Christina_Girerd

Thanks for the distribution idea. I like the emissive material idea too.

I know Chief has rope lights now, but is there anything like the encircled "net lighting"? I didn't seem to find anything in the library, but maybe there is another term. Or any suggestion on recreating this? I thought about multiple rope lights, but they seem too linear and this is more dispersed. I'm also thinking of getting a similar image and pasting the material on the wood to get a suggestion of it without dealing with a ton of lights. This is for an event venue.

Thanks for those tips too.

Yep, that worked great! Thank you. I figured there would be something obvious that I was missing!

I think I must be missing something, as it seems a basic door design. Does Chief have a slab door with an upper window? The attached image is the closest I've found, but I don't want the inset panel on the bottom half. I've checked the bonus & manufacture libraries I have.

My method is to select a layerset that is part of all my plans and is descriptively named "All Off Layerset." So I turn on this blank layerset then I first turn on layers that tend to add a lot to the file size - plants, interior accessories, furniture, vehicles, images - things that usually aren't needed for posting problem plans and then delete that stuff after briefly looking it over to make sure something I might need didn't get accidentally put on a wrong layer. And of course, this is after I'd saved the file as whatever the title was with some descriptor like "2024 03 Smith Plan for posting." Then I check the new file size. If I need to reduce more, I next typically consider deleting layers for terrain, fencing, exterior furniture, fancy lighting etc, depending on what I needed to show the problem.

That moldings-built column looks good too! All these different ideas to make columns are useful but not necessarily immediately intuitive to a newer user. This make me think Chief should have a basic Column option - maybe under one of the Build menus, which is where I first looked. The user would choose round or square/rectangular, have options to choose moldings for base and top, and the column would resize while keeping the moldings the right size, and default height might be to the ceiling so if it is moved to different height rooms it would adjust automatically unless the user changed the default height. And the user could set a column style as a plan default. Something that newer users could easily find and use. I will put in a suggestion for this.

Thanks for all the options. I tried Ryan's suggestions of door openings first as that sounded easiest, and it worked well. It had the advantages of including the base molding and keeping the room definitions. I just removed the door opening casing and jamb and made it taller than the wall then copied it. I did later try the tall cabinet idea - that worked well too, and as you pointed out, could easily be moved around as a unit. I'll save that one for when I need a column that is inside a room. I used ceiling beams for the horizontal beams, those worked easily.

I'm doing a rough 3D of an existing building with posts defining different ceiling height sections of a large space. I can't figure the best way to make the posts that have the same wall finish and molding as the rest of the room. I looked at Framing/Posts but they only offer end profiles, not moldings. I ended up using invisible walls and room dividers to break up an actual wall to make the short wall bits appear as columns (I made a wider wall than normal), but then the base molding is messed up on some of the posts. See attached plan and 3D view with problem base moldings circled, and photo of actual space. I tried adjusting the wall options such as No Locate, No Room Def, etc, to see if there was any difference, but nothing seemed to put the moldings around all the column bases. In addition, it was a real pain to break the wall up and try to size the real wall & invisible wall sections without them trying to merge. I can’t remember ever having to do something like this before, so I assume I’m missing something as I wouldn’t expect adding some columns to be this complicated. I know I could make a 3D symbol if I have to, but I’d assume there’s a better way. Any suggestions? 2024 02 ST Column Problem.plan

Hmmm - good point. Maybe it was a project I'd done some beta testing on and hadn't touched since which caused a reset to 1 to 1. I'm just glad you had a quick answer!

That worked! Strange... Anyway, thanks so much - easy fix!

This is a specific problem in a large plan file of a multi-bldg church site that I just brought forward from 2015 - not even sure what version that was, but probably was whatever the current version was at the time. My goal was only to explore turning a closet into an ADA/family bathroom, so I just wanted to do a quick prelim plan and was trying to get a dimension when I ran across this problem. When focusing in on a bathroom/closet area with an exterior wall, I noticed that if I click on the exterior wall to get a dimension of the bathroom or closet, it may instead give a dimension of 77'+, which is approx the dim between the two exterior walls, ignoring the interior walls even though it drew the dim line to the interior wall. If I click a little higher or lower, it might give a dimension of 0 or 73'... If I click on the interior wall, then it sometimes gives the correct dim to the exterior wall. I tried replacing the exterior wall and removing one interior wall and a few minor tweaks, but still had problems. It's a complicated 3D church space, so I thought I'd check if anyone has had an issue like this before going further. I also noticed that if I slightly angled the horizontal dimension either up or down while using the measuring tape tool, it would measure correctly. It was only when the dim was exactly horizontal that it would mess up or with the wall to wall auto dimension. The first image is for context and the max building width shown is the approx 77' that was sometimes showing in the dimension. The zoomed in images show a red circle where I clicked to get a dimension and what the result was. FYI random dim checks in other areas of the plan don't seem to have problems. Another odd thing - if you click on the inside of the exterior wall with the measuring tape tool and start to draw the dimension across the small room, it starts around 66' and gets up to the 73' dim just before you touch the opposing wall, then goes to 0' when you snap on the interior wall. I've included the plan which has the problem. I got rid of other buildings, landscape, etc, to get the file size down while still showing the problem in case anyone wants to try it. The attached plan has been brought into x15. 2023 10 30 FellowshipHall Exist01.plan

That did it. Thank you very much!

I've reduced my problem list to three catalogs. The CadBlocks that just isn't ready yet, then one for AdamsWood and BonusPlants. I deleted the Adams Wood Products catalog I had, thinking it was this "AdamsWood" catalog, but it still is listed as not being found even when there is no catalog with that or a similar name in the library. When I add the Adams Wood Products catalog back in the library, it says it updates successfully, but I still see a notice for this AdamsWood catalog that I can't find. The other problem is that I can't find a way to delete the BonusPlants catalog. See the second image - I right-clicked on it and it has a different right-click menu than the other catalogs - with no delete, but a "Vacuum". It doesn't have the little door symbol in the catalog icon, so I'm sure it's an old legacy issue. Any suggestions?

I get the same error with the BonusCadBlocks, as well as 14 others. I know some of my libraries are from old versions and they don't have them anymore, but as you point out, the CADBlocks library is still listed in their library online and even has an X15 option so that doesn't make sense. I'll put in a bug report on that.

I've been using X15 since beta and have updated to 25.2.0.53, and I haven't had any problems with slowness in plan views or 3D work on my desktop. Recently I used X15 for a week on a laptop for the first time, and that went surprisingly well except for some of the heavier duty graphics processing. But I'm sure that was just because the laptop doesn't have the hardware for it. Hope you and the others with the problem can figure out what's causing the slowness on your systems.

I agree. I'll put in a bug report on this.

I was trying to use the backsplash to counter below feature for the same reason Robert initially mentioned - just a quick preliminary design, and was also surprised to find that option no longer exists. Found your helpful explanations here, but was wondering why the wall cabinet materials list still has both backsplash and countertop components. To make sure it wasn't something with my defaults, I opened Chief's residential and kitchen templates, and both their wall cabinets had it listed too Doesn't seem to make sense if there is no way to apply it or is their some reason I'm missing?

Thank you! I thought that was the case, but last night I was looking at the right side of the status bar where I thought I remembered it, and where it says "rendering..." or "finished rendering" and didn't see it so assumed it didn't show anymore. But this morning, I checked again after your remark, and this time noticed it on the left end of the bar. I should have looked more closely yesterday. One of the pitfalls of later night work!

I have a large main house with detached garage and ADU that I want to post for my client in the 3D Viewer. I want to include as much info as possible, but don't have a good feel for optimum vs. usable surface counts. I posted a first test model that appeared to post, but then when I try to view it, I get "3D Viewer Error" message due to lack of available memory and it just suggests reloading the page which doesn't change anything. I created a second model where I removed layers for plants and vehicles to reduce surface count, and that one loads and I can even get it to show in Standard view part of the time. So I need to make a third model and remove a few more layers so my clients won't get error messages. I wanted to check the surface counts of some of my previously posted models that worked well, but I can't find that info. Do the surface counts only show when you are exporting the model from Chief? Or is there some way to check for posted models? It would be helpful if I could check surface counts for the 3D view showing in Chief so I could quickly turn items/layers off and on and figure out any high surface count objects that might be worth turning off for the model export. In the 3D viewer tutorial, they mentioned too many camera views might also cause a model to be less responsive, but again, I don't have a good feel for what that means. Is 1-5 okay, but over 10 is too much, or ? And how much do extra camera views slow things down versus removing surfaces? If I remove two camera views, is that worth removing 1,000 surfaces? Also I noticed one of the Viewer tutorials was from X10, and I didn't know how much things might have changed since then. Thanks for any suggestions.

I long ago started putting a zero in front of my custom layer names so that they all show up at the top of the list and aren't mixed in with layers I typically don't adjust, which makes searching easier as I usually just need to scroll and don't need to search on a keyword. As Dermot mentioned, it's better not to change the default layer names. I do the same thing with my custom layerset names. Don't need to do it for my saved plan views since there are no defaults in that list. Attached screenshots of my method in case that is helpful. (They posted out of order, but close enough...)

I submitted a feature request report for this.

I'm making a custom toolbar of a number of library objects (using the "Place Library Object" icon) and I'd be handy to have it be a drop down menu to save space on my toolbars. I realize that if I shove it up to the far right edge of the window, or close to the left edge of another toolbar, such that the double right arrows are displayed, then it sort of will function like a drop down, but not an actual drop-down menu like other tool bar icons. I didn't see anything about this in Help, but wondered if I missed something.

It apparently "grabbed" the kitten face texture because it had the same name as the original X1 texture. And yes, they do work fine as more generic silhouettes. I was just curious if you had still had those textures, how they might have looked. I will probably also just use a solid color to make them generic, but was just playing around after I saw that odd face.

Thanks Glenn! I placed a few in a plan to check them out, and found this surprising face and tracked it down to a kitty magnet texture titled "face" in the bonus command center. When I first saw it, it looked ready for some alien video game... Do you happen to have the actual face and other textures you could share? When I first loaded the calibz, about 10 textures are missing, from an X1 folder. Even as is (well, minus the kitty face), they will still be helpful as 3D silhouettes.