Home Designer Suite Missing Tool Bar Menu

The information in this article applies to:

Chief Architect Premier or Chief Architect Interiors Home Designer Professional or Home Designer Architectural or Home Designer Suite

DESCRIPTION

The toolbars in my program have disappeared. How do I make the toolbars visible again?

CAUSE

There are a number of reasons why your toolbars might not be displaying:

The display of toolbars is toggled off.
The toolbars have been undocked and then closed.
The program cannot find the file saving your currently active toolbar configuration.

If the program cannot find the current toolbar configuration file, you may encounter one or more warning messages when you launch the program, exit out of it, or reset your toolbars, including:

"Cannot open custom toolbar configuration file."
"Cannot open backup toolbar configuration file."
"The toolbar file could not be saved. It might be read only."
"No backup file exists. Toolbar will not be reset."
If you encounter any of these Warnings, proceed to the instructions for re-populating the program's toolbar folder.

RESOLUTION

Since there are a number of possible causes, there are several different troubleshooting steps to try, including:

Turning on the display of all toolbars
Turning on the display of individual toolbars
Resetting the toolbars to their original configuration
Resetting the toolbars to factory default

To turn on the display of all toolbars*

*Applies to Chief Architect Premier, Chief Architect Interiors, and Home Designer Professional.

From the menu, select View and verify that the Toolbars option has a check next to it.
If there is not a check next to Toolbars, this option is not selected and should be turned on. To turn it on, simply click on it.
If there is a check next to Toolbars, proceed to the troubleshooting section on resetting the toolbars to their original configuration.

To turn on the display of individual toolbars

Right-click on a blank area to the right of the Help menu option to display a contextual menu.
Under Toolbars, click to select the toolbar that has been toggled off to turn it back on.
A check mark displays next to toolbars that are enabled.

The toolbars that display in a given view depend on the view type. For example, the toolbars that are available in floor plan and 3D views are not available in Materials Lists.
If there is a check in each toolbar that is located here, proceed to the next troubleshooting section that applies to your product.

To reset the toolbars to the original configuration*

*Applies to Chief Architect Premier, Chief Architect Interiors, and Home Designer Professional.

Select Tools> Toolbars & Hotkeys> Customize Toolbars from the menu.
Click on the title bar of the Toolbar Customization dialog and drag it to move the dialog box to the center of the drawing area, away from where the toolbars are normally docked.
On the Toolbar panel, click the Reset Toolbars button.
- You may receive a warning dialog that states: "If you restore the default toolbars, any custom toolbars that you created will be lost. If you would like to keep the current toolbars, choose Cancel."
- Click OK.
Without closing the Toolbar Customization dialog, you should be able to see whether or not your toolbars have been restored.
If you now see the missing toolbars, click the Close button to close the dialog and continue working.

In the event that the above options do not restore your toolbars, they may need to be completely rebuilt from the factory default configuration.

By completely resetting the toolbars to their factory default configuration, you will lose any customizations that have been made to the toolbars. This should only be done as a last resort.

To reset the toolbars to the factory defaults

Select Edit> Preferences if you're on Windows PC or Chief Architect/Home Designer> Preferences if you're on a Mac to open the Preferences dialog.
Select the Reset Options panel on the left and then click on the Reset Toolbars button.
You will receive the following Warning dialog:
Click OK to close the message box and your toolbars will be restored to the default configuration.

MORE INFORMATION

If your toolbars appear to be restored, but you are still missing a particular tool, it may be either that the tool is only offered in a more advanced version of the software, or it may instead be an edit tool.

When you select an object, the Edit toolbar appears. By default, it's located at the bottom of the program window, just above the Status Bar. The buttons on the edit toolbar can be used to edit the selected object(s). Which buttons display depends on the type of object selected, the current view, and how you selected the object.

The Edit toolbar buttons are the same as the options in the contextual menu when you right-click on an object.