Message: You are attempting to change a material on a pony wall using the Material Painter


Reference Number: KB-00916
Last Modified: July 23, 2021

The information in this article applies to:

Chief Architect Premier or Chief Architect InteriorsVertical SeparatorHome Designer Professional or Home Designer Architectural



QUESTION

When I try to use the Material Painter to change the material on a pony wall, the following message appears:

"You are attempting to change a material on a pony wall using the Material Painter. This will apply the material to both the upper and lower wall parts. Do you wish to paint the pony wall(s)?"

What does this Question dialog mean?



ANSWER

When you click on a pony wall using the Material Painter tool, the  selected material is applied to the entire wall and not the upper or  lower part of the wall you clicked on.

The only way to assign materials to the upper and lower parts of a pony wall is to specify the desired materials in the wall types' definitions.

If you have already used the Material Painter on a pony wall, you must first restore the default materials.


In Chief Architect X6 and Home Designer HD products it is possible to use the material painter on exterior pony walls. However, keep in mind that the material painter will still paint the whole room when used on an interior wall.


To reset an exterior pony wall to its default materials

  1. Open the plan in which you would like to restore the default materials for a pony wall.   


  2. Click the Select Objects  tool, then click on the pony wall to select it.  


  3. Click the Open Object  edit button, and on the Materials panel of the Pony Wall Specification dialog:  

    • Click to select Exterior Wall Surface from the list of components on the left side of the dialog, then click the Select Material button.  


  4. In the Select Material dialog, place a checkmark in the Use default material box, then click OK.  


  5. Click OK to close the Pony Wall Specification dialog.


To reset an interior pony wall to its default materials

If you used the Material Painter on an interior pony wall, you must  restore the default wall material for the entire room rather than the  individual wall.  The process is similar to the one described above.

Select the room, click Open Object , and reset the default material for the Walls on the Materials panel of the Room Specification dialog.

For detailed, step by step instructions, see The article "Restoring materials changed with the Material Painter" article listed in the Related Articles section.

To change the surface materials on a pony wall

To change the interior surface material or materials on a pony wall,  you can simply specify one or more Wall Coverings for that wall.

If you need to change the exterior siding materials for a pony wall,  it is best to specify different wall types for the upper and/or lower  pony walls. You could also use Wall Coverings for this purpose, but this approach may result in incorrect wall thicknesses. For example, if a  pony wall currently has Siding-6 above Brick-6, and you would like stucco on the upper wall only, replace the Siding-6 wall type with Stucco-6. 

If you want to use a siding material that is not associated with any of your wall types, make a new, custom wall type. To learn how visit the "creating a new wall type" article listed in the Related Articles section.