New Plans Panel

New Plans - Select the Imperial Units or Metric Units radio button to determine the units used in your new plans. Once you create a new plan, the units of that plan cannot be changed. You can specify a different set of templates for imperial plans and metric plans.

When Chief Architect is first opened on a computer, it refers to the Windows system settings to determine whether to use Imperial or metric units.

If a template file is not specified or cannot be found, the program starts a new plan in the selected units but uses the system defined defaults for new plans.

Be sure that you use an imperial plan for your imperial template file and a metric plan for your metric template file. When a new plan is created, the plan is created in the units of the template file regardless of the units setting.

Plan Template - Displays the plan template file the program uses when you start a new plan. Click the Browse button to select the new template.

Layout Template - Displays the layout plan template the program uses when you start a new layout file. Select a new default layout template by typing in a new file pathname or click the Browse button to select a new file.

For information about creating templates, see "Template Files".

Open/Save As Directory - Control how the program behaves when a new plan is opened or an existing plan is saved.

Use Last Directory refers the program to the directory last used to save or open a plan file. Use This Directory refers the program to a particular location specified by you.