KilgoreTrout

"Where is the center point of the building pad?"

Here's my guess.  I would create a room polyline for the exterior of the building.  When you select it, Chief puts a handle where Chief thinks the center is.  I bet this is the same point they use for the building pad.

Seems pretty accurate to me.  I just tried a test plan and drew some cad lines with an angle dimension to verify that they were close.

Are you getting any wall edit handles?  If you are just missing the "same wall type" handles (they should look like diamonds off the wall end), then this has to be an issue with the preference setting.  If you are not getting any handles, then it is probably going to be something completely different.  Also, you might want to post a picture of what you are seeing.

You're welcome. 

Also, just as an FYI, if you are working with a big terrain model like this, you may actually want to work with the auto rebuild terrain turned off and manually rebuild it anytime you need to update it because rebuilding the terrain all the time may slow you down.  The tool to manually rebuild terrain is under the terrain menu.  You should get a special cursor whenever your terrain is out of date (unless you turned these cursors off in your preferences).

Did you turn off auto rebuild terrain?  I didn't download and checkout your plan but this is one obvious reason why your camera view would not match the plan view.

How are you trying to do the elevation?  If you are trying to use the wall elevation tool, then yes, you have to have a room but all you need to do is draw one or more invisible walls to close it off.

I haven't had any problems bringing my template plan or libraries forward when I have upgraded.  But I keep my template file pretty clean and I don't use the "save as" method that Scott likes to use.

I have not had any problems, nor have I heard of anyone else having problems like this with 16.3.  Sounds like it was a problem with the install although uninstalling and reinstalling should have fixed that.  I would say your best option is to call tech support.

There are at least 4 places the material that you see on a wall could be set.

- In the wall type or definition.  This is usually the material that you see when draw a wall.  If you change the material in the wall definition, all walls in your plan using that wall definition will change (unless they have been overridden by one of the other materials listed below).

- In the wall itself.  If you open the wall dialog, you will see a material for the interior and exterior wall surface.  If you change the material on the wall surface, then the whole wall will change even if it spans multiple rooms.

- In the room.  If you open the room dialog, you will see a wall material setting.  If you change the material for the room, then all of the walls in the room will use the material.

- Something that is sitting on top of the wall.  This could be a wall covering, material region, or even something else.

When you start using the material spray can, it is not always clear which of those material settings you might have changed.  This is why some people recommend that you don't use the material spray can on walls/rooms.  You can always re-spray them with the "use default" material to restore them back to the original material.  You can also open up the room and wall dialogs to see if the materials are set to "use default".

As far as seeing siding inside your house, there are also some situations that you can get into where this happens because the wall is used both inside and outside.  In those situations, I just cover up the siding with a material region.

If you want concrete stairs, you probably don't want open risers.  You can open the stair dialog and change some of the options to get the look you want. If you want the stairs to go down, you need to hold down the alt key when drawing them.  You could also draw them going up to the pad but turn off auto heights and lower them so that they meet the pad.

You are also going to need to make some changes to your terrain.  It looks like you have already turned off "flatten pad" otherwise your terrain wouldn't be intersecting your house.  You probably need to add some more elevation data (the elevation regions can help to create a flat spot at a given height).

Wall types are stored in plans or they can be stored in your library (new in X6). 

I would bet that all of the templates that ship with Chief have the same wall types.  The only way to see if this is true would be to check them all.  You could draw each of them in a plan and compare it to the others.  But why bother?  If you need a wall type you can't find in the template you are using, then just add it and save it.

It's probably something in your wall, floor, or ceiling definition.  Or maybe you manually edited your wall heights.  Or maybe something completely different.  The easiest way for someone to figure it out is for you to post a zipped version of your plan on this forum.  Then someone could probably figure it out in a few minutes.  Otherwise, people will only be able to make guesses.

The dimension setting in preferences only affects how the dimension look on your computer screen.  Layout views are more wysiwyg and will show you what the dimensions will look like when printed.  To solve your problem, you will need to adjust your dimension settings in your plan view such that they will look good when you send them to the layout depending on the scale you are using.  Since Pro only has a single layout page, you may want to keep several versions of your plans and layouts for various scales.  This would probably be much easier in Premier but you should be able to do what you want in Pro.

There is no such thing as "X6 version 10".  There is version 10, which is ancient by software standards, which is why some people are having problems running it on version 8.1 of Windows.  X6 is basically version 16 of Chief Architect.

I can make it happen in a new X6 plan if I have two cabinets butt together in a corner.

I have seen some problems with this and I think it's related to whether or not the cabinet is bumped up against another one (and which side is bumped).  I usually just use single cabinets instead of the double face ones and adjust the left and right stiles where needed to get the correct look.

If I remember right, Suite only let's you create a picture of an elevation but you can't add any annotations or do much with it. You should take a look at Architectural (or even better Pro if it's in your budget).  I think both of these versions will let you do scaled elevations with cad, dimensions, text, etc. 

"...even the cabinet shelves"

Cabinet shelves sometimes show through cabinets depending on your camera type, angle and distance.  I will sometimes adjust or even remove the shelves to make this problem go away.

Yes.  I like to keep images like this in the same folder the plan is in.  Or, you can open up the picture box dialog and check the "save in plan" option. 

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

I can't think of any reason why it couldn't work the same in a section view.  I checked and it wasn't there in X5 either.  I would report it to tech support as a bug/feature request.  Maybe it's something easy they can add.

This looks pretty basic to me.  Just draw your walls making sure to define the separate levels as separate rooms.  Adjust the floor and ceiling heights appropriately.  Then just draw (or click to place) the stairs where you want them to go.  They should automatically span the level change.  There should be some training videos on stairs that may help.

A trick I sometimes use is to turn on all of the layers and then use "select all" (control-a).  If there is an object way out in Timbuktu, the select all will pick it up and then you can zoom in on the corners to find it and delete it.  You sometimes have to do this on each floor. 

My best guess is that you have something that is far away from the rest of the model.  You can usually find these things by turning on all layers and zooming out to find it.

Another thing that I have seen cause this is when you get a "shark fin" or "flag pole" in your model.  These can be caused by bad facias or wall connections or other things.

I am going to assume that you are using an overview camera.  I don't think you will have the problem using a full camera.

Just because your plan file is "no bigger" then other plan files does not mean that it will work the same.  It may generate many more surfaces when you create a camera view.  It might also contain something (like a library symbol) that Chief doesn't like.  I would try deleting things to see if the problem goes away which will help you figure it out what is causing it.  If all else fails, post the plan or contact tech support.

Seems like a video card/driver problem.  I would first try updating your video card drivers.