ACADuser Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Creating a room area table from a room finish table & want ceiling height in feet & inches like the room dimension column. How to change this column from inch only to feet & inches? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlackore Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Creating a room area table from a room finish table & want ceiling height in feet & inches like the room dimension column. How to change this column from inch only to feet & inches? The lack of an option within the Schedule dbx to format how measurements are displayed is befuddling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACADuser Posted January 8, 2015 Author Share Posted January 8, 2015 Wow, so much for a dynamic table if you have to explode it to text. I won't say any more because apparently I've been complaining too loudly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Wow, so much for a dynamic table if you have to explode it to text. I won't say any more because apparently I've been complaining too loudly. Don't stop complaining. We like people who are willing to work with us to help improve the program. Some of our most effective testers are those that complain the most. The only thing I ask is that you try to do so in a professional manner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 And to be clear. I think you have been professional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACADuser Posted January 8, 2015 Author Share Posted January 8, 2015 Thank you sir, glad to hear someone is listening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 I too think the Schedules and Materials List need a major Overhaul , a good Quantity Surveyor could help greatly there. M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Wynsong, I can't use the materials list because of things like not being able to map the materials to a particular wall for instance. Can you explain what you mean by this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 There's an organizational theory that states you can't make people feel OK about a detriment by providing a benefit to "cancel it out". You actually have to deal with the detriment and fix it or they won't feel good about your product no matter how many new features you give them and not fix the issues that are making them unhappy. Well said, too many are willing to accept the "unacceptable" Chief is wonderful - can't imagine using anything else but it can be frustrating with all the "workarounds" that stay around ... Lew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 OK, so that wasn't a good example that you quoted, but you did use it as an example to demonstrate your position. And you then said And, on and on it goes. I am not try to pick on you. I am trying to understand exactly what you are saying. Anyway...On to the material list that you post above. You say that you are confused by it - but you don't explain why. From what I can see, it is a normal materials list. It would be interesting to see the plan and material list together. It can be customised to display or hide the information you want. What I see is a list of all the various walls in the plan listed by their height and wall type. You can display or hide columns, or even the whole of the General category if you don't want it at the top of the materials list. You can assign rows to different categories...and on it goes. I'm by no means saying the materials list is perfect, but maybe you need to do a bit more study to understand how it works. Things like roof area are really easy to get. Select all the roof areas you want to include and open the dbx. Go to the Polyline panel. There should be more than enough information for you there. Or...you could use the material list. I just checked on a simple plan and the roof dbx gives me a Roof Surface area of 40.89sq m. The material list gives me 40.92sq m. Close enough for me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Wynsong, Yes, it is a pity that we have to waste so much time learning how the program works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich_Winsor Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Sounds to me like you are being penny wise and pound foolish. If using Chief is costing you so much you should just bite the bullet and purchase that "other CAD program" that you seem to think will solve all your problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Sounds to me like you are being penny wise and pound foolish. If using Chief is costing you so much you should just bite the bullet and purchase that "other CAD program" that you seem to think will solve all your problems. Hey guys, I was in my sons office today, (he is a REVIT user), he spit out a few very nice raytraces in less than 15 seconds. Hopefully he will be at workshop tomorrow morning and I did ask him to send me some of his raytraces that I will share with you prior to the meeting........ I ain't gunna take up any of Jon Caffee's or Jintu's time promoting REVIT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill_Emery Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I like using Chief, and there are things it does exceeding well; but I do have to say that Wynsong has a valid point. Chief has a lot of features that barely work, or only work for certain common scenarios. Here are a few examples. · Stairs are an example of a feature that works for common stairways, but is severely limited when the stairs are a little out of the ordinary. · Schedules (as Wynsong pointed out) are quite limited in their formatting capabilities, and are so fickle that it's impossible to have a comprehensive door schedule on more than one floor even though they were updated for X6. The formatting issue would not be so bad if we were allowed to use macros to create the formatting that we want. · Ruby and macros, although they have some usefulness, are simply a dead end. · We still don't have the ability do get doors and windows right, even though they've had some attention over the years. · Foundation walls which have had recent attention will only work in very common situations. Try putting together a slab foundation with insulation layers, steps, and interface with existing slab, and you're in for a tremendous waste of time. · Don't get me started on the material list. I know the system well, but I'm still exporting to excel and sorting endlessly to get what I need. · Components are another obtuse area of Chief that leave me shaking my head. I think the problem comes down to resources. Chief is a relatively small company with limited resources. They are in a competitive market and must keep it's capabilities on a par with its competition. What I noticed over the years that I've used Chief is that features that are added are so rushed that they are just developed to the point where they barely work, work in some situations, or are simply an incomplete solution. Sometimes things get fixed with a patch, but often it's just called good enough. I like improved features and capabilities, but I think it's important to make these new features fully functional. And it certainly wouldn't hurt to go back and fix a lot of things that have just been incomplete or broken for a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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