Christina_Girerd

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.

And forgot to mention that I always ask the client if they have any floor plans from previous work done. Then I use those to save time. And if I do need to measure the whole house, I tell them they can help me if they want and reduce my time spent. They are always happy to do that and I get to know them a bit better while we're walking around with the tape measure and they feel glad they are saving some money.

About 95% of the time I draw the whole house, including interior walls. Always do the exterior though, as I need the square footage numbers to know allowable square footage for the addition, walls in relation to setbacks, etc. I might not draw the whole house interior if I'm just doing a kitchen remodel, for example, in which case I might just label the back end of the house "Bedrooms" and not show any interior walls except those connected to the immediate remodel area. As was mentioned, drawing the interior walls is fairly quick and usually helps give the client context to see the whole thing. I just tell the client that putting in the existing plan is part of the project set-up, which includes checking the local codes, getting site data, etc. I've never had any client question me about it.

Yes, I briefly thought about that as a general library enhancement, but am in the middle of a project so just mentioned that one before I got distracted. I will add a comment to expand the idea to the report I already submitted. I might well have asked for that in the past too. The hassle with starting a Style Palette from a folder in the library is that it only lets you add objects as you have them in your defaults, which of course you can then customize through the dbx. Or you don't add any objects but just give it a name, then you go back in the plan, select the object(s) you want and select the Style Palette icon to "Add to Existing." It just adds a few more steps and doesn't seem as straight forward a work-flow to me. I've noticed that most of the Style Palettes I have created so far have been from partially non-default items that are already in one of my plans, so I need to select them specifically in the plan and then select Style Palette to create or add them to.

I'll put in a bug report for the folder option idea.

As I am creating some basic Style Palettes, I notice they end up at the main level of the User Catalog. When we create a new Style Palette, it would be efficient to have an option in in the Style Palette Spec dbx to specify which folder the new creation ends up in so we don't have to go sort it out in the Library Browser later.