solver

Are you sure this is available for Home Designer? My guess is it's a Chief Architect only feature. You might contact Sales/Support for the best answer.

It's called Z Fighting. Search the forum for fighting to find out more.

Soffits are a generic tool that work for many things, and would be easy to use for your panels.

What is it supposed to do?

Suggest contacting Chief directly.

CAD Points. The black on is the Current CAD Point. See the CAD Menu. And Help for how to turn them on and off.

Suggest you download the trial of whatever product you are considering and see for yourself. Or, call Sales.

No

Robert: You did not post a plan or pictures. Make it easy for someone to help. There is no need for color correction or adjustment.

Thanks.

Both. Just one of the many workarounds you learn while working with the software.

Try a doorway in the opening. Turn off casing and everything else. make it as wide and tall as the opening.

Create an open space and place the dividers manually using Partitions or Soffits.

Study up on Dimension Defaults.

This is a similar to the soffit problem. The program, internally, sees the walls as extending higher than is shown in a camera view.

Soffits are cabinets. You may be able to turn off "create automatic fillers" in cabinet defaults. This will effect all cabinets in the plan, not just soffits.

None of the Chief Architect products are designed for this, but may work for you. It also depends on what type of metal home you will build. Many different combinations -- finishing the interior of a pre engineered building, building using light or heavy gauge steel studs etc. The software was designed with typical wood framed construction in mind. I would recommend Home Designer Pro as a minimum, because if its ability to define wall types and to create and modify framing. 30 Day trials are available, and you can always upgrade by paying the difference in cost.

It's easier for others if you will post an image, instead of a PDF of an image. Also, marking up the image to identify the problem area is helpful. And, for questions like this, posting the plan is the best way to get a good suggestion, because it's almost always it depends. You can use Edit>Edit Area (All Floors) to cut out only the relevant part of the plan.

Look at the Layer Display Settings.

You can't. I would choose another type of object, a slab or soffit, for example. You need something with a Fill property.

Skylight tool

Auto built the roof.

The "correct" way is to model the roof as it is, but in this case, that's not needed. All you need to do is create a roof structure that provides room for the cathedral ceiling below. In the Build Roof Dialog, enter a value in the field indicated. 6" is plenty. This tells the program to raise the roof structure an extra amount, keeping it out of your way. This has no effect on ceiling heights, only the roof. Also make sure the roof pitch is higher than the ceiling pitch. Your ceiling looks like a 3 or 4 pitch, so make sure the roof is greater, like 6 or 8. Make The 3 walls shown Full Gable. Build the roof. In the Build Roof dialog, change the roof pitch to match your ceiling pitch, and draw in 2 ceiling planes. I made 2 videos, but did not change the pitch before drawing the ceiling planes, so the videos show how to do it manually. Next draw in your own ceiling planes. http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cbffbj68Gp http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cbffbl68m1

Are you only concerned with the interior of the house? You need a roof over that single room to create the cathedral? What "messes up"? What's wrong with what you have?

The program uses the concept of a Room. You control the ceiling above each room by changing settings in the Room Specification dialog. If you want a cathedral ceiling in a specific area, that area needs to be defined as a room. Resources for self help: The built in Help System (always a good place to start) Getting Started Knowledge Base YouTube