VHampton

If I am correct, it's possible to remotely connect to the PC. Do you mind my asking if you might be set up this way?

Failure to load the CAD file is often because the .dwg probably has way too much 'stuff' included in the drawing. Under layer options (upon import) why not uncheck a good portion of them for experimental purposes - and then see how it goes. If some of the basic line work makes it's way into a successful import, then you can probably go back make some decisions on what not to include - meaning that you can cherry pick only the most important items, and leave out the things which are bogging down the import. ...good luck with that.

That roof in the image seems to have a curve of some kind for sure. Minimal though. The (2) roof sections is definitely the answer. The gutter can be custom made... Regarding the rake frieze, a poly line solid is great tool to force the shape of that boxed eave however necessary. Regarding Randy The Macho Man Savage... he was a legend. Lol. Untitled .plan

Use the rainbow tool while one 2D camera model. There's a color for the texture (in Vector view) and there will be a pattern color as well. Check the pattern color. Make it darker. If that pattern is light grey, it'll be faded when sent to layout.

Never question why. Lol. ...Just go with it. ...and yes - you're very welcome. Ceilings often pop up through the roof or sidewalls, and that method is a great way to figure out what needs some fixing.

When I see ceilings like that, I go straight to the "delete surface" tool. Delete the 2 layers of glass and then use the pointer to select on the unwanted material. It will (or should) open up the dialogue box for whatever room is being displayed for that sheet of sub-floor. The sleuth work to figure out what the plywood belongs to can be much easier this way. Have you checked the structure for both the first floor and the second floor? Presumably, the first floor has a ceiling height which is being voided since the second floor is "open below" Did you check the open to below space (on the second floor)? if it has any kind of structure being shown, then may get some perspective on what the issue is.

Hey Rob. You may be experiencing crashes due to a memory issue. Often times the default setting for being able to undo a plan move is set to something like 10 or more. Which isn't a big ask, but if the plan is complicated, it certainly can be. This may occur irrespective of what kind of hardware your machine is equipped with. I've had plans with cars and stuff which have large 3D surface counts. Extraneous 3D objects can over-burden a drawing file pretty quickly. As an experiment, turn down the undo option to 1 or 2. Or try even turning it off altogether. Then play around with an archived version of the plan. If it crashes, then the issues have been narrowed down to either a quirk or a hardware issue. If it's more stable, then you've found a potential cure for the crashing.

It appears that you have some excellent answers Doug. For two story houses with a roof deck, I often build a third floor, and then flat roof the entire area except for where the decking and rails will go.

Murphy's Law. But in reverse. lol

Totally agree Larry. I have the archive warning set to something like 70. Whenever it asks if I'd like to manage the overflow, the pop up instantly disappears 9 times out of 10, with no direct link to the folders. It's happened on every X version every released.

Whether it be a PC or Mac, there's always going to be the following folder, which contains the archive folders... which contains the back-ups for every project saved by Chief. Chief Architect Premier X12 Data I realize that you may know this already, but for anyone following along in the future, they should know that it's a very easy navigation process.

Stranger things do happen. Having the program just quit out of the blue is something that used to happen on occasion. That was back in the earlier days of X1 though. Usually memory related stuff when Chief evolved into a heavy weight in the drawing world, and needed some serious hardware to make it run. I remember when the plan files for each floor saved independently back in the days of the V versions - when we were lucky enough to have a computer with even 1 Gb of Ram. That was some organized chaos to put it mildly. Anyway... auto save is definitely a convenience, but there's nothing like doing self saves for good measure. Your story is definitely a cautionary tale for sure. Thanks for posting. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and an excellent New Year ahead. We could all use one.

That pretty much stinks. I've had that happen on occasion too. The auto-saved file was no where to be found. Regarding the solution, sometimes deleting the archive folders for that particular project creates a new folder which might behave better. Once the archives are gone, doing a 'save as' for both the plan and the layout should set things up again. ...As a safety precaution though, I usually set aside the best and most recent auto-saved files before doing this. Either way, DJP has some sage advise. Tapping on a dedicated hot key every so often is good practice.

So Larry... In the Chief X12 Archives Folder, there was no recent data for this project? In the past, I've rummaged through the Archives section, and sometimes a certain project has more than one folder. Sometimes there's a folder for the Layout only, and a separate one for plans... and then there's the combo folder which contains both layouts and plans. Don't know why this happens but it does. Anyway. my sympathies. It absolutely stinks when this happens. Like DJP said... saving every so often along the work day day can be a good policy.

So it seems that every Mac has a display control for each monitor. Laptops or desktops both have the same interface for the displays. You can decide to "rotate" the view on the second one if you like - and it should be that easy. Although I didn't want to experiment on mine... according to on-line comments - it can be done!

Macs typically have an HDMI port to add a secondary screen. You can plug almost anything in - including an old flat screen TV. Dual screens is such a great way to work whether it be a PC or Mac... I won't promote any brands here, but there's a company that rhymes with bell - and they make a really good monitor for the price. https://www.macworld.com/article/3532366/add-a-second-display-to-your-mac.html

Hey Brian, If your plan file had a name, it should surely have been saved. I posted a map on how to find the archived plan. Once you open a saved version, you can rename it to the original, even if it may have lost s few hours of work depending on how much was done before the "save" took place. And per Ryan... on a Mac, you should be able to look at the top right of your screen for "Time machine". It looks like a clock with a backwards arrow. Assuming you have a back up disk, or a place on your drive where the computer is doing it's back-up, just go back to the day that you deleted the file. It should still be there alive and well. Hope this helps.

I've seen this before when the fill is transparent. The pdf won't always show the desire infill unless the transparency is set to zero. Don't ask me why, but I'd like to know more about this myself. BTW... Welcome. And if you have a moment to add a signature w/ your version, and computer spec.s, that can be a help for folks to getting a better insight on what might be causing the situation.

Couldn't agree more. Alaskan is the man. Much respect.

Mike... You can also add a parapet to a flat roof by using a gutter. Ideally the roof wants to come out to the edge of the outer wall. This walls on that particular floor in check so to speak. Make a square stock gutter. Say 2" x 6" In the gutter options Set the y axis plus 2" and the x axis to minus 6". The gutter sits flush with the EPDM, and is inset, just as you would have in a real world condition. Then the material gets colorized black to match the roof.

Interestingly, Layout lag time seems like a common issue. When you do an update of all plot line views for example, the layout sheets take seem to take forever to scroll through. Often times, I have to shut the program down and somehow this refreshes the memory when it reopens. Turning off the undo feature works best for speeding up things in plan views and 3d, not necessarily layout. But back to layout speed... any camera views sent to layout as images (as opposed to plot lines), have a way of increasing the size of the layout exponentially. Try to avoid "live" camera views in layout altogether. It can be helpful to save the live view away from the layout borders - and just keep an image capture of that particular camera to help minimize. PDF files in the range of 50 to 70 mbs are often the result when you print a project with lots of live cameras in the viewports - and they can take an incredibly long time to spool through the pdf printer.

Sometimes the plan file gets severely bogged down because of the undo/redo option. As an experiment, go to preferences and turn it off altogether. That always results in a huge speed boost. If that turns out to be the cause, then try setting it to only a couple of moves. As Alan pointed out, notes can also be known to bog a plan down. Back in the earlier versions V7, V8 and V9... they always recommended to keep notes to your layout sheets or CAD details. Never on plan views if you could possibly limit that. Not so certain that it would matter in this day and age though. 15-20 years ago, you'd be lucky if you could find a computer with 1 Gb of memory. Changing the undo/redo setting will make the difference no matter what.

My pleasure.

X-11... This was again made using poly line solids... But with a cut-out for each piece, so that the rug reads as one. The 8 foot section was created first. Then it gets a poly line solid "hole" for the middle section. The middle section gets slid into position... and likewise, it gets a cut-out for the center. The center section goes into place... and voila. (3) pieces all at the same height. No shadows lines. Round carpet.plan Round Carpet .3ds

That's correct... and part of why it only took about a minute to "stack" everything. Anyway ...Just opened X-11. Takes 2 minutes to re-do, and using your suggestion. The right way. ...BTW very impressive renders on your site. Are all of them done using Chief? or is there a hint of Lumion as part of the rendering process?