johnny

I think Chief wouldn't be bad for landscape design but their 2D symbols are VERY far off from professional standards. Considering that you can remap the 2d symbols associated with the 3d, and use transparencies now, it would take some work but doable. The only other thing I notice is Chief gets really bogged down went using a lot of plants.

Scott - any chance you could start uploading the recordings of the workshop to youtube? Id love to re-review some of these.

Great comments Ben and Larry. One thing I want to add to this is I am currently trying to manage 5 users producing 500-1k plans per year using Chief. The first question I was asked by this company is if Chief is the best app for their situation. I recommended staying with Chief, but I hope these sorts of "blind" spots can be fixed so use of a Chief file is not so proprietary to whoever created the plan. I am full cognizant my situation is unique, but really these issues would be a problem for even 2 people working on the same file....or as Larry shows one person who simple forgot that change was made.

Amazes me sometimes how much SF some people want. I bought some property from Burl Ives widow and she showed me their home, which was very much like the home designed by David in size. 2 separate homes connected - they lived together "under the same roof" but in completely different "residences".

I know its Lew's question but I will answer from my opinion. I would have a simple alert symbol (again, like I showed - simple and unobtrusive) that indicates if any of the "default" settings dont match actual room settings. If you bring your mouse over it then it could recite the specific alert such as "Rooms have manual settings"...or something more thought out. Very simple and would help a lot. If I am not mistaken we've had this discussion before in one of our conferences and I thought the consensus was in general agreement it would be good to have the alerts.

It is complicated, but like Larry and others I get hung up on Chief more than any other app - and i've had to learn some very complicated industry apps. This is a good example where you can have multiple sets of data-entry and have no indicator if a conflict may exist. I see the logic in having the ability to make room-by-room changes, but adding some sort of alert indicator (like I showed) would be a no-brainier IMO. Having your whole system based upon the "room" model paradigm means that is a very important aspect to control AND track.

I can buy into the speed of having "remember" like features present in Chief, but it would be much more helpful and intuitive if Chief could at least alert you to some of these conflicts. Not so much alerts that get in your way, but just helpful reminders so you don't go looking for a rabbit down its own hole.

Walls can sit on roof planes - which is what you want in this instance. If you draw your wall where it should be, open in Dbx to to "roof" tab and then click "roof cuts wall at bottom". Keep in mind this operation can require some "adjustment" still to get to work.

Actually that warning was good - but different than I think the problem you had was. Micheal's point (well taken) is that you can have default foundation types, but then come back and edit specific room settings for auto-foundation features - which can be in conflict with default. The problem is that say you forget you changed a specific room, and go to make general changes to the defaults expecting those changes to show up everywhere - there isn't a warning or indication that you have other room settings in conflict. This is what was going on with your first plan example.

Having small little indicators could help someone trouble-shoot these issues quickly. IMO having multiple input locations for control data makes this sort of thing a must. I know like Larry i've run into things like this and I can blow and hour or two quickly not realizing what is wrong.

I can't see the logic in having the ability to have conflicting data exist anywhere. Yes, the functionality is great and I understand why having room-by-room settings would a positive. However, there should be some alert or way to quickly ascertain if any of the default settings conflict with the individual room settings - or vise-versa. To have no message or ability to check this expect thru trial and error is almost the definition of non-intuitive. I believe intuitive is not being able to have an object governed by 2 data input locations without at least clearly alerting the conflict (if there is one). To solve, I'm talking a little alert graphic or something where you could hover your mouse over and learn about the conflict (which may be exactly what the user wants). Something simple.

I'll say it - Larry is 100% correct. Yes, it can be solved, but why would the app show something that is not correct anywhere?? It should be impossible to have conflicting settings to make someone think they've made choices (through user input) only to have some other location where the same information needs to be setup again. Why does one area take president over another? That is nuts - and non-intuitive.

I know this sort of thing can be frustrating for sure - Chief's wall snapping is tough to work with sometimes in these situations. However, in your case I didn't seem to have an issue you mention, so I am curious what I am doing you aren't. I think you should draw the bay with lines to create guild-lines to snap to - although I just entered 4" and no problem without lines.

Here is my simple vid - nothing new, but there is something odd going on the fact you can't balloon those walls.

My 2-cents (probably not even worth that) is the OP made manual changes to the walls AND the attic walls...nearly all of them. Add to that some of the conflicted settings (including room/floor settings) and you have yourself a mess. Michael's approach works since its rebuilding those walls that where manually played with by OP. I didn't figure it all out but this doesn't look correct either -

^^^^^ this...the design of that roof isn't good and asking for future problems. Redesign.You could just raise that added roof 3' or so and have an elevated post-to-beam support leaving the tie-in of that roof addition unessissary since it would just sit above the other roof planes. The gutter system remains as-is and the new roof's storm water just spills down to the lower, existing, roof/gutters. This would also look better too.

Well said. However, I am curious about the "steeper learning curve" comment. For me, Chief has been the most difficult software product i've ever had to try and learn. It just isn't intuitive or logical to me...

Just an FYI if you've upgraded to the current version from (directly or indirectly) this version you are selling ...that doesn't work.

There is a good video about building laddered over frame truss conditions on Chief's YouTube ...id follow that instruction but use rafters instead of trusses.

You nailed it. With the boxes it locks the direction differently than the wall - ? Interesting.

Can someone help tell me what I am doing wrong? I am trying to simply use the "tab-move" feature for walls but it doesn't seem to work.

lol...very well could be - but then again, Chief isn't helping its cause... ...yeah not sure what is going on. My system is a fairly standard system - nothing odd.

I use a Titian (Nvidia) with most recent driver. My system is: https://s31.postimg.org/jzemqlshn/system.jpg I didn't have issues with Raytrace until the last update...so this is a new issue.

I've tried all sorts of things including new install and as you suggested - nothing is working. I will have to call Chief on Monday and submit a bug. If no one else is getting this then I am very curious what it could be.

I dont raytrace often so it hasn't been a huge deal, but since the last update any time I try and raytrace Chief crashes. Should i re-install the entire program?