KristjanM

Kbird1, Didn't think of going through Word. Thanks for that tip.

Anyone have list of the CA shortcuts in a spreadsheet format? I haven't been able to convert the pdf or html formats to anything useable.

So as I'm learning CA, I'm looking at shortcuts. These are so important. I watched a video and the presenter mentioned a two letter shortcut. In all the softwares I've used, you cannot have a two letter shortcut (except Revit which uses two letter combinations for all shortcuts). I'm not talking about two key shortcuts such as ones which involve ctrl or alt etc.. So experimenting a bit, give a shortcut of TX to text. Works fine. Give a shortcut of TR to rich text. Works fine. Change text back to T... Chief won't allow a single and double letter shortcut to start with the same letter. Smart Chief programmers. So...thinking of incorporating this with single letters for the most used commands and two letters for other things. I basically hate any shortcut which involves ctrl or alt. When I was using Revit, I really liked the two letter combinations. Chief has the added bonus of also allowing the single key use. Anyone using a similar strategy?

Eric, Thanks for your quick and simple solution. That's an easy fix.

I have a foundation corner which doesn't seem to display correctly (for what I want). 8' tall wall meets a 2' tall wall at a corner. In the plan view, I want to see the tall wall but not the short wall which is under a patio slab. If i put the short wall on a separate layer and turn it off in the plan view, the tall wall shortens. If I look at the walls in 3D, the tall wall doesn't shorten when I turn off the short wall. There doesn't seem to be any way (that I can discover) to keep the tall wall at it's correct length in 2D. Any suggestions?Foundation Corner Visibility.plan Foundation Corner Visibility.zip

rgardner, The ortho textures are easy. It's a problem when the timbers are at 30 deg or 60 deg or whatever. It wouldn't be that much work to create textrures slanted at a specific angle. Just lazy after working with software which automatically aligns the textures. I'm going to try both ways, with the truss tool and with solids and find which one I prefer. I'm sure there will be instances when one or the other is better for a specific job. Thanks for your suggestions.

Thanks for all the comments. I have downloaded the plan and can see the solids. Using a combination of posts, beams and solids should be fairly straightforward. Now if you could just get the textures to automatically align to the length of each member, I'd be really happy.

Kiwideziner, I guess that should be obvious. Having just looked at a number of 3D solid videos. I can now see how it was done. solver, not sure what you mean. In Canada, a timber would be a larger wood structural member that would come from a sawmill, not a lumber yard. I realize that timber means lumber in other places. There are certainly some timber frame pieces in the sample plan.

I am brand new to Chief. One of the sample plans I am particularly interested in is titled "Timber Frame". Does anyone know how the timber work was created? In Chief or somewhere else and imported in?

Thanks to all for your comments. I tried obj and skp imports. Obj is not too good with some missing faces. Skp was actually good with everything there. Exporting is another issue to be confirmed. Just tried the 3ds file from Chief and it fails at the end becuase of missing textures. I played around with the texture locations but haven't been sucessful yet. Kris

I am using the trial version and am having no luck with one of my requirements. Since the trial version has no export capabaility, Chief has sent me some sample files in dae and dwg format. When I open the dae fie in SU, the import fails. When I open the dwg file, SU locks up before the file loading is finished. I need SketchUp in my workflow for a number of reasons which Chief doesn't satisfy. Is anyone sucessfully using SkecthUp in conjunction with Chief? KristjanM