Chrisb222

That's been my experience: beautiful, but unusable. I'll try some of the suggestions here to see if it will work eventually, the quality is worth the time trying if successful.

I've tried exterior renderings using the free version of ChatGPT. They looked beautiful, but the architecture got transformed into a Frankenstein mess that looked similar to my design, but if you've seen much AI rendering you know what I mean... just weird. Maybe the paid versions would be more true to the original, and less goofy?? No front door and no way to get to it if there was. And a driveway for motor scooters. Beautiful though... I wish I could render in chief like that, and as fast.

Normal method would be Roof Cuts Wall at Bottom: That didn't work for me, which I suspect is being caused by the roof hole for the dormer, but I was unsuccessful at getting that setting to work. I did however succeed at "faking it" by changing the wall to Interior 4 and manually dragging the attic wall down to cover the drywall: I would roll with this, but if it really bugged me I would send it to tech support.

Yep, that looks much better, I'd like the ability to specify the underline offset, and the line weight. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/ Good luck!

Yes it's close, closer than I'd like, but not touching. CA PDF driver output matches the screen:

It does not touch the text for me, in plan or layout, Arial on a Mac. I also tried a couple different fonts, no thouchie.

It's something to do with the wall type there, which is specified as Deck/Fence, and the standard Railing/Fence wall type is not in your plan. If you change that to one of your interior railing styles, and change the layers to the same as your Deck/Fence type, the roof doesn't generate: I noticed in your file, that extra line I talked about wasn't there and it's always there if I use the normal Railing/Fence wall type. That's what tipped me off, and you can see the lines in my screenshot. I don't know what's different about those wall types causing the different behavior, but that's what's causing it.

It doesn't do that for me: Post the plan and I'll take a look to try and see what's going on. I suspect the porch room is extending out past the house wall which isn't necessary for this technique to work. My biggest complaint with the technique is visible lines where the overhang meets the slab in vector views, which you can see in my pic. Another problem is the automatic ceiling will extend through the attic wall to the outermost edge of the overhang, which you can also see. There are other methods. One popular method is to delete the floor structure of the porch and manually draw in a slab, which eliminates the extra lines in vector views. Another is to use a 3D solid around the porch with concrete material. You can also do that with a molding poly line, but both of those also show the extra lines. There's another method that's pretty complicated that works well, I've used it but to me it's not worth the extra effort involved.

Several methods. One of the easiest I've found is add a concrete layer to each side of whatever wall you used to define the porch:

Yes it will, you probably don't have that layer turned on in floor plan view.

It is: "Distribute evenly" is easily done in floor plan view.

One of the best moves I made using multiple monitors is placing one monitor vertically, for the ALDO, Library Browser, Project Browser, and Activity History palettes. This lets them run really long vertically which cuts down on scrolling through those long lists.

Badge of honor!

As mentioned, need to know more about what you're after, but several options exist:

Module lines are the lines between the individual cabinet components. Sometimes I want to show them.

Simplest answer is to turn off display of the Cabinets, Module Lines layer. If you want to see module lines on other cabinets but not the fillers, you can open the filler, go to Box Construction, check Framed and set Separation to 0. That may negatively affect other aspects of your model, however.

I didn't say they were totally different, I said they're not exactly the same. One of the main differences in MY workflow is being able to deactivate Perspective Crop Mode, which returns the camera to it's normal foreshortening behavior, allowing me to tailor perspective views in ways I can't using the more simple Zoom tool. For instance, activate PCM, zoom a little, orbit a little, deactivate and zoom in/out, orbit, reactivate. It gives me great flexibility in fine-tuning a view. You may operate differently, and that's ok. In fact, PCM completely eliminated my need for the Zoom tool, and I have none of them on my toolbar because PCM and the scroll wheel do all they do and more, in one tool. It really is a great tool that shouldn't be deprecated, IMO. No. Thanks for agreeing they're not exactly the same.

Not exactly the same. Both of those methods do funky things to the camera. Perspective Crop Mode can be activated and deactivated in ways that retain the other camera functions and settings making it much more useful. In my methodology, at least.

@decorators3I've been curious about this all day because I couldn't find this tool anywhere in the menus or the default toolbars, so I went to Help to see what's going on: Perspective Crop Mode In Chief Architect X8 through X11, Perspective Crop Mode allowed older functionality governing zooming in cameras from Version X7 and prior to be preserved in saved cameras in legacy plans migrated forward. This deprecated tool has been removed from the program’s menu and toolbars in Version X12, although it can be migrated with legacy toolbars and hotkeys. Saved cameras in legacy plans with this behavior enabled may become distorted if you pan or zoom in the view. That's when I remembered that at one time Chief changed the functionality of how the perspective cameras dealt with perspective foreshortening. If you want to use Perspective Crop Mode, you have to go into Customize Toolbars and add the tool to your toolbar manually. It really shouldn't be a deprecated tool, it's a great and very useful tool for manipulating perspective views, I use it all the time. They don't even address how to use it in Help, only what is mentioned above. I just wanted to clarify this in case you were having problems finding the tool and making this work, because it will work fairly well for what you want to do. Let me know if you have any questions.

Perspective Crop Mode prevents the camera from foreshortening the view as you zoom in and out. So once you're really far out and foreshortening is decreased, Perspective Crop Mode will maintain that perspective when you zoom back in. It's not perfect, but it's close.

Then the closest you'll get, since PB is not available in elevation camera, is: Open a Perspective Full Overview Go to 3D > View Direction > Front View Zoom out really far, until your model is tiny Activate Perspective Crop Mode* Zoom in to desired field of view *I don't know where this tool lives, I've had it on my custom toolbars too many years to remember

Cross Section/Elevation camera, shoot the front. Or, take an Orthographic Full Overview, then go to 3D > View Direction > Front View. This view can be rotated and manipulated. Either will give you the angle you want, and can be switched to Standard technique, but not Physically Based. Any true 3D perspective view is going to show foreshortening.

I don't think Google is wrong here. The way I read that, it says yes you can fillet arcs... the newly created arc being the result of the fillet action. Key phrase: "add curves to corners" which is exactly what the tool does. I see nothing in the clip saying that it fillets a straight segment into an existing arc.

Depends on what you want from the template that's not in the plan. If you just want default sets or plan views, just export/import to the old plan.

Yes, I understand. The doors I created can also be selected within the DBX, regardless whether the default door is a Library Object or a standard Chief door style. I knew this when I posted and assumed it's something about how Steve created the doors, but I don't have his catalog so I didn't comment on that. Here's my catalog if you're interested: