Christina_Girerd

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)

Ok - thanks Dermot! I just submitted the plan and a few images. My guess is that the problem has something to do with the fact that I messed around with the foundation walls and heights, while trying to get this as-built to look "right." I'm not doing any remodel on the house, just the garage, so I was just putting in the front house quickly as a shell.

Room divider was just a little off the wall. I sure don't ever remember having this issue before and I know I used to do this in other plans fairly often. I had already deleted the previous try, so I did it again, in a slightly different spot, and this time the fence didn't get any stucco, but the newel went goofy again. I agree this is not something we should need to do, but it is a temp fix if needed.

Yes, room divider was set to invisible.

I replicated the "break fence" and drag across to the house, and yes, the "newel" is a triangle. (Meanwhile I added a gate instead of the fence so that didn't have any issues.) I tried putting a room divider against the house per Eric's suggestion, and you can see that worked in the second image. The grey stucco is the length of the room divider segment. However, when I selected the beige stucco with the eyedropper and tried to paint the grey stucco on the house wall, then the fence suddenly sprouted the low beige stucco, but didn't have the newel problem (third image) Wierd... Plus, the grey stucco would not change color with the spraypaint tool.

I completed the house exterior, drew a fence down the driveway, then used the clip wall tool to cut the fence and then dragged a segment of fence across to the house. I was quite surprised with the odd stucco parts across the fence and the tall stucco "post" that appeared. I've never seen this before. The fence segment is obviously taking on some of the ext wall characteristics instead of keeping its "fence-ness". The image of the fence segment in the Fence Spec dbx looks normal on both sides. I don't see any settings in the dbx that look out of place either. Any ideas?

More good suggestions - thank you. I've got a big deadline tomorrow, so I didn't have extra time to investigate on my own. I use both those methods for other things, hadn't thought to apply it here, but they'd work well.

Good suggestion - thanks!

I want to change all the window and door components in this room to another color. I tried to save time by using the spray paint tool with "Room" application selected, but I keep getting this "unable to determine room..." dialog. The alternative it offers me is to change the whole object, but that doesn't work for me as I want the interior white, but need to keep the exterior brown. I tried clicking on the main part of the door, the door frame, the window frame - they all gave me this dialog. So I'm having to manually spray paint each component so I only get the interior colors changed. At first I spray painted the entire floor to change the color, but just like the "spray paint object" mode, it also changed the exterior window and door color which I did not want. So I thought I could at least spray by room, and then it would just get the items within the interior of the room, but apparently not. These are standard Chief doors and window. I checked this out in a brand new plan and had the same problem. Am I missing something? Or is the program not able to distinguish which part of a window or door is in the room and which is "outside" so it gets confused? But when I spray in component mode, it knows the difference. This has also got me thinking that maybe we need one more variation of the spray paint modes - between room mode and floor mode - an all interiors mode. Hmmm...

I just tried it again, and yes, I could give the lintel a separate material. I did have a molding profile for the lintel, but I was looking at it in a 3D view, and I'm guessing I accidentally spray painted the material in object mode instead of component and thus thought I couldn't change it individually. I thought I had also looked to see if it listed a material separately for the lintel, but maybe not. Anyway, good to know you can use a separate material for the lintel and I just missed it somehow. Thanks.

When I mulled the the door and windows, then the lintel worked as expected. Unfortunately, after that, I realized that the frame and lintel are a single material, so I can't give the lintel it's own material and the client wants a stone lintel, so I'm back to the manual lintel anyway. Oh well!

I deleted the windows, and it still won't extend. Not worth messing with more at this point, I'll just put on a manual one. Thanks for the suggestions.

Trying another feature I don't normally use, the lintel extension for a door. I thought I could quickly use the door lintel extension to have a unified lintel across the door and two side window. It showed fine in the preview window, but upon closing the dbx, it only shows the lintel exactly over the door, as is shown in the image. I lowered the windows down farther than I really want, just to see if they were causing a conflict, and they are now definitely lower than the lintel, so it doesn't seem they are the problem. I know I can just draw a lintel manually, but now I'm curious why this isn't working as I expected.

Yes

The client wants a bay window on the second floor directly over the bay window of the first floor, but we don't want it continuous. I tried to "raise up" the bottom of the second floor bay window like I did with the first floor (raised the floor up 24" floor in settings), but it continues to show walls down to the roof of the first floor bay window. Any ideas what I am missing? I attached images of the exterior that shows it continuous, and the second story interior view that shows the raised bottom - on the inside at least. Thanks

Hi Dave - just found your wrought iron panel - just what I need for a current project. Thanks!

I typically haven't had problems with custom symbols when Chief updates. What I found helpful for me in setting up my User Library items, was to have my library item folders on my hard drive match the folder structure in my User Library. I tend not to have many project specific items, so I have a single "Chief Library" folder that has main folders for Backdrops, Bonus Libraries, Color Themes, Images, Manufacturer Libraries, Misc Calibz (usually downloads from helpful Chief users that have a mix of items that don't quite fit in a single folder so I toss it in there until I sort it out) and Textures. Then if I find something online that I want to add to my library, I put the original file into the proper subfolder on my hard drive to start with, then create the new item from within Chief. Very infrequently, but it does happen, I have had to recreate my User Library from scratch and a few times I did it as a test, so by keeping the hard drive folder structure a match to what I want my User Library to be, if something ever happens and I need to recreate it, it will be much easier. It also makes it easier if I want to compare original images of some type, Stucco, for example, to see which images have the highest quality or most detail if I am cleaning out, update or sorting my files, when they are all in the same folder. Within various Texture folders, such as Stucco, I tend to sort by color families with subfolders such as Beige Stuccos, Brown Stuccos, Dark Stuccos, Gold Stuccos, Grey Stuccos, Light Stuccos, Reddish Stuccos, Other Stuccos. I also keep copies of the various bonus calibz and manufacturer libraries, because those sometimes get updated or changed, and I still want to use some item from an older catalog, so having the original still allows me to add it to my user library even if Chief no longer has it as part of their main offerings. As others mentioned, I try to keep the symbols part of my user library basically matching the structure of Chiefs Core Library since over time I have gotten used to it. I also copy my user library every year or so, and label it with a date, so if I ever need to go back to something, I can. Definitely worth checking what other people do, thinking about how you use it, and taking time to set up a good system.

I went back to using a CAD line to scale for this one too. I checked X11 and yep, it only showed it working horizontal or vertical, but I really thought I had used it on angles at some time. I wonder why they don't let it be used on other angles? As that would sure be useful in cases like this angled parcel map. I will submit a request that. And a bug report for the scale differences issue.

Did the Point to Point Resize tool change in the update? I was trying to use it tonight and don't remember having it only let you resize in exactly horizontal or vertical. I'm trying to adjust one side of a parcel map image. I first tried to resize the image as I brought it into Chief - the blue rectangle in the image, and found out I couldn't use the pt to pt tool between the two property corners because it wasn't horizontal or vertical. So then I rotated the image - the yellow rectangle - and tried to use the pt to pt tool again. This time I could snap between the two corners, but the dimensions would not come out accurately. I was trying to set the distance between the circled corners of the yellow rectangle to 80' so I entered that in the pt to pt resize dbx, but the result measures out to about 88' 5". I tried this multiple times and do not get accurate results. My guess is that it is some issue with the image being rotated. Anything I am missing?

Thanks Glen!

Is there any command I'm missing somewhere to "re-center" Room Names? When I take an As-Built and start modifying walls for a new design, I often get confusing and overlapping room names when I have a lot of small, adjacent rooms. Sometimes it can even be confusing to figure out which label goes with which room because they take the same name as the last big room before I took out walls. Obviously I can figure out by size and/or changing the title of the room. It would save a lot of time in these cases to have a "re-center" option for room names. Methods might be: re-center any rooms within a selection rectangle, or a tool to click in each room or selected rooms to recenter, or an option in the Room Spec dbx on the General tab right by where we select the room type to "re-center" the label. I'll put in a request for this if there isn't any option I'm already missing. While we're on the subject of Room Name label placement... it always annoys me that the room labels are always set below the vertical center point of the room. I always have to move them up because they look visually "wrong" to me to be below center, like I didn't pay attention when I placed them. I wish we would have a default option as to how our room labels would be placed. I've submitted a request for this before, but If this bothers anyone else, please submit a feature request.

Almost all my work is additions/remodels. Not so many new builds in our area since it is so built out already.