Archnot-Boltz

There in lies one of the most glaring and basic problems with the way Chief draws or demarcates a deck or porch perimeter/edge (which should be a Single Line entity that does not effect Railing or Ceiling demarcations). Same for Roofs & their Soffits.

Hey Ben, I feel your pain. I used two layer walls (framing layer & ext. sheathing layer) for many years starting with Chief '97 because of dimensioning issues with Chief dimensioning to the vinyl siding layer. During that period (when the soffit tool was the do all 3d workhorse workaround!), I would assign drywall as the framing layer material and siding as the exterior sheathing layer material in order to have my 3d model look "correct" for renderings and elevation views. Worked fine until I got tired of this limiting work a round and started wrastling with wall layers and the frequent manual dimension snap error that I would miss and have my drawings thrown off by a 1/2" (even worse if I forgot to change the size of my 7/16" OSB sheathing to 1/2"). Always had issues on Remods of old buildings with 20" plus stone foundation walls. The simplest fix for Chief would be to, BY Default, have the interior walls stop (automatically snap) at the inner layer of the exterior walls. Also, in lieu of the Wall Layer Adjustment Tool (which has greatly improved wall connection edits but can still be a frustrating PITA), would be for Chief to Stop Auto Snapping Once a wall has been drawn and give us Snap Points to All of the walls Layers without being crippled by that damn "Main Layer" setting. Also, regarding errant dimensions, I've suggested, requested, whined to phone support that Each Wall Layer Should have a Separate Toggle to "DO NOT LOCATE W/ DIMENSION SNAP-PLEASE!". Amazing that your Real World Daily Issue that envolves and effects your ability to create accurate and efficient creation of design drawings has been Once Again, Trumped (not the "ex" Pres) by Rendering and Kitchen Design Tools in X13. Let the brow-beating begin!-BB Oh, and thanks to Eric for another excellent video illustration.

Problem Solver is a great guy (totally cool accent for relaxed how to vids) but dang if he don't let the programmers off the hook with his mad skills! Guess I'll have to wait another 20 yrs for them to fix Bay and Bow windows (forgot the secret handshake again for those Bow Diddley rascals!). Onward to that Bow window thread, sorry for intruding.

No, I always joke about poorly designed tools that yield consistently inconsistent results and are a PITA to use!

What's "Grid Line"?

Is the Terrain Tool going to stop sucking?

I'm with you there on the S&M aspect of having the pain with the pleasue (and to be clear, I'm not into S&M!). Many times, I just wished that they would just do periodic patch upgrades as they are developed. It's a major Biache to update previous version files, which I think should be handled by Chief providing some coding that allows you to hit a button to keep the original drawing file and create an upgrade file that is usable with the new version. Seems a shame to not be able to always access an older project.

Wow, another dang "Secret Handshake"! I've been using Chief's inadequate bay and bow windows (as little as humanly possible!) since 1998 and still have to look up how to modify them if I haven't used either for awhile. What does that tell you Chief? (either, I have a lousy memory, which I do or you should address the problem and make this tool or feature more logical and user friendly-and it's not my job to tell you how because I'm not a developer). Doug is a very experienced user and he has to rely on Problem Solver, although it may be described in the most recent manual but for me it was easier to search this forum. Many times in the past, I would bug phone support but today's a Saturday. I searched "Suggestions" first because I know I've brought it up in the past but couldn't find it there because of an anemic search engine (many times it's easier and quicker to do a Google Search because they actually have a fully functioning search engine that doesn't ignore you if you aren't perfectly specific. Now, I'm going over to suggestions and again suggest that Chief rework both Bow and Bay Windows as they've never behaved nor displayed satisfactorily. But thanks to PS and Dermot for answering the question.-BB

Mr Nestor, you are one slick operator. Very nice videos ( I just checked out one of your screened porch vids), excellent. BB

I remember using that one, way back. Haven't seen it in years.

Sounds like clean California doesn't want you to burn wood. For sure they're afraid of seismic liabilty.

Lew, I've been using Chief since 1998 (version 5, I believe) and don't remember not having the roof tool. When I started, there was no Terrain Tool and the big Work-a-Round Tool was the Interior Soffit Tool and "Electronic White-out". As a matter of fact, it was Chief's (more user friendly) roof tool that pushed me in the direction of purchasing Chief '97 vs. Softplan 9. That and the fact that Softplan was still DOS or just changing and cost around $1500, when Chief had a pre-upgrade sale for $599.00 (if I remember correctly).Back then, version upgrades were under $200.00 and occured every 18 mos to 2yrs (and I looked forward to them until the unnessessary upgrade from V9 to V9.5). BB

High or Low? I would think low in proportion to the number of architects that use the Big Boy Programs ( Archicad, Vectorworks, Revit, & ACad). One might venture to say that more homeowner dablers use some incarnation of chief than architects? The majority has to be builders, remodelers and non-licensed "residential designers". The name implies "Architect" unless of course "Chief" refers to Native Americans, which is most certainly does not.

Agreed, but tough to show in a plan view isn't it?

Chief "ARCHITECT"?

Just another dang time wasting Work-a-Round! Please suggest Chief fix all the Pony Wall idiosyncrasies (including alignment controls of Both Pony Walls Layers with upper walls etc). You can do it Nicky!

It means that you have RE-Build Terrain Turned Off in the 3d Settings Dialogue. I just found it for rebuild walls/floors/clgs which was aggrevating the heck out of me. I had my rebuild setting turned off because I was trying to speed up my very slow re-draws (large drawing file I think plus plan was created in x5 or 7 and converted to x12 after sitting for a couple of years.

I can rarely if ever find anything using this. I just found the "House" (rebuild walls/floors/clgs) icon "fix", same as the this Terrain Issue the user is having issues with by Googling it.

Rock n Roll! You have a better memory than me, Robert. Never hurts to continue or revisit the dialogue. Thanks

When you are drawing 2d CAD items, Chief should not have to redraw the screen and for sure not re-build the model. I don't know if it has to do with the Polyline Solids which are 2d CAD that creates 3d objects and Chief can't or won't differentiate between the two? When CAD tools are activated or in use, couldn't Chief just deal with the 2d? Same with text. Text and CAD items show up automatically on layout sheets without having to resend so why not when working in model space?

Thanks David, so, would it be safe for me to take this topic to the Suggestions Forum and request a fix?-BB

Why does Chief rebuild the entire model for a simple 2d CAD Line edit? Hitting the "Escape" button used to stop a model rebuild, what happened to that function? thanks, BB

Wow, I can never find old posts. Glad you found it. Never heard anything back from Chief in regards to the issue, so thanks for the reminder because I wouldn't have remembered. BB

Looks pretty rocking, I guess more bang for buck and portability than a 17"? I assume you hook it up to a monitor for dual screen capability? DataCad17, I didn't know they were still in business. Any improvement over the Dos original which I found difficult to learn? thnaks-bB