Christina_Girerd

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.

That also makes sense to me too after working with them some more. And since I mostly focus on preliminary design, my clients don't usually have any specific manufacturer in mind yet, so I just need to give them the general "look" at that point, and do fine-tuning later.

Found a weird issue when working with the style palettes.. I saved a couple style palettes that are only base and wall cabinets. If I select one of those style palettes from my library and select the "Object" spray painter and click on a cabinet, it correctly changes to the new style. If I select the "Floor" spray painter and click anywhere in the room - floor, cabinet, wherever - all cabinets on that floor change to the new style. However if I select the "Room" spray painter to apply the new style, it only changes if I click on either the floor, the baseboard or the ceiling! Doesn't work if I click on any cabinet, wall, window. Later I had a style palette that was just the room - floor and walls. When I selected the "Floor" spray painter to apply it in a plan, I could click on the floor, cabinets, backsplash, windows and ceiling to apply it, but if I clicked on any wall, it would not apply it. Don't know if there are other combinations like that. Seems like a bug to me. Anyone else notice this? Back to Steve's comment about how to name style palettes - seems a bit tricky to me too, as I try it out. Even just doing a few simple palettes of cabinet variations with just cabinet color, countertop, backsplash and hardware variations becomes a naming challenge. I've started with a general style first like Shaker, Modern, Farmhouse, and then a color indicator like blue, grey and white, etc and then just a number after - thus "Shaker Blue 01." I also think I may end up with some style palettes that just include variations of flooring, baseboards, ceiling molding and wall color. Separate cabinetry palettes. Seems more flexible at this point for the way I work on remodels. I also noticed I can't select an exterior wall or roofing to create a style palette for exteriors, except for doors and windows. I'd find it very useful to have exterior style palettes that include exterior wall and roofing material, fascia, soffits, etc, as well as exterior doors, garage door and windows. I usually finish the exterior of any house I'm working on before I get to the interior, so I'd normally put in the exterior doors and windows at that time, not when I'm just working on interior style. This is a really great new feature! Just needs some fine-tuning as we start to use it.

I just met with a client this morning who is interested in a backsplash similar to what is shown in the photo. I've been looking through the Chief catalog, and the closest I've found so far is a DalTile "Argento," but it doesn't have quite enough contrast. Does anyone know if there is a material that looks similar to the one below? I might have missed downloading one of the manufacturer catalogs. Thanks.

I'm looking into the Style Palettes and was wondering if Chief had any examples already in the Library somewhere? I searched a bit but didn't find any. I'm about to create a few of my own. Just curious - what are "SAM" users?

I would be one of those people who would not have known to reset the layers when opening a legacy plan. I have quite a few legacy plans, too. As I think about it because you brought it up in these comments, it seems obvious, but when I'm busy and working and need to pull something up from the past, it doesn't occur to me to think - wait - which version was that done in, do I need to reset layer names? I just want to get on with my work. I opened the LDO to see what button you were talking about and realize I hadn't really noticed it. And if I hadn't read this post, I wouldn't have known that it was something I could/should use when I open a legacy plan. So I opened up a legacy plan from 2005 and tried it out - yep, lots of layers that didn't exist back in 2005 that do now, plus some name changes. I would probably vote to just do this automatically for legacy plans, but Dermot is probably right that a few people might want a preference to turn this off. Another option would be to have a dbx upon opening stating "This is a legacy plan. Would you like to Reset the Layer Names?" with a yes/no right there so nobody has to think about where it is. This also makes me wonder if there are any other things that are recommended to do when converting legacy plans? If so, maybe those would also be listed in the "This is a legacy plan..." alert dbx upon opening? Each with a yes/no option. And if there are multiple things to deal with, an option at the bottom to "Remind Me Later" or something to that effect and then somewhere in a menu or whatever logical place, an option to "Update Legacy Plan" with those items listed for when the user wants to deal with it.

I had forgotten about having to send it to plan, or having it in my plan and then sending it to layout. So I decided I should just open up the saved camera view and send it into the layout. However when I sent it to layout, with "current screen" selected, it sent a much larger view than the current screen, but not the entire plan either. I can now use the Break tool to adjust the box perimeter, but then when I wanted to enlarge it, I can't find a way to do that. What would normally be the resize handles just expand the box (i.e. undo any cropping) and I tried holding various Ctrl or other keys, but those didn't seem to work. Any suggestions on how to enlarge it? First image was the current screen image, second shows what I had selected in the dbx, third shows what showed up in the layout. I also tried sending the camera view to layout with "current screen as image" which actually sends the "current screen" as expected, but then I can't use the Break tool. (BTW, I will send in a bug report "feature request" asking that we be able to use the Break tool on images in layout.) When I went to re-open my saved camera view (the first image) - it had been changed to the weird partial view that showed in layout even though I closed the camera view in plan saying "don't save." Odd.

I'm pretty sure I've done this before, but can't remember how and apparently didn't have the right buzz words to find it in help or in this forum... I have a .jpg picture file of a house overview on a layout page. I want to angle one side of the .jpg rectangle to crop out part of the driveway and take out a small chunk on the other side. I looked for something like the Break tool to adjust the edges, but can't seem to find anything. What am I missing? Thanks.

Yep - that was it - invisible wall layer. Thank you!

I'm using a shelf ceiling for the first time in a garage/ADU conversion loft and I was surprised at how it shows the edge. Anyone have any suggestions for a good way to close off the edge? Thanks.

Thanks - that solved it! As you can tell, I don't use schedules very often. I found the second one in a CAD detail. My instinctive attempt to find it was to right-click on the window label and hope there was some command to open the associated schedule - there wasn't, but I think that would be a great place to put a link to the schedule since it already had commands like "move up in schedule." Another attempt was to look in the Project Browser window and hope there was a folder specifically for Schedules (since we have Material lists, wall details, etc) to pop it up that way - and there wasn't, but that seems another logical place to have a link. And last but not least, I opened the window spec dbx and wondered if there would be a link there, but no. I could see having a link in the General tab, right near the "include in schedule" check box that would be "Open Schedule." Or in the event that there is more than one, like this case, it would show links to both, so the user can quickly realize the issue and then delete one of them.

I turned on "show in schedule" for windows in an older plan that I pulled into X11. I was surprised to find that two labels showed for each window! You can only select the one closest to the actual window, but the second label moves in sync with the first one. I opened a new plan, and it doesn't have this issue, so it must be something with this legacy plan. Does anyone know how to "turn off" the second label? I tried deleting the window schedule and also turning the "show in schedule" off and on again, closing and re-opening Chief. These double labels also show in the elevation. Any ideas on how to have only one label show? Not as critical, but when trying to figure this out, I pulled up another legacy plan to see if I'd get double labels, but on that one, I got no labels, even though everything was turned on to show them.

Yes, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the tip. I unchecked recessed for all of them and then it mulled fine.

Interesting - good to know.

I was just having a problem with mulling exterior doors and side lites and saw your post, but wasn't sure it was the same problem so I made a separate entry. I just tried mulling interior door and lites and had the same problem as you - the flooring is deleted under the door, exposing the subfloor. I suspect this is the same issue now that I tried mulling an interior door.

I notice that when I mull an exterior door with side lites, chunks of siding disappear at the bottom - see photo below. Not quite sure how to describe it, but as soon as a break apart the mulling, the problem disappears and it looks normal. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is this a bug? I noticed that Mark had a post today about issues with mulling interior doors, but wasn't sure if it was the same issue, so made this separate post.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check them out.

I only get the striping in Standard View with the Ray Casted Shadows on - is that what you tried? I attached my graphics card stats.

Yes, the issue was two driveways on top of each other, which I mentioned in my second post, but you're welcome to look at the plan. I found a slightly older file that still had the problem and checked and the issue is definitely that there were two driveways on top of each other. One of the driveways is split into two pieces as I was going to change the texture close to the garage, and I probably assumed I had gotten rid of the original driveway but apparently not. Just fyi, this project has some minor remodeling to the main house and an ADU addition in the backyard. Oops - I forgot to zip the file before I posted it, so it's a little big, sorry. 2018_03_24_Welsh_SchA1c.plan

It was a new plan in x10. I remember trying to tweak something on the driveway last week because the as-built driveway extended out to the left and in the standard driveway that I placed, I couldn't put in a break and do that. So I'm sure did something while messing with that, but didn't do it in a single session so lost track of it while working on other plans.