonable...as long as they keep it in the $600 range we currently pay and continue to receive the discounts we receive on additional licenses we have. However, if I'm reading it correctly, if I were to buy my 3 licenses on or after January 10th, the cost would be: (1995+1295+1295) $4585 That's over a 350% increase from my current annual fee!! That is a MASSIVE price increase!! I don't see anything that says legacy will be the same price ($595) on Jan 10. Chief needs to let us know what the legacy pricing is going to be on January 10th. They seem to 'imply' it will remain the same price structure, but they certainly don't tell us. On a side note, I do think they are doing the right thing by keeping the license perpetual. However, that's only for legacy folks. New licenses don't have the same luxury. With the massive price increase for new licenses and lack of ownership, I'm not seeing Chief as an attractive option for new folks. Please feel free to correct or clarify any of my comments.

Excellent, glad I could help.

You are correct. You're description in the first post of 'needs to be flush with the rest of the roofs' and your pic with the porch roof not flush with the rest of the roof contradicted each other in my interpretation, so I was trying to answer both questions for you. My 'guess' is your comment about being flush meant to get rid of the hip over the front porch vs making the eaves flush...but that is just guessing. Doing my best with your description. The screen shots are very helpful.

Now seeing the floor plan: If you want to use 'auto' roofs, you would need use the second option I listed by adjusting the 'roof baselines'. Or use option 3 and adjust the roof manually. I'm sure you know this, but your floor plan screen shots in your second post don't match your roof lines from your first post. The roof polylines will be easier to work with if you have it like your first post to start with.

A few ways to match the example that has a higher roof height at the porch (auto) raise the heights of the side rooms (left and right) to the same height you have on the porch (auto) use 'roof baseline polylines' (see F1 help) and adjust them to the left and right of the porch do it manually by adjusting the roof planes as needed. If you want it 'flush' with the rest of the roof planes as you mentioned vs matching the higher roof of the example, then lower the ceiling height of the porch to match the rest of the house.

Do you have any 'real-time' backup software running? Or possibly incremental (timeframe) backups? If not in the archive you mentioned, then a backup copy you create outside of Chief's ecosystem would be where to find one. If you don't have backups setup, I highly recommend it. Odd for the archive folder to not have the file, wouldn't hurt to double check your 'autosave' settings within Chief. For reference: I have (2) real-time backups running so if I crash and archive file is unsuccessful, I can go to the drive I save to as well as OneDrive's cloud backup that has version history. I also have multiple nightly backups run as well. I'm a little psycho about backups...lots of redundancy, but hate redoing my work. Sorry if you lost your files...hate that feeling.

Hence the need for the perspective overview camera (to go back to the OP)

Thanks Glenn...I'm trying to get rid of the tilt from a 'top view'. I would love for it to look like the ortho top view with straight down walls. This tilt works fine for a smaller house, but on a big house, these wall angles don't work well. Sample of what I currently get attached. Suggestions?

For everyday designing, I only use orthographic and not perspective. However, orthographic does not have 'Clay' or 'PBRT' rendering options while perspective does have those rendering options available. So I need the perspectives for straight down floor plan views to use those rendering styles. If the orthographic cameras added those rendering styles, then I would not need the perspectives....in fact I would prefer the orthographic views so the walls are straight vs tilted. Let me know if I'm missing a way to use those rendering styles in orthographic cameras and I'll concede. Until then, I need/use the perspective cameras.

Within the windows specifications, go to the 'Shape' tab and make adjustments to get what you need.

Depending on all you want to bring in and how old a plan is, I import the following: >Saved Plan Views >Default Settings (check overwrite and replace) >Layer Sets (select all and replace) >Wall Definitions (if any new wall definitions needed) (a few other steps I do with really, really, really old plans) That should get you pretty close and will just need to make some adjustments as you go...but much faster than starting over.

Thanks...that may be faster than controlling each room polyline, and I had a similar thought...but as you can see there are quite a few of them...so, while it is a good option, I was hoping to avoid...guess I'm lazy, haha. I like to call it efficient. Sounds like a feature request. Thanks again.

Thank you for your suggestions and efforts...much appreciated. So in short, Chief can't fill the openings the way I want it to with 'room fills'. I was really hoping to avoid all of the polylines as I believe the room fill is much faster (multiple select, match properties, no editing etc), but as you all mentioned, less control where the polylines have complete control. Attached is what the entire plan looks like with Room Fills...but as you can see, the doorways are white....in some places that's fine, but would prefer the fill....I'll play around with it some more to see if it's worth the effort. Thanks again.

See attached plan and screen shot. I need to get the 'room fill' to go through doors and doorways. Is there a way to accomplish this? RoomFill.zip

Reminder, per the reply from Chief, this is an issue with 'fonts that aren't default to Windows'. So, if default to windows, there should be no issues. If not default, then spacing issues 'may' occur. I would 'assume' that each non-windows font would behave differently.

Response from Chief...I realize each our issues may be slightly different, but perhaps this helps someone:

Response from chief:

Ugh, ok, thanks for the update. This one really baffles me...how could this leave beta. If I were beta testing (used to beta years ago), it would be my first first bug report, and I'm sure it was submitted. I'll submit to tech support so I can get an official response and update. I'll report back. Thanks again.

Does Chief plan to fix this? I've been waiting to upgrade for this very issue. Based on this thread, I assumed it was fixed. So I upgraded and bam, spacing issues all over the place on our notes page. I am not using Chief Blueprint font. I stopped that a while ago since they kept changing it and got tired of redoing my notes page. Using a steady font made upgrades smooth. Now they are messing with the spacing of all fonts. My screen scale is at 100%. Trying the margins to zero changed it very slightly, but still way off. What a PITA. Not going to upgrade all my machines until this is fixed or a solution provided without me having to redo all my notes...especially if this is going to happen every upgrade.

Anyone who submitted a bug have an update on this? I've been waiting to upgrade for this very issue. Based on Chief updates and change logs, I assumed it was fixed. So I upgraded and bam, spacing issues all over the place on our notes page. I am not using Chief Blueprint font. My screen scale is at 100%. Not going to upgrade all my machines until this is fixed or a solution provided without me having to redo all my notes. So, not fixed yet.

To second what Dermot is saying...I have many, many, many Chief 9.54 files, and I still use them regularly in the latest Chief software. As Dermot mentioned, the file will first need to be opened by version X8 and saved, then it will open in any software version after X8. I have kept version X8 installed for this reason, but the viewer will work as well, as outlined by Dermot. While I don't like the two step process, it's better than losing the support completely. Your driver issue is a completely different issue and I highly doubt you will get that to work. Many of us have done that dance over the years without success. Occasionally someone will get it to work, but it's just a matter of time that it will be so outdated that it will lose all functionality and we will need to bring plans forward to the latest...and why not use the latest, most productive software? In summary: the best answer is to use the latest software and bring the files forward. If you need help with this, I or many on this forum would be happy to help you convert a file to X8 or later. Hope that helps.