User interface overview. In this video,
we will be giving a brief overview into Chief Architect's user interface.
We will dig deeper into each one of these topics in later videos,
but for now we just want to get familiarized with the different areas of the
interface. At a glance,
Chief Architect's main window is comprised of: the program menu,
toolbars across the top, right and bottom of the screen,
a tool palette on the left, side windows on the right,
a status bar across the bottom, and of course the main drawing area.
The drawing area is the largest and most visible aspect of the interface.
This is the area where you will be drawing,
viewing renderings and creating printable layouts of your plans.
At the top of the drawing area the title of the plan and view type are displayed.
This title bar will automatically change to tabs when multiple views or files
are open.
The program menu contains all of the tools available in Chief Architect.
The toolbars below the menu, are a collection of commonly used tools.
Every tool on the toolbar exists somewhere in the menu,
but they are arranged here for quick access.
You will notice on the menu that certain tools have a keyboard hotkey listed to
the right of the tool name.
Similarly hovering your mouse over a toolbar icon activates a pop up that shows
the tool name and its associated hotkey where applicable.
Hotkeys can be a single keystroke or they may include modifiers such as shift or
control.
The tool palette on the left will show a list of similar tools when an icon is
selected.
This is the same list of tools you will see when clicking the Arrow next to a
toolbar icon. When a tool is selected,
the toolbar icon changes to reflect this selection,
allowing you to change tools and to return to a previously used tool more
easily.
The zoom tool bar is located on the right side,
helping you to navigate your drawing by zooming and panning.
And below that is the toggle mode toolbars,
allowing you to toggle common viewing and drawing modes on and off such as color
and line weight.
On the right side we also have signed windows.
The project browser that shows all of the various components that make up a plan,
such as CAD details, saved camera and section views,
saved plan views and so on.
The library browser allows you to place items and apply materials to objects in
your plan.
And the active layer display options showing all of the drawing layers present
on the plan, as well as the layers associated with any select item.
On the bottom of the screen you will find the edit toolbar.
The edit toolbar contains contextual or selection specific tools.
And as such is only populated when an object is selected. For instance,
when selecting a wall,
only actions that are applicable to walls will be displayed.
And when selecting a door,
the toolbar changes to show door-specific actions.
Lastly, we have a status bar across the bottom of the screen showing reference inforamtion
Here you will see a tool description when you hover your mouse over a tool icon.
The name or number of selected objects, the selected tool,
current floor, current CAD layer,
drawing group of the selected item,
mouse cursor coordinates and screen size.
The toolbars, status bar, scroll bars,
all side windows can be toggled on or off through the view menu.
And if necessary,
toolbars and side windows can be reset to factory defaults
through preferences, reset options.