DzinEye

Yeah, I can always easily pull off a new segment anywhere on a story pole except for at the bottom. Hmm... maybe I experienced this bug you mention. I have always had some kind of annoying restriction with that bottom marker I want to set at something other than the specified 'grade' setting. Either I can't get it to stick to where I want it to go, or I can't get the marker to line up with the others, or it just keeps disappearing. At some point a while back I just gave up and started using my own elevation symbol to paste in place. It's been a while, I'll revisit. Appreciate the input.

Didn't mean it to sound like I was trashing your idea! It's a good creative work-around. It's just a lot to do in comparison to my wishful hope of it being something automatic and it would have to be adjusted for each different elevation where I need to show a different adjacent grade. I always appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks Mick. That IS a way to get it to work, but what bunch of monkeying around. It seems that 'grade' in so far as Chief goes is simply a fixed point to reference, either a finished pad height or some other user defined height. Would be nice if storypole could pick up the 'adjacent grade' from the terrain, but then it would have to make an assumption of where it's picking that grade, and it'll probably be wrong half the time or more. The ability to pull out an elevation marker from a normal dimension is great, so frustrating to find I was blind to something right in front of my eyes when I was not looking for it.

Thank you. I swear, I use that extensions/markers tab to mark center lines all the time, I never even noticed there was an 'elevation marker' selection. My solution until now has always been to paste in my own home-made elevation marker. I figured there had to be a better way.

I'm all for options, and you give good examples, which make perfect sense if one has set the plan to reference heights from grade, but if we've already selected to reference the 1st floor subfloor as our zero, then it seems the program could discern that and then correctly show grade for what we've set it at below floor level? Anyway, it's a minor thing, but I just can't seem to be able to manually move the story pole grade marker where I want it to go, which varies on a sloped property. Any tricks for that? I've tried placing points, when I drag to the point the dimension just disappears.

That setting changes the terrain height in relation to the subfloor, (which he had apparently done), but it doesn't change how the story pole dimension shows grade. It seems to me that it should... but for some reason it doesn't work that way. This is what was confounding the OP.

Rob, I think you might've originally gotten confused by Perry's comment about the Terrain Dbx... I'm sure he meant well, but as you now know it's not there. Another thing, unless you need/want that inner row of dimensions (note you have two rows of dimensions) on the story pole, you can uncheck the box for it.

Thanks, yes I totally understood the idea in so far as the ability to change colors without changing everything of the same color goes. To be sure I completely follow though... you only have to have one specially named color assignment for each object part, you don't have to go through that process for every color you want to use right? So even if say I have colors named White_ext window sash and White_window ext casing and I change both to Grass Green, they'll still be able to be changed independently?

Good info Steve, Thanks. I'm wondering... does the new Style Palettes change anything to the approach you explained here in your video?

Pretty cool Rene!... but then I can't help but wonder why you still have such a sh-load of giant icons all over your primary monitor?!?

Thanks for the tip!... keeping the ctrl key down is definitely the secret to this secret.

Very interesting... thanks.. Well I'm going to go ahead and try the standard method, and if that doesn't work I'll give the super-secret method a go.

Thanks! Okay, so it sounds like I'm opening a whole new instance of Chief then, not just opening another layout tab.

I'm interested by all the responses from keypad and touchpad users. I remember when those came out and thought it seemed like a cool idea, but at the same time it just seemed like moving the icons from the screen to another keyboard...e.g., not really saving much time/hand movement. Plus with a keypad it seems you get one function per key, whereas with hotkeys you can get a large number of functions from a limited number of keys by the ability to do combinations. While you probably could do that with a keypad too I guess?...but if so, then why when you already have a keyboard at hand?

Thanks... ya I don't have access to X12 yet, I'm on monthly SSA.

I remember reading it a few times over the course of the last month, but my searches are fruitless now that I need it. ;(

So Gene... Did you start using any hot-keys ?

Always works for me. Unless you've got a project with a boat-load of skylights it's pretty quick. I do have to wonder though why it's so difficult to get this often asked about feature added to Chief?

I assigned escape to the space bar because I use it frequently and it's right there easy to reach without moving my hand. I left the regular Esc key alone and assigned a different hotkey combo to Select Object. Note that you'll need the normal escape key anyway as the re-assigned escape will not escape you out of menus/dbx's. As Michael and Mick suggested you can right click to select an object even though your window tool (or whatever other tool) is in use, but note that your cursor won't APPEAR as the Select Object tool, yet it still works. As for contextual menus, I like them, but I do wish I could customize them and adjust how far they pop up from the cursor and how they justify in relation to it.

Oh for crying out loud Rene, you're so behind the times! I just programmed myself a synaptic helmet and don't even have to touch a thing, I just think of what I want and it happens. Seriously though.. you're a mad-man.

We PC users only get crayons...

Good topic Gene! Interesting reading. To me this subject touches on a huge plane of thought related to how software has developed over the years. Having fairly closely followed the forum for the last year I know I am among a fairly sizable group of people who came to CA from other cad software, primarily AutoCad and similar. When I began using AutoCad the GUI was pretty much just pull down lists of operations, there were no cute little clickable icons littering the screen. To be productive I learned to use hot keys for literally everything. Probably highly influenced by my gaming usage (DOD), from the get-go I developed my own system of hot-keys that kept my right hand on the mouse and left hand at the home keys as much as possible. Over the years those icon bars kept getting bigger and bigger in annual updates and I would just turn off 95% or more of them. To me, it was all just fluff to hog up precious space on the small monitors of the day. Because of not giving in to the icons, when I worked at some offices later other users were in awe of the speed which I could draft. Honestly, I don't say this as a boast, just to express the power of hot-keys. Fast-forward past the '08 melt-down, now working for myself and coming to CA I wasn't able to just set AutoCad aside and spend a couple months learning CA from the ground up before becoming productive. Having to learn CA while also using AutoCad, it was an easy decision for me to abandon CA's hot-key system for something as similar to my AutoCad system as possible. This though highlights to me one of my pet-peeves with CA's hot-key operation. With AutoCad I could have any single lettered key used once 'R', twice 'RR', thrice 'RRR' etc., because it was necessary to 'enter' after a typed input. Before dismissing that 'enter' as luggage on a fast hot key, realize it is exceedingly fast and easy because a click of the mouse or spacebar can be set to operate as 'enter'. So a whole world of commands could be controlled from my left hand at home position. With CA I am crippled into using icons for far more than I would like because in order to create 'what I consider' logical hot keys, I must use 2 and 3 key hotkey (sequential) commands in order to get more commands from a key. Like Glenn I dislike modifier/simultaneous hotkey commands, to me they require too much contortion. IF you're starting from scratch and don't already have a hot-key system, I think Michael offers sage advice in using the system that's already set up. But my basic theory for hot-keys is to use keys which are easily associated with a given function and also are easy to access with my left hand at the home-key position. You can only go so far with logical connection and still keep your hand at the home keys, but if you build your system with commands you use frequently and begin using them right away after you assign them, you will learn them remarkably fast. For instance we have a whole pull-down menu associated with BUILD. So start with the B key, then add to it. Build-Wall-Exterior... 'BWE'. Though 'BWI' would be logical for Build-Wall-Interior, I can't reach 'I' without taking my hand away from home position or off of the mouse. In that case if we had command-enter input I could just use BW for Build-Wall-Interior. Since we don't have that option, I use BWW. Then I have Build-Window... 'BWD', Build-Door 'BDR', etc. For Cad commands since it is Drawing instead of Building, I start with a D key. Draw-Rectangle DRR, Draw-Crossbox DRX, Draw-Line... again, the L in 'DL' is a reach so instead 'DF' from Fence which is like a line. Dimension commands all have 3-letters and start with 'DD'. Okay, sorry you didn't ask for all that.. LOL.. but that's the 'system'. Here's the most common I use. I didn't limit to just the top 5 because they're probably the most common for everyone (cut, paste, undo... yada yada) CC - Copy CX - Center Object DS - Tape Measure (Cad hold-over from 'Distance') VV- Paste hold position MM- Reflect about (Mirror) SW- Selection by Window SX- Selection by Crossing SF- Selection by Fence TT- Rich Text (Because TR is Trim) Q - Leader Line XX- Point to Point move ZE - Zoom Extents

Ahaa!.. very clever. Thank you!

Well what's the magic? This is what I get...

Thank you for that Eric. It kind of worked. It did curve the attic wall up high as in your example, leaving a gap, but wouldn't snap down to close it off after pulling out the ceiling past the wall and snapping it back as in your example. I ended up manually dragging the 'curve' down to close it off point by point. I may end up just going with the arched door opening solution, only problem with that is the stone wainscott has gaps at the opening.