The information in this article applies to:
If you run Chief Architect/Home Designer software on a Mac computer and experience any of the symptoms below (or similar symptoms), it may be caused by the Data folder being in iCloud storage.
Templates, toolbar configurations, and the User Catalog are all stored in the program's Data folder which resides in your user account's Documents folder by default. These symptoms, as well as others, indicate that the software is having trouble accessing, reading, or writing to the files in the Data folder. If you're on a Mac, you may have iCloud Drive enabled, which might have your Desktop and Documents folders stored in iCloud. Accessing program and plan files over a cloud storage service can cause the symptoms previously mentioned and more severe symptoms like data loss or file corruption. In this article, we'll go over creating a new Data folder on local storage to circumvent the issues caused by having the Data folder in iCloud.
If you'd like to remove your Desktop and Documents folders from iCloud, you can do so by following the instructions in this Apple Support Article.
Changing the location of the data folder should be out of necessity, so in the following steps, we'll verify that the Documents and Desktop folders are on the iCloud Drive.
At your own discretion, you can remove the Desktop & Document Folders off of the iCloud Drive by clearing the check mark in the adjacent box. If you'd like further assistance managing your iCloud storage, refer to the Apple Support Resource provided at the beginning of this article or contact Apple Support.
In this example, a Data folder will be created and placed in the Home/User folder. However, the Data folder can be placed in another preferred location outside of the Documents and Desktop folders if you wish.
Chief Architect Premier X12 Data
/Users/Chief Architect/Chief Architect Premier X12 Data/
/Users/[YOUR USERNAME]/Chief Architect Premier X12 Data/
If you still receive error messages related to reading and writing files after specifying your new Data folder, the software may not have the proper access to this file location. See Step 3 of "Troubleshooting Chief Architect Software Closing Unexpectedly on a Mac" in the Related Articles section below.
If you notice that you're missing files in your User Catalog, or Templates that you have used previously, please see the articles in the Related Articles section below to learn how to copy and paste these files into the new Data folder.