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EDUCAD offers a draughting service for those of you that may need that extra pair of hands.
We also provide help with titlesheet setups (but be aware that Logo's have their limitations).
Files can be easily emailed, so for those of you a little harder to get to frequently, this has been a
great option for draughting help and also for training/problem solving queries. Don't forget our fax too if
you need any help. We can charge you for support this way rather than having to arrange a training session.
Especially for those out of towners.
There are lots of tips and tricks to help each person achieve the desired effect with designing in Chief
Architect. For every different house design these tips could differ, so often it is a matter of spending
some time with our clients, showing them more efficient ways of using Chief Architect for their type of work.
Here are a couple of tips plucked from the hat to help…
Different Finish on Gable end Wall
When a different finish is required at high level in the gable end wall - here's the way to do it.
Extra Dimensions & Alter Auto Dimensions
To add in those extra dimensions and alter where automatic dimensions are located to:
Go to the Dimension Setup Dia. Box, click the LOCATE button and make sure that
dimensions are located to the items you need dimensioned, and most importantly to the
MAIN layer(framing layer). To edit dims or add in, double click on the actual dimension
LINE and use the red hot grips to pull the dimensions to other locations.
Also drag and ‘throw out’ away from the building any that require deleting.
The red hot grips at each end of the dimension line are the add in tools.
Drag and drop extra dimensions in if necessary.
The Soffit tool is useful for many many things but here a couple of handy uses:
1.To represent posts/beams.
2.Applying to denote tiling up to eye level eg. Bathroom tiling to walls/showers etc.
3.Make large soffits to drag under the building to give it a base/ground to sit on for 3D shots.
4.Resize and place above cabinets/counter tops to denote upstands to bench etc.
5.The best reason to use soffits if possible rather than primitives, is that a
material can be applied to the soffit making it represent the actual building
element whereas primitives only hold colour, not material.
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If you find the Living Area that is automatically created by Chief Architect
is a hinderance, try doing the following:
Those of you with Chief Architect ’97 will find that when trying to insert an
image to the plan, a ‘tree’ appears. This tree represents there is an image there,
but does not necessarily represent the actual plan view of the inserted image;
ie. if you had an image of a person you may not want a tree in plan,
you’d want a person.
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If you have constructed your floors for your building and wish to delete them,
ie. Foundation plan, here is the trick:
You will find that there will be several files for one house in the file manager. These are explained in your Chief Architect manual and you will need to read up about these before deleting any.
Trim / Extend (Found by using your Break Icon)
Trim and extend is used constantly for working drawings and framing plans. The biggest tip is to use
your multiple select function to select all objects in one go. This is activated by:
For more information on the use of this function please don’t hesitate to call for help.
These are files that ART has produced for us to add to our Chief Architect programs
to improve them every so often until the next release is on the market.
When Chief Architect ’97 was released into the market, it was snatched up in great
knots. ART and several users spend months trying out the software before it is released
and hopefully iron out the bugs. When you consider the vast amount of users of Chief
Architect, there are bound to be a few bugs that those people did not find before it
was launched. Over the following few months of it’s release, Chief ’97 seemed to have
a few problems found by it’s users and these were reported to ART. They in turn find
out how to fix them and make files which update our Chief Architect
programs.
These are called Update Patches and are executible files (end with suffix of .EXE)
which you activate by double clicking on. They will then lead through to find the
Chief97.exe or Chief97-x.exe file which is the file that runs Chief Architect, to
update into that file.(This file is found in C:\Chief97 folder.They will tell you
"they have successfully updated your Chief97.exe" and next time you use
Chief these updates will be done, not always visible updates.
NOTE: The latest Patch was posted on the website March - check you have it, it was:
New976.exe (updating Chief97.exe 1/2/98 -> 2/7/98)
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Many people are not using these handy keys from the keyboard, try them out!
Make Layers For Extra Information in Profilem.PL1
This is now stored in every new plan created so you do not have to set it up each time.
Adding Additional Arrows To Text Blocks
When you have one note which refers to several parts of the
drawing, instead of repeating the note so you can activate arrows to
each note do the following.
Once the note is written, tick "Include arrow" box - this will give you one arrow.
If you require another - click on the text tool and then click near the last note,
this will open up another text box - type in a space or two - tick "Include arrow"
box - click OK. This will show another "squashed" arrow but you can click on it
and edit where it points to and indicate the note applies to several areas
of the drawing.
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If you have something which does not look 100% in your drawing, however you have no way of
deleting it without damaging your 3D views or plan, try the following: (I use this a lot, handy for
hiding anything below ground in elevations etc)
This is handy for covering things in plan and in elevations prior to sending to the Layout
sheet. If on the layout sheet then you can use the EDIT LAYOUT icon to delete and
change items.
This question has been asked of me frequently. It is not easy to do but if necessary it can be achieved for those crucial 3D colour shots. It is easy to fix an elevation or 3D shot on the Layout Sheet to make it look correct using the Edit Layout icon as above, but for 3D colour shots use the following methods and also "White out":
