Chrisb222

Add "not to scale," resubmit.

Did you fix this? I've had that happen in the past when I had my wall definition screwed up. Since you "run into it consistently" I'll guess your template plan has a goofy wall definition. I'm sure if you post the plan you'll get a quick solution.

Katherine, I took it that you want to specify a window by typing in a dimension of, say 36" and the dimension string would show 36" to the outside of the casing. I'm guessing you're measuring an existing room, going from the corner of the room to the first window casing, then measuring that window from the outside edges of the casing, then the drywall space to the next window casing, etc ..... and wanting to draw a room using these type of measurements. If that's right, set up your window defaults with a casing in round numbers say 2" with Overlap Frame set to zero. Then when you enter your window sizes deduct that casing size x2 from the window size. So if you want a window that's 36" to the outside of the casing, enter 32" for the window. Then set your dimension defaults as Eric and Michael said, you'll get the result you're after. If I guessed wrong, well, you get your money back.

This has been discussed and many of us are strongly against it. Software companies like it because they get an endless stream of revenue, even from long term users. I have software I've owned for 20 years that I still use, but only had to pay for once. If Chief had been sold under never-ending subscription fees I would not have bought it. Chief already offers monthly rental now for users who don't want to pay the full price.

+1. I'm certainly glad they mention the new features. I'd hate to have to go digging through the reference manual, comparing that to an older ref manual, just to figure out what's different.

Here's how I do it in a tight spot but your lower level doesn't even meet code minimum 7' ceiling.

Especially suspicious considering the number of doors is a result of "doubling" the number 1 ten times.

Funny, "learnt" is actually a correct usage there. I stopped trying to get one of my guys to stop calling jack studs cripples. He insists so I just go along. He also wants to say something that's level is "plumb" and something that's plumb is "level" but he inconsistently uses the terms interchangeably. Haha. I know what he means. However, printed material in a professional product should be correct. Same to ya!

Haha, that's how I pronounce wainscot, but at least that IS one of the three recognized pronunciations. If I said "WAIN-scutt" around here I'd probably get whacked with a two-by-heavy. "Trey" ceiling is just plain wrong.

Just watched the video. Wow, great upgrade! Tons of great new features. Thanks Chief!

My only gripe so far is all the misspellings of tray ceiling.

Both of these comments have truth and validity to them, but are a little too rigid in my way of viewing Chief. Yes, SPVs can be set to use totally unique anno and layer sets, but it's not necessary and creates extra work when one anno/layer set may be able to serve multiple SPVs. Likewise, discarding anno sets is possible now but also creates extra work unnecessarily. Yes you can create a new SPV without anno sets, but if an existing anno set works for multiple views it's more efficient just to call up the anno set and bam, set everything at once. I'm glad. Anno sets, or now Default Sets are still useful. All these tools are important as they do different things to work together for nearly infinite workflow possibilities.

According to the offer page, the cost will go from $556 now to $1,195 on Jan 7. For me, that would be a reason to jump, but I have a strange attachment to my money.

You might want to jump on that, the year-end sale was extended to Jan 6 https://www.chiefarchitect.com/offers/

Excellent advice. The only thing I would add is that I never go beyond 10 passes. Ray Tracing can be an eternal hell but ultimately yield beautiful results, and it takes many hours of trial and error for the tool to become even remotely usable. Yep, it is NOT a "push button, get results" tool.

My elevations are fast whether vector or standard. I don't see PBR as a display option on elevations. All of my display tasks are handled by an onboard graphics chip in a puny 2.6 GHz i5 dual core processor. I don't think there's anything wrong with Chief running on a Mac.

Chief is optimized fine for me. I use a Mac Mini Late 2014 with 8 GB RAM and on-board Intel graphics, driving two 24" monitors. Probably the weakest system possible to run X11. I can pan around elevations and cross sections with no problem, pretty much real-time except for normal jitters. Orbiting around 3D views is also snappy. Never crashes (knock on wood). Never.

Arial Narrow all caps ~97% Chief Blueprint ~3%

You can also just turn off display of the layer they're on, "Footings, Step Markers."

I typically show shadows on the front elevation only, but yeah when I've shown them on all elevations I use Sun Follows Camera. I don't send color plot lines, so everything including the foundation is black and white.

Depends largely on what one considers "pop" and how much resource they want to put into achieving it. For myself, I find I'm satisfied with a quick simple approach that gets me 80% of where I'd like to be. To get another 10 or 15 percent isn't worth the effort IMO. The techniques I use are, shadows on in Vector View, add some grayscale trees, send to Layout as Plot Lines with "Use Edge Line Defaults" and "Use Pattern Line Defaults" both checked, 20 and 10 line weight respectively. Once in layout, open the object view and change Pattern Line Defaults line color to a light gray. For myself, this got me to a point where I didn't need to develop my technique any more. It's fast, easy, and I like the result.

I have wanted to do something similar but haven't been able to accomplish what you're trying to do, due to Chief's limitations on controlling wall display. At least within my limited knowledge. I have, however, come up with a solution I'm comfortable with, that I understand, and that gets me close to where I want to be. I like to show standard floor plans dimensioned to rough framing, but kitchen layouts to the finished wall surface. And I never want to show layers unless it's a wall with a brick or stone veneer. The two screen captures show an example of my finished drawings, using wall definitions and layer settings. You can see how the floor plan has a 3-1/2" thick interior wall and the kitchen plan has a 4-1/2" thick wall, and the exterior wall is gray on the floorpan and white on the kitchen plan. This is working for me but it would be nice if the wall display had more flexibility.

If I understand what you did, this might be where you went wrong. Do you mean you "changed each wall with stemwall under to show UPPER" ... in the Wall Specification DBX? Because for this to work, ALL PONY WALLS MUST HAVE "DISPLAY IN PLAN VIEW" CHECKED AS "DEFAULT" IN THE WALL SPEC DBX.

Cut/paste in place is a great tool, use it all the time. Also very handy when moving stuff between floors.

This works. Had to drag the walls back up and the "room" that was the box window is now part of the deck. Not sure there aren't other problems caused by this method, but it looks right.