KristjanM

Perfect. That does the trick. Thank you.

I don't have any walls in my energy file as I am drawing lines, slabs etc on top of the plan pdf. This gives me plan view areas, volumes and lengths. I use p-lines for things which go around corners (eg. gutter total length which go around a hip roof). I do need to calculate certain area items which I have to do in an elevation view such as the total wall area of the foundation which is above grade. I total these in a schedule. This is all good. What I am trying to achieve is a reduction in the number of items I have to draw on the elevation views. For example - a house with 14 corners which has 8 wall areas which have sloping exterior grade. These areas all have to be drawn on an elevation view. The other areas have consistent depth above grade which if I could get a p-line perimeter multiplied by the area height, this would give me an area to total with fewer items to draw. I could use a rectangle as you suggest but the fewer steps the better. I can give a p-line a height custom field but even if this field is defined as a number, I can't multiply this height by the perimeter and get a number. I have the feeling this isn't possible. Might have to rethink my workflow.

I do something similar for areas which have a sloping grade level but am looking for a way to use a plan view for areas which have a consistent height.

I use Chief for design work principally but also use it to generate data to input to energy modeling software. I use polylines and slabs to generate lengths, areas and volumes drawn over the plan pdf.. This works very nicely. What I would really like to generate is a surface are from a polyline or some other strategy to get a surface area. For example, to get the above ground area of a foundation wall, I could draw a polyline and give it a height thusly generating an area. I could use some version of a pony wall but it gets tedious and I am looking for simplicity. I tried assigning a custom field (defined as a number) and multiplying this by the line perimeter but this doesn't work (for me). Any clever suggestions out there?

Just tried it both ways, object snaps on and off. Wall doesn't snap either way. Curious. Well, the wall does snap but it is very finicky. Works about one in five times. Changed my pixel snap distance to 30 and now the snap shows up. I had it set at 10 which was obviously set too low. My issue is solved I think. Thanks to all for your help.

PS. While construction lines aren't a usual thing in residential drawings, I find them useful (I come from a commercial construction background) and the engineer likes them.

Yes, point to point absolutely works. Thanks. Walls are already set to outside main layer. With bump on, wall snaps to outside of wall, not outside of main layer. With bump off, wall doesn't snap at all. Looks like point to point wins for the moment.

I do like to use construction lines to locate important junctions. The snapping behavior in Chief doesn't seem to help. If I move a wall to align with a construction line, the wall snaps to the outside layer of the wall. I cannot make the wall's main layer align with the construction line which is what I want. Am I missing something here?

Yes, that was it. Print in color was turned off. I never fiddle with that setting so don't know why it was off. Anyway, my gray fill is back. Thanks for the clue.

In my title sheet and view labels, I have a light gray box behind the text. Today, when I export my layout sheets to PDF, the boxes of grey fill only display the outline and don't display any fill. I have used layout to pdf successfully last week in X16. First thought - updated some drivers a few days ago, maybe that's the issue. Doesn't appear to be. Restart the computer. Doesn't help. Try a file in X15. Works perfectly. Install X16 on my laptop which has a different set of drivers. Same missing grey fill. Tried to print with my pdf driver (not the chief one), doesn't work. Stumped at the moment.

Joe, I will try your directions out. Your template will be my homework. Thanks.

Okay, interesting. If I put refenced into the number format macro, it now works in the text box. However, now it doesn't work in the label. Seems like two macros are required for the different uses. Thanks for the help.

I have a rectangle with a label - macro values for perimeter and area plus two macros for perimeter and area using number formatter. All values display correctly. In a text box, I place exactly the same text as in the label. The two built in macros for perimeter and area display but the number format macros don't work. Can this actually work? Different syntax in the text box?

Thanks for your comments. Kind of what I thought but you never know.

Two part question - 1) For an object (a closed polyline for example), the object properties gives several items which are classified as measurements. These items can produce a totals row in a schedule. In my case, my area displayed would be in sq. ft. I also need sq metres which I can get by doing some kind of conversion in a custom field or using a object information field. All is good as I have the two numbers displayed in the schedule. However, the sq m field doesn't total even if I convert it to a float. It seems that only measurement fields will total and there is no way to define a custom field as a number. Correct or not? Is there a way to get a total from custom field? 2) I have total displayed in a schedule. Is there any way to grab this number for use as a variable?