Renerabbitt

I understand the desire for more frequent patches under a subscription model, but I don’t think that expectation aligns with how this software—or this company—actually operates. Chief isn’t a lightweight or modular app where features can be pushed live with minimal downstream impact. It’s a professional production tool built on nearly 30 years of accumulated code, with an ecosystem that’s tightly coupled to documentation, training, and support. Every feature change or behavioral adjustment ripples far beyond just the executable. Frequent incremental patches would require: Updating Help documentation and knowledge-base articles continuously Retraining support staff so they can correctly diagnose issues per patch version Updating internal training materials and SSA workflows Preparing trainers for live classes, webinars, and year-round training events Managing version fragmentation across users on different patch levels That kind of cadence would almost certainly increase confusion, not reduce it. Support would be flooded with “what changed?” calls, trainees would be following outdated instructions, and users collaborating across offices would constantly be out of sync. For a company whose business model is support-centric, that’s a serious risk. On top of that, it’s easy to forget that every change to the professional product must also be evaluated, segmented, and deliberately restricted across the Home Designer product line. Features can’t simply be “turned on” everywhere. They have to be gated, versioned, documented, and supported differently depending on the SKU. That alone adds significant overhead to every single update. There’s also the reality of cross-team development. Many features don’t live in isolation—they depend on work being done in other development areas. You can’t safely release Feature A if it’s meant to integrate with Feature B, when the team responsible for Feature B hasn’t completed or stabilized their code for the next major version yet. Releasing partial integrations mid-cycle is a recipe for instability and technical debt. Chief’s development model is regimented for a reason. Features are bundled, documented, trained, and supported as cohesive units—not dripped out in isolation. That discipline is what allows them to support an enormous range of users with consistency and reliability. Breaking that rhythm just to satisfy a “faster updates” expectation would undermine the very thing people rely on Chief for: stability. Comparisons to AI software or modern SaaS tools also miss the mark. Most of those platforms are cloud-native, modular, and not burdened by decades of legacy workflows—or real-world production liability. Chief operates in a completely different category. The cost of instability here isn’t a bad UI tweak—it’s lost time, broken workflows, and real-world consequences. Subscription doesn’t automatically mean “ship everything immediately.” In this case, it means predictable funding for long-term development, structured releases, and a support ecosystem that actually knows what it’s supporting. That’s not falling behind the future—that’s respecting the complexity of the present. If anything, I’m far more impressed that Chief manages to evolve at all while maintaining a system this disciplined, with documentation, training, and support moving in lockstep. That’s something very few software companies—AI-driven or otherwise—are capable of doing well. BTW Chief, if you are reading this, despite my grandstanding brand ambassador post here, its about dang time for that X18 Beta...you can see we are all getting a bit twitchy?

Man, I am tired of this topic, but I’ve seen it come up a lot—and I do browse the boards regularly. I find these posts deeply lacking in both understanding and compassion. For those of us whose careers Chief has quite literally enabled, we are SO GRATEFUL. For anyone here, the subscription model has been around for years, so this person likely meant to post in the Home Talk forum which just changed to subscription for the HD 2026 software version. Also, grass isn't greener: Autodesk Revit — subscription-only AutoCAD / AutoCAD Architecture — subscription-only SketchUp Pro (current versions) — subscription-only SoftPlan Professional (current versions) — subscription-only Cedreo — subscription-only RoomSketcher Pro — subscription-only Coohom Professional — subscription-only Planner 5D Professional — subscription-only Archicad--Subscription only Imagine picking a vendor over 10 years ago and praying they stay relevant over the years—no, over the decades. I get it: you want your developer to survive by taking a thousand chances that the fleeting consumer will buy into the next version, constantly gambling on how much development budget they can allocate so you won’t complain that the feature set isn’t exactly what you wanted. What a miserable experience it must be to have such ungrateful customers—customers who apparently don’t want you to eat. I challenge any consumer making these claims about the subscription model to go develop a product for a consumer base and then try to guess the magic number needed to fund the next iteration. I dumped roughly $108K into development of my next product this year, and it was frightening—just guessing what numbers you might realistically hit. There is a reason Vail Resorts constantly raises day-ticket prices while keeping season passes comparatively low: it’s far easier to budget for planned improvements when you have fixed, predictable numbers. This isn’t a cash grab or corporate bullying—it’s necessary. They are in their fourth year of trying to develop a cloud service for us customers, while doing everything they can to keep SSA costs low, all while dodging a million cloud-computing copyrights and trademarks. And speaking of inflation—to those who think it’s worth mentioning—think back for a second and answer me this: has the price of this product tracked with inflation over the years? Not even close. Also, last I checked, subscriptions are fully deductible, while purchased-to-own software is a capital expense that typically requires depreciation. It’s literally a write-off—so why is anyone complaining? This whole debate reminds me of how difficult it is to promote a professional product on Amazon, where you can’t qualify the customer and someone trashes your product with a bad review because the delivery driver dented the box. I have consistently saved more in efficiency from each version’s feature set than I have paid in SSA, year over year, for the last 10 years, and my prices have gone up at a rate greater than the cost of this software. Historical data from X17 alone showed roughly a 20% efficiency improvement for me. Keep going, Chief—I owe you.

You would need a pretty custom macro that to examine upper and lower wall layers and text label or you would need a custom macro and 2 schedules. Where 1 schedule ignores schedule- callouts of the other as to avoid duplications This video is paywalled but you are doing something similar in that you want a schedule-callout from each schedule but you dont want the callout to populate numbers from both Alternatively, I am curious if simply using a callout with a detail would work better. In terms of it being a plan-set to build from, the builder will need to see a detail for your pony wall connections and relative heights anyways, so you could just drop a callout on each wall:

Yes you can Any mesh can be converted into a millwork/fixture/furniture/hardware symbol category, and any of those symbol categories can be used as a drawer box:

This is from my paywalled member section, 16 Min video, I set it to public for today only Jan 20, 2026

Save-As.mp4

Why not just use the material lists? Otherwise macros..the all encompassing conditional macro would be worth charging for. The simple macro that you use at risk of your own peril is %upper_layers[0].area.ceil.round% keep in mind this wont report correctly for gable ends unless you have it set to balloon frame

a photo of what you are trying to achieve would be helpful

is your signature up to date? I might make it more clear that you are on X12 if that's the case

Edit/Edit Area (All Floors) Draw A Marquee around all elements you intend to move Either use transform replicate or start dragging the center handle of your marquee and hit tab to enter coordinates

260115.mp4

What version are you on?

Cut and fill can easily be done in blender which is free. Export existing and proposed terrain, generate volumes from them, then duplicate and cut one from the other and vice versa to get your cut and fill. They will report volume in blender

I think I remember that you bought my X17 templates? If so then change the reference plan file for spec to the CBC reference file and that will setup the correct spec on G1. Those templates were build for California first so just lookup Irvine's requirements and go from there. I personally set the expectation that I will receive one revision. It makes me more efficient...instead of chasing a bunch of one-off obscure requirements from a contracted plan-checker I just let them come back to me with what they need

put it on floor 1 and it will make this process a lot easier and more dynamic, that way your stepping happens above your FF and makes use of a stem wall pony wall and your furring wall

This is a membership only video. I changed it to public for this thread but will change it back to membership after today. give it a watch, it explains a very simple process for this:

I have a page dedicated to this including a texture generator, a custom built texture search engine and other utilities. all free to use. https://www.rabbittdesign.net/texture

uncheck this in your railing:

these are all just terms of relativity..whats actually happening under the hood is you have a start and an and point and then it is rotating a certain number of degrees. 4 in 12 isnt just a number style, you dont have to have that number style be active in order to utilize it. It is just being translated into degrees, but references a start and end point. so change your start and end point. Another caveat, with polar checked it will flip if you start drawing in the direction you want. Drawing to sheet left is different than drawing sheet right. So start drawing left and hit tab and then your negative will do what you want

This is what a backup does, it stores all of your files in a place of your choosing as an archive

just rent the software for a month and export them

For those that are curious, it changes to a double line when you have a difference in setting from the rooms on either side of the wall

I've run into it in previous versions of X17 to the OP, do you have grid snaps turned on, have you considered right aligning the text... and if you have auto width turned on for the text box consider turning it off. the program may try and size the box before the macro fires. Why are you using that particular macro? I would say that one is a risky one, there are so many conditions I can think of where that becomes a liability. Couldn't this be handled better in a detail or ceiling height macro?

Share your plan file please

Episode 1 of improving your renders: