tchomes

Aaron, yes, our team is seeing a significant lag time between X18 and X17 with the same files. Specifically in 3D cameras, but a couple of my employees report that anytime they zoom in or out, they see walls and fixtures slightly move on the screen. They don't actually move distances, but it is enough that the eye sees it and it causes issues. Like they are ghosting...

Thanks everyone! Glad to know that i am not alone. I have requested for Chief to turn off the automatic view updates when relinking a file to save us time and liability for views being updated that we don't necessarily need or want to be updated. I am ok with check box that states "Update all linked views" and the user can choose to check it or not. Charles, I understand your approach, but that would create "thousands" of unnecessary files. As we get to the sixth or more revisions, we would have six copies of a tile image and every other image/material that we used in the plan, which could be hundreds. Then there is the mess of working with zip files and opening them. I do feel this is the best way to export the "full" file and all materials, but we place all of our materials on a general folder on our server that Chief can hit when it opens so that each user has access to any custom materials that were created. Thanks to everyone for their replies. I don't peruse Chief Talk as much as I used to years ago, but glad that it is still a supportive community.

I would like to know how medium firms (5+ users) are handling their project management with Chief Architect. We have been using our own system for 20 years, but with X18, maybe there is another method that is easier that has passed me by. Specifically, our files are shared between our designers in our office, as in multiple people may work on them at any given time (not at the same time). Our current system: - We use a network drive (16 TB) to store our Chief Architect files (.plan & .layout) - We version our designs during the design process by keeping the .plan and .layout file in sync and using a "letter" to denote version number. Example - Smith Residence a.plan & Smith Residence a.layout. We will create a .pdf with the version letter, Smith Residence a.pdf to share with the client along with 30-50 snapshot renderings all labeled with the "a" designation. - When a customer requests a revision, we save as the .plan and .layout to a new letter and relink. Example - Smith Residence b.plan & Smith Residence b.layout - and a new "b".pdf and "b" renderings I realize this keeps multiple copies of both files throughout the project, but occassionally, our clients will want to go back to a previous revision or they want pieces of a previous revision and we can open the previous .plan and .layout file. I realize we could use the "Archives" for this, but the archives are only controlled by time (Date/time stamp) and not by the designer. Our designers might create two versions in the same day if they did some edits in the morning, submitted to the client, and the client requested additional edits in the same day and the designer was able to work them later in the day and resubmit. With the "Archives", which we have set up as daily, we would not be able to go back to the previous revision. We keep track of revisions as that is how we know internally, where the project is and our clients are allowed so many revisions before we start charging for more. This system has served us well for over 20 years and 1,500 projects, but now with X18, when we do a save-as, Chief automatically goes in and updates every view. We export a lot of Vector Views. We do not use the live views. This allows us to do line view edits to clean up views. However, with the automatic update, it is killing our process because we may have 50 views that are being updated (elevations, sections, cabinets) and we do not want those automatically updated as we do not know what changed. It is a liability to our construction dwgs. We have not used Chief's Project Manager, as it did not seem like a good fit for us and the qty of files we work on with multiple people. On average our .plan files are about 100Mb and our .layout files are about 20Mb. This is without exporting all the "library, texture & image" files each time, which is how I understand the Chief Project Manager works. I am an old dog, but always open to process improvements as efficiency is king in our business. Please share your method for versioning projects. Thank you for your time. Tracy's Custom Home Designs

Thank you Perry. I tried that, but it did not fix the issue.

I don't do a ton of basement designs, however, this plan has a walkout basement. We are pouring a stem wall around the front of the home, shown in a grey wall on floor 0. However, when the stem wall is next to the slab for the porch, the adjacent walls are not showing in 3D. The walls and ceiling heights are showing correctly in 3D. All the other walls that are not next to a slab show correctly and I am using the same/similar wall type. I appreciate your help.

We use the tools --> Reference Plan Files so that we only have one place to go to change all the elevation views. As we get closer to finals, we may have 20-30 elevation/cross section, cabinet views and doing them individually would be very time consuming. Again, this is something that has just started happening with X16, so hoping there was a toggle to turn this feature off. Also, typically when re-linking to the latest file, our Plot Line Views will automatically turn on color when we click to save the .pdf the first time. So we usually have to "print to pdf" twice. The first time it goes through and updates the views and makes them color. We close that one and then we can re-print to .pdf and it will be correct. This doesn't happen everytime, but often enough that our designers have to check before closing and saving. We have 60+ open projects at any given time in our office and most of my designers are making small updates to 3-4 projects per day, so this is a time consuming task that we didn't have in X15. We pride ourselves on trying to be as efficient as possible.

I appreciate the feedback, but we only use Plot Lines. We never use Live View.

We create versions for the .plan and .layout file for each time we send it to the customer so we can revert back to previous versions if needed. So our process includes renaming the .plan and .layout each time and re-linking it in the .layout file. When X16 came about, now when you re-link to a new filename, it automatically goes and updates all the elevations views (Exterior cameras as well as wall elevations). I am wondering how to turn this off? This can be very time consuming when working on older files as well as when making minor adjustments to files. All view Dependent Edits are lost as it refreshes the view. I am sure this is a nice feature that was requested by some, but it has negative drawback to my design firm. I appreciate letting me know where to uncheck this feature. Thank you.

So far, so good...

Having a problem with the program seeming to crash repeatedly. The error message is below. Has anyone seen this and been able to correct the problem?

Thanks everyone for their comments. I’ve decided to switch all of our future meetings to Teams and we will try it out. I won’t cancel my zoom subscription until we used TEAMS for a month or so without hiccups. I’ve decided not to get Teams integrated VoIP phones. Seems shortsighted initially. Thanks again everyone!

I did a search before writing this, but didn't find anything quickly so.... For those of you that share your Chief screen with a client while doing design work, have you had any issues with Teams vs Zoom? I ask as we have been using Zoom since COVID, but thinking of switching to MS Teams since we already have the license with Office 365 and are looking to integrate TEAMS phones. However, I read that MS Teams can have some issues when sharing video with lots of users. The most we have on our design meetings is 3-4 users, so unsure if the articles are talking about 100's of users as in a general sales meeting or classroom setting, or if sharing video like Chief, would be problematic... Not a big issue to switch back, except for the fact that we may get hardware for our office phones that would be setup for VOIP with MS Teams. not sure if the hardware will still work if we switch back to Zoom and go with another VOIP provider. Thanks in advance for your great knowledge!

and that is why I posted this in the suggestions section so that maybe the program can be changed to offer this as a room style.

Hello, My name is Scott with Tracy's Custom Homes in Texas. I am trying to figure out how to make a "Room Type" for our porches and patios. I want the patio floor to be dropped 1.5" all the way around. I used the Garage room type. This was the only one I could find that would allow you to lower the slab floor. How can I make a room type that will allow you to lower the slab floor for a porch and can be saved to our master template for everyone to use?

Thanks for both of your ingenious ideas! I used the polyline as a road perimeter with a curb. I had to set the curb 1" tall for it to show all the brick as it appeared the terrain was cutting the curb otherwise. I used the road marking for the cross bands. In hindsight, I may could have used the road again, as the road marking you can't set the defualt height and it creates a little bit of a "toe trip hazard", but for my CD's, it won't be noticeable. Thanks again for your creativity! I knew I could count on Chief Talk.