Christina_Girerd

I haven't really worked with parapet walls before, and was following a Chief tutorial video that had me basically make really tall third floor walls, and then do a drop down roof inside, then create a ceiling... It was a bit confusing when I tried to get a decent roof plan. Then I realized there was a roof access stair, so I ended up creating a fourth floor to show those walls. It's pretty confusing, but I at least got the plans to show what I needed in the layout and the 3D view looks right. If I did this type of thing more often, I'd take more time to figure it out, but it's all pro-bono. So I'm fine with work-arounds in this case. Thanks for the suggestions. And to Eric's question - didn't use material regions, as I needed an inset to show shadowing which is why I used wall niches.

The wall niche tool worked great for the exterior ornamentation of a vintage building I'm modeling, but then I discovered that the niches are adding confusion to the plan view since they draw within the window. I tried turning off the wall niche layer, but that only removes a single line on the exterior. It still leaves the actual wall niche void. I realize that makes sense, as it is the same thing if you turn off the window layers, you still have the voids where the window would have been. However, I don't want the wall niches to show on the plan view. I feel like I need the equivalent of the 3D cross section slider to have the floor plan only show from the windows down, but I don't think there is such a thing for the plan only view. Any suggestions?

At least we have enough sun today in my area (Mountain View - an hour south of San Francisco) that the porch lights aren't coming on in the middle of the day, but smoke is still too bad to be outside and fine gray ash is all over everything. While one of your tropical depressions full of rain would be welcomed to wash away the smoke, people are now getting worried that when we finally do get rain, the mud slides will cause even more damage.

Thanks. And yes, I'll put something in a bug report about the capping problem.

The angled section goes to a point and is not flat - that is just the odd way the wall cap applied itself. First pic shows the wall profile. Second shows the 1/4" cap, different material. Third shows 1/4" cap in same material. Last shows no cap, and wall framing changed.

Yes - that is faster than messing with materials in the wall type dbx since Chief annoyingly won't let me change materials with the eyedropper for wall "insides." Here's what a got with the standard "Cap 01" wall cap at the default 3/4" thickness. I left the cap in the other material just to show how it applied.

This is interesting - I just noticed that the top edge shows the stucco on the angled parts of the wall, but the wood for the straight parts. I'm planning to just change the wood texture to be stucco but was surprised to see this.

Thankfully I didn't have to do any measuring. The client had already used a firm that specializes in as-builts by the time they connected with me, but that firm only did plans and elevations. I'm doing the 3D so they can produce some images for a donor campaign as they are a non-profit homeless shelter and related services. Been in that building since about 1950. They've done a few remodels over that time, but ready for another. Before that it was a chemical company. I haven't really started doing the inside yet - meeting with the client tomorrow to figure that part out.

I pulled in an elevation image, sized it, then put it behind the building elevation and used the "break" tool to shape the top of the wall. Worked well. The wall niche tool worked well for the insets.

Thank you both. I'm doing a quick review of Chief's flat roof & parapet how-to videos also.

Any suggestions for the best way to make this shaped parapet wall? I figure I can do it with polyline solids if necessary, but wondering if there is something better. Thanks.

Oops! I did a church roof once with multiple curved segments and angles pointing up to a spire, and yes, it can be interesting what comes out at times during the process. Good luck!

Apparently there are quite a few things that I can't include to get the Rotate to show. Cameras, and also Roof Ridge Caps, Electrical, and after that I figured why bother...

The Edit Area/Transform didn't work for me in the actual plan - as I showed above, the rotate option was greyed out. That was my first idea on how to deal with it.

Thanks for all the tips. After trying the various options, I will create the ADU in a separate plan. Before I posted in here, I tried the Transform/Replicate option, thinking I'd try to select everything and then rotate, but I did not get a Rotate option. (see attached) I turned all the layers on, made sure nothing was locked, but something blocked it. It worked fine on a test plan with hardly anything in it. Then I tried the Rotate Plan View option, which seemed so easy at first, but then I found out it is really only visual and even the selection rectangles drawn are still on the original angles. That would be super frustrating. Definitely will make a suggestion about this, to add to whatever some of you might have already suggested. Johnny's video post sure looks nice and easy! Can't imagine trying to create that multi-angled building in Chief right now. Kind of fun to see that software since that was what I used before I jumped ship to Chief years ago because of Chief's easier ray tracing.

I have a triangle shaped lot which was set so that the original house that I remodeled 10 years ago has walls at 0 and 90 degrees. Now the client wants an ADU along the angled back fence, and the ADU walls will be at odd angles like -27 and 63 degrees. I added the angles I need for the ADU into the Default Settings / Plan tab, but I'd rather temporarily rotate the whole plan while I'm designing the ADU. What's the best way to do that? I tried searching with terms like "rotate plan" etc, but couldn't seem to pull up anything in help, Chieftalk or training videos. I know I've seen something about it in the past, but maybe I'm not using the right search terms. Thanks.

Good tip - thanks Glenn.

I put in the report and mentioned the comments. When I drag the boxes down, I don't get anything else colored. I also tried this in a generic blank layout (one of Chiefs), putting a text box on one page and another lower down on a second page, but at least in that very quick test, could not get it to reproduce.

Interesting clip Eric, thanks. How do you get those "ghost items" to be colored and show like that? Are those items from other pages that Michael was referring to? After Michael's comment, I deleted all the other pages, and then the movement worked just fine. Thanks. I'll put in a bug report.

Here it is... So the text that I circled above, will go down about 4 "down arrow clicks" now, but then stops. At least when I just tried it. 2020 07 Sample Existing.layout

I have noticed this for a long time, but usually been too busy to ask about it. Anyone know why the movement of an object, such as a text box, using the "select" then tap the "down arrow" on the keyboard method would not work when they are no obvious items in its path? For months, I have noticed this issue, particularly in my Layout file when I'm adjusting text boxes. In the example below, I did a wide selection of the area to show that there are no other objects immediately below the text items circled in red. I can select and use the up arrow and both those text boxes move. Yet not for the down arrow in this instance. I like to use the keyboard arrows for small movements because it is precise and quicker than opening the Transform dbx to move it a specific amount. Another "oddity" is that I can move the left text box (Bldg Coverage) with the left arrow key, but then I can't move it back with the right. As if it hit some invisible buffer, though I'm just moving it back to where it was. I don't know if this is an issue with the latest release, but I don't remember having so many issues with the arrow keys in the past. Is there any key I can press while using the arrow keys that while override whatever Chief thinks the object is bumping against? I tried Ctrl, Alt, and a few others but didn't find anything. Or suggestions about why the arrow keys are behaving as if blocked?

I just spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get my typical saved Plan Views into a 10 year old plan. I didn't immediately look at Help, because I assumed that I could export them from a newer plan, and pull them into the old plan like we do for layer sets, etc. After all, I saw "Import Plan Views" in the file menu. But when I opened the plan that had the Plan Views I wanted to export, I discovered there was no "Export Plan Views." Then I thought maybe I had to export default sets, and got more confused from there. I briefly looked on the forum and didn't see anything, then finally went to the Help menu. I realize it is my bad for not looking at the Help file sooner, as then I understood there is no export for Plan Views, only import. Though even when first looking at the Help topic for Plan Views, my preconceived ideas had me quickly scanning for the info on "Export" and wondering why it only had info on "Import" until finally I read it and understood the process. The reason I bring this up is that I am wondering about this interface and am curious what others think. This model for importing Plan Views skips the whole export first process which requires opening up another plan to export from before you can import. So that saves time. Yet for a lot of things, we still have the Export / Import model. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of being able to directly import from any file without having to have exported it first. One possible minor drawback is that I expected I would be able to export a small data file of my typical Plan Views that I could keep in my "Generic Project" folder (like a .cadefs file) such that I could have them to import whenever I need to or easily share with someone without having to give them a whole plan file. However I realize with this new import only method, I just need to import them directly from my generic plan file. I notice that Default Settings don't have an Export option either. Hmmm....

Just wanted to say thanks to the Chief content team for the recent Gardening and plants/pots/vases symbols. Perfect for a project I just started working on and will be helpful for others in the future I'm sure.

In Chiefs "Hot Tubs" folder, please add water to the standard rectangular above ground "Hot Tub" symbol, or any other "empty" hot tub symbol. The Hot Tub (rustic) symbol has some very nice looking water (better than the sunken hot tub symbol) - please add that type of water to the other hot tub symbols that don't have water. I don't want to show an empty hot tub in a rendering to a client - it does not look inviting. Please also add another symbol variation to the basic hot tub to show it with a standard insulated cover. In the meantime, I will add water to the hot tub myself, as I have done before, but wanted to suggest it to the content team. Thanks.

I was looking at some old symbols, that are "invisible" when placed in a plan because they have no assigned materials. Every material in the Component Material list just says "default" but with no pattern and no texture, so if you place it in the plan, nothing shows. What is weird though, is if I select one of the "defaults" and apply a material to it, then suddenly the other formerly blank default, now might show something like "Default Furniture Birch 3" even though I only changed the material for one of the defaults. (See attached pics) Aside from that, I'm wondering why there can be a "blank" default? I looked in Default Settings / Materials and thought maybe there would be some item listed as "Default" that I could at least assign a color or something that would cause it to show up, but there wasn't. One image shows the original condition of the symbol with both materials showing as "Default." The second image is after I changed one "Default" to Aluminum, and then the other default "on it's own" changed to the Default Furniture Birch 3. I know how to fix the immediate issue - just assign materials, but was wondering if anyone else had run into this. I also think Chief should have some way of dealing with this - maybe just to have some actual material named "Default" such that at least any object has visibility if placed into plan? Or is there some bug involved in this behavior? On a side note - it sure would be handy to have the ability to use the eyedropper tool to select a material in plan and then just spray paint it into the dialog box onto the "No Pattern/No Texture" boxes, instead of having to open Select Material/Select Plan or Library etc. (BTW, I've already suggested that in the past)