Chrisb222

Hey, look at the bright side- X15 is a great version, and the good folks at Chief Architect are allowing you to continue using it at no cost. Many software companies switched to subscription and immediately deactivated their long-term legacy licenses.

Gene, I often manually edit attic walls if they aren't behaving how I want. In your case I was able to edit the attic wall into one wall with the correct shape to accept the window (I also changed the wall type to Siding-4 since I assume you won't want ICF attic walls). I went at your file with abandon so it's a bit of a mess but I attached it if you want to see what I did: CB Bob Landgraf Barndo.plan.zip In my opinion this need will probably force you to manually model either the post or the beam (or both) in that spot. Getting that to auto generate wouldn't be worth my time, if this were my project.

^^

Hi Shane. Yeah I've seen that a lot on auto generated roof trim. Not sure why it happens, but something I do that often works is just selecting the errant trim, grabbing one of the end handles and moving it slightly then letting go. In your case, doing this forced both sides to generate. Selecting that trim edge is tricky sometimes but look for it on the Roofs, Trim layer. Might have to do that more than once as you work on the model. It's a Chief Thang!™

Shane, I see the problem in your original post using your attached plan. After some experimentation with a new Residential Template plan, when you specify a custom label using Specify Label under Room Label Defaults at the START of a new plan, all rooms will adopt that label. Any new rooms, even new rooms created by adding a wall to split a room into two rooms will also adopt that default. However, if you change the default settings, it doesn't affect the existing rooms. Once the room is created it will retain the default settings assigned at that time. You would need to go into each room and change its custom label. However, if you change the default settings and create a new building, those rooms will adopt the new settings, and retain them until they are changed in the Room Specification dialog. See the attached image from your plan file. I think this feature was, as most big changes seem to be, taken out of the oven while only half-baked. IMO the program should automatically update all room labels that use the default settings if those settings are changed. Also, there should be a way to specify whether a default room type uses the default label settings or not, or uses different default settings. This could be accomplished by adding the label settings to the already existing room default's Label panel, along with checkboxes to either use the global room label defaults, the specific room's label defaults, or the automatic label. I have an ongoing discussion with tech support regarding the changes to the room label, and will add this issue to that thread.

X18 Residential Template does not treat mulled windows as doors when "Treat as Door" is checked in Mulled Unit defaults. That setting only applies when a door is part of the mull, and why the checkbox is dimmed for a windows-only mull. Schedule still reports window-only mulled units as windows, even when this setting is checked in defaults. So it's hard to say what's going on with your file. Just guessing the problem is in your template plan, a custom mulled window library item, or your macro. Post the plan for better replies.

Because the wall is using a randomly assigned repeating pattern to represent the blocks, not stacking actual individual blocks like you would irl. You can force it to look how you want, mostly, with some work. Need to adjust the material and pattern offsets in the Define Material dialog, or by using the Interactive Material Editor. You may possibly need to create copies with different adjustments to get it to look how you want. See if this Knowledge Base article helps: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00194/changing-the-direction-of-a-material-s-pattern-and-texture.html

Yeah, I think it's a bug. Saw it come across not too long ago, the Open Below room is causing it. See the thread below for some other workarounds besides dragging the wall down, which is probably the easiest. But you're right, you shouldn't have to, and any of them I tried will screw with your framing. It would be nice if you sent it in to tech support and reported back. Maybe someone else can figure out a setting to fix it, but as soon as you change that to a normal room it corrects itself.

If the ends are currently touching each other, click on one of the lines to select it, then click again on the end point, and they should connect. If some of the ends aren't touching where you cannot make a closed polyline without changing the line's size or angle, that's a different situation with a different process...

I run into this a lot. I have several things I do to try and make them align, sometimes one works better than the other. It seems that the default porch ceiling height relative to the roof structure is the culprit, as the roof structure can force the eave (front) beam down. Take a cross section elevation and see if that's the case. You can try reducing the depth of the gable sub facia, or lowering the porch ceiling, or raising the roof plane baseline height. Check your Roof Structure, make sure it's built using the correct dimensional material, then try setting the roof plane to have "Same Height Eaves" checked and "Same Roof Height at Exterior Walls" unchecked. Try using "trusses no birdsmouth" and make beam 11". Also try moving the roof plane baseline out to the outer face of the beam, from a plan view. These are some of the ideas in my "Notes on Usage" file, but most of them cancel Auto Roofs. If you post the plan I'm sure someone will fix it.

Wow, nice to see several things I've asked for. Fill Style by Layer is huge for me. Looks like a really good upgrade. Thanks @ChiefArchitect!

Drywall area, sheet count, thickness, type* all can be captured from the wall object properties. But you can't get that into a schedule without ruby macros, as far as I know. *An actual "type" property doesn't exist. To define different Types (eg standard, fire code, green board, etc) you would create separate materials for those, and identify them in the Material Name field, which is a property. Not that I'm aware.

It requires a custom macro, custom schedule, and some initial setup in your wall definitions. Can be done but a little beyond the scope of free assistance for most. If you don't know how to do it, several people here offer custom work for hire, maybe post in Seeking Services if no one volunteers: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/15-seeking-services/

@JonathanK Well, in my defense I was specifically replying to your complaint about having to draw everything manually, so forgive me for assuming you weren't aware of easier methods. You mentioned manually drawing things multiple times and didn't mention other methods, so I thought my post would be helpful. You're right though, it's ridiculous that the line weight and color options for those layers has no effect on elevation views. Sadly, it's not the only thing about Chief I'm disappointed in...

Be aware, many times turning off the endcap produces a tiny dash at the end of the line that doesn't look good. I don't like the endcap, but haven't been able to get away from it because most times the endcap looks better than nothing.

In Preferences, set this value to zero:

I don't know what you mean exactly by "work correctly" since the software is working how it was designed and intended, but if you send your elevations to layout as Plot Lines, you have complete control over every line in the drawing. You can also add lines. It's not automatic, but by marquee-selecting lines you can edit them pretty fast. Certainly faster and easier than manually drawing it all from scratch.

Go to CAD > Lines > Line Style Management, copy one of the dashed lines and see how it's defined, edit to what you want. Or use one of these: dashed lines.plan

Yes, this can be done automatically using the "conditioned = true/false" Room object property. You'll need to insert a call to that property in the OIP for each room. Pull the value for this property into your room schedule. Set it up in your template plan and layout so it works on future plans without any further manual work, unless you add a room type, then just copy an existing type for the new.

All my SPVs that go to layout are specific floor. But I tested it when switching to the design-stage SPVs I use that are set to Any Floor, they maintain the floor level of the previous view before relinking.

Yeah, put it on the partition:

I've found the copy/paste hold position, then relink the plan view to be the fastest and easiest. Something's off on your SPV settings. This doesn't happen to me.

So I showed that the software generates accurate numbers. This is a question for your designer. Sure there is. Change 500 to 472.

No clue. See attached, these are "software generated numbers" derived from an OOB factory Chief Architect template file: What software is your designer using?

Fix the stair tool!!