rlackore

It's personal preference, but I always place the first story(in your case the ground floor/basement) on Chief's Floor 1. I reserve Floor 0 strictly for the foundation that is below the first story (stem walls, footings, pads, etc.).

Changing the roof shingle thickness to 1/4" fixes the problem for me. Keep in mind that you have to make the change manually for each roof plane, or use the Edit All Roof Planes tool; making the change in the Defaults will not modify existing roofs.

Can you use the Walls options in the Dimension Defaults?

This would be a good Suggestion (it should work for CAD Boxes also).

Certain color ranges will print as black (when printing color to b&w), while others will print as white. I once adjusted all my color fills to print as white when printed to b&w, but when we changed printers that effort was wasted, because as Michael observed, different printers will print differently.

You can save yourself a bit of work by replacing identical objects per floor. For instance, if you have five identical toilets on a floor, select one of them and adjust the fill as desired, then save it to your library. Next, select the toilet (in the plan), and use the Replace From Library tool. It's not a global solution, but AFAIK it's the best Chief offers.

If you can't post the plan, at least post a screen shot or an image of the printed output.

You haven't specified exactly which materials are a mystery, but looking down the list you posted, I quickly found the following: 602 Greentea Concrete 2980 North Cove - 520 Italian Stucco 2713 Bona Vista - B37 Concrete 2091 Soiree - 701 Iron Horse They can all be discovered if you follow the advice of my first reply to your post. Yes, you have to dig a bit, but none of them are a mystery.

I've never exported elevations. Plan views do require clean-up. Most of my exports are used by subs (MEP, civil, etc.) who don't really care how pretty the linework is - they use them as a background to lay out their own work. If you're exporting to folks who need to manipulate your work, or if you need to manipulate it before passing it on, then I feel your pain. Writing a LISP routine should be quick and help automate the process - the real work is in setting up Chief to provide the export in a format that works for your process.

There is no easy way to accomplish what you want. When I export to AutoCAD, I don't normally use the Split Wall Assemblies Into Layers option - as you've observed, it provides far too many layers with unhelpful names. There is a painful workaround: 1. Set up you wall definitions to use a unique color for each "component" of the wall assembly (or as many of the components as matter to you): 2. Export to AutoCAD, and don't split the wall assemblies. You'll get something like this: 3. In AutoCAD, create and set up your layers as you like: 4. Then use CHPROP with a color filter to select the components and assign them to the appropriate Layer and the color to BYLAYER: 5. This series of operations gives you what you want, albeit it requires some setup in Chief that may, or may not, be worth your time: I think I'll request a solution to this in the Suggestion Forum. Good luck.

This is a known issue - many previous posts about this behavior.

Have you checked Default Settings>Materials? This is where many, many material definitions reside: Also, many other subcategories within the Default Settings hold material definitions: And you can purge material definitions that are not longer defined for use in the 3D>Materials>Plan Materials dialog box:

One method is to give the interior wall another wall to snap to. Draw an invisible wall 4" away and drag the interior wall up to it:

You can use all of Chief's tools, including walls, etc. I assume you will be exporting your work to dwg as 2D data only using File>Export>Export Current View (DWG,DXF). During the export process, make sure the Other Options>Export AutoCAD Index Colors is checked.

Assuming you will set up your raytrace to an 8x10 aspect ratio, then divide the lowest resolution number (2400) by the least dimension (8"), which gives 300dpi.

For a face-mount railing, it's more complicated. I prefer to use distributed objects for the newels and the balusters, and a molding polyline for the top and bottom rails. It's more work, but I haven't found a better method.

For a railing on top of a half-wall: 1. Draw the half-wall. 2. Draw the railing and make it No Room Definition and No Locate. 3. Align the railing with the half-wall, then adjust the railing heights as necessary so they are higher than the half wall.

Okay, Chopsaw beat me. But anyway, here's a simple step-by-step: 1. Start a blank plan. 2. Draw an Interior Wall. 3. Insert the door you want, size it appropriately. Then open the door dialog box and uncheck Casing>Use Interior Casing; also set Hardware>Handles/Locks to None and Hardware>Hinges to Hidden. 4. Shoot an ortho view and remove the wall with the 3D>Delete Surface tool. 5. Now you have a door with nothing you don't need. Make it a Symbol with Tools>Symbol>Convert to Symbol. I typically define this kind of thing as a Millwork symbol. 6. Insert into your plan.

Here you go: fralime.pat FYI, the pattern file I uploaded is unnecessarily long and complex (32 lines) because the simple version (12 lines), which works perfectly in AutoCAD, draws incorrectly in Chief. I've submitted this to tech support. If anyone uses AutoCAD and is interested, here is the simple version: frenchlimestone.pat

I agree that the Undo command needs work. Several people have posted suggestions in the Suggestion forum - you could also.

I do the opposite of Ray. I show the lower wall, then lay a CAD mask over the window. The CAD mask is simply a CAD Box, with a solid fill the color of the wall, and the Drawing Group set to 26-Wall so it doesn't hide the Window. This is useful for foundation ponies with furring also.

No, only Rendering techniques are available for walkthroughs.

I forgot the flooring. F=E-(J+K).

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The Finished Ceiing (F) is equal to the Rough Ceiling (E) minus the Ceiling Finish (J). So whatever values you've entered in E and F will determine J.