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what year software? Shingles are under main library ROOFING and then manufacturers if yo go download from their site (might have to pay unless you have 2026 subscription based.)

Not from my point of view at least. HDP although having great features is no match for CA. CA still has much improvement to be made also. Once you are used to using CA the limitations in HDP can be quite annoying or at least it is to me.

When they moved Chief to subscription you could pretty much set a timer to HD following suit. You don’t have to spend much time in the CA ecosystem to realize that Chief rules the roost and everything they do is with Chief users in mind. Not criticizing, I’m sure Chief customers are their bread and butter. The HD suite has always been a weird offering. Clearly they set the prices/functionality so that Chief users wouldn’t dump the product and downshift to HD. Likely with the added hope that HD users would become invested in the CA ecosystem and upgrade to Chief if they used it for business purposes. Other software companies do this. Quicken is a notable example. Quicken Deluxe is simply Quicken Premier with a bunch of features turned off. The difference is that in Quicken the turned-off functionality is straightforward. Don’t need investments? Get Deluxe. A lot of the features from Chief they throttle in HD seem arbitrary, weird, and highly irritating. I’m wondering if they’ve seen a number of SSA Chief users who didn’t need Chief’s full functionality dump SSA and purchase HD. Or they anticipated that happening as they raise SSA prices YTY to reach the Chief subscription price. Regardless, this removes HD as a realistic option for serious DIYers and small contractors who only model projects occasionally.

I am new to Chief Architect and I recently purchased the Home Designer Suite and I am having trouble with the materials list NOT listing the roof shingles. Does Home Designer Suite not do this or do I have to buy an upgrade for that feature to work?

It looks like a tricky setup! Sharing the Dropbox link is helpful, maybe a roofing contractor or architect could give specific guidance on adjusting the gables and porch roof without affecting the second floor.

After you create the hearth when designing your custom fireplace you can actually create custom built-ins using the soffit a half wall adjusted to the height you wanted but i recommend using at least a 16" thickness. You just add a door casing to your half wall and adjust it to the height you want to make your custom built-ins. Then you can add the custom mantle above it and it makes the fireplace complete. I was trying to create this but the help section didn't give me that option.

PS you should install tile on walls as custom backsplash not molding.

Ditto to above. molding is meant for those cross section shapes in library to be "Extruded" around room.

Instead of using a molding, I'd recommend using the custom backsplash tool or a wall covering in the individual wall’s specification to achieve your desired result. or

HD 2026, Mac OS. Trying to figure out why I'm getting molding where I don't want it. I'm looking at this wall construction here. I want molding (tile) on the walls coming out from the sides of the room, but then no longer once it cuts in towards the door. Right now the molding is appearing everywhere, and cutting off the windows behind the bench seating. I've looked into each wall, and where I want it, "no interior (or exterior) molding" is checked. Yet it seems like HD is just generating molding regardless. If I peer into the materials on those walls, no molding/tile appears. And yet, it's rendered there. Sanity check? Something I'm doing wrong? Crude markup on the drawing: green yes molding, red no molding.

@PhillipCA that did the trick! Much appreciated, didn't even know that material info pane existed.

Try this

I think one of the many drawbacks to HD 2026 is that the material editing properties have been taken away. If you go to the material, copy it to make a new one and rename it, see if you can edit the angle of it. Change it from 0 to 90, or the opposite. If it's greyed out, you can't. However, if you applied this as a soffit, and not a moulding, the pattern may be fine.

Home Designer 2026, Mac OS.

What version are you using?

Can't figure out anywhere to change the orientation or why it's appearing this way:

I tried again by dragging and dropping the file onto HDP7 and it asked me to download the file again, and I did. I downloaded the windows vista file 7.08b from the CAHD official website and this time the browser didn't give me the question or warning for some strange reason ? The file installed fine and everything worked ok after entering the CD Key and having the dongle in place. The important thing is to install the update otherwise the dark red HASP dongle key will return errors when you try to run the program. The other thing to do when installing the program on a newer machine, is that you have to manually double click the .exe file so that the program will install. In this case there are two program CD’s. One more trick that @Bob_Medvetzhas shown me, is to edit the registry so that the drivers for the HASP dongle install correctly. You can see his posts on the ChiefTalk website. Please search Chief Architect version 10 on newer windows machines. The newer versions of Chief Architect are the best to use and I have CA X10. But much of my work like others was done in much older versions. So if you have a client from say twenty years ago and they want to add or remodel their home, you don’t have to start from scratch. Beware you need save older CA files via X8 to get older files to display more correctly in plan and in layouts. You will still have some editing to do but most of the model will be correct. Hope that helps others who are in a similar situation as us older users are.

well what fixed it? Curious peeps wanna know

I did it! Thank you!!!

Thanks for your reply! The main issue is that none of my walls are load-bearing. That is why I attempted to apply a single rule for headers (which I do not need) to all my walls, as there is currently no "Load bearing wall" option available for walls in the application. While there are workarounds, such as manually removing the "header" option for each opening, this core issue still exists within the app.

Hi, the download is safe becuase it is from an official Chief Architect website so I trust it. When I try to run it as an administrator it looks for another program to open it and provides a program list to choose from. I have tried dragging and dropping the update file right onto BH&G HP7 icon but all to no avail. I will put up another screenshot to show what is happening and what the update file type is. Maybe someone could help ? I have this software BH&G HDP7 running on new computer with XP pro on it. So if it doesn’t work on the newer machines, I am not that worried about it. But I like to try and see if it will run on windows 10 & 11 machines as well with a little help from other users. Edited: Problem solved now and it is indeed working on my newer windows machines. Thanks for the support.

can you post picture of PLAN with CROSS SECTION Camera location/lines

it is a WIN safety thing. might need to lower your security settings to allow you to download but it looks like it downloaded and is just giving you warning about opening it. what comes up when you click SEE MORE? If it downloaded click the download arrow button and OPEN FOLDER for downloads. then you can RUN/open file by right clicking on it and hit RUN AS ADMIN.. BUT make sure you trust it else an EXE file is an executable which if written by BAD guys can kill your computer or give you virus etc.

Hi Bob ! Thanks once again for your help. Here is a pic of the download message I get after downloading the BH&G HDP7 update.

Thank you! I will try. One of these is sure to work.