Nicinus

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Posts posted by Nicinus

  1. Very sad but I will have to sell my X8 license. :(   I'm working on some longer term projects where Chief unfortunately is not an option, and I've just received a reminder that my SSA expires in December. I'd rather buy a new license when I'm done with my current commitments than see it devalue for what could be a couple of years.

     

    I'm not sure about the value, but since my SSA runs out in December the next version should be $500 if SSA can be transferred or $700 if not. Not sure about license transfer fee nowadays either but it sounds as if anything around $1,500-$1,700 should be a good deal.

     

    PM me if interested.

  2. I've had access to Vive for a little more than a month, but I think it is fair to say that it will take a while before this will be a smooth process. I'm going via 3ds Max to Unreal (which is free for commercial architectural work) via FBX. It is fiddly but the game exporter in Max helps. The Vive is in my view a much better experience than Rift with its room sensors, some of the demos like Everest and the IKEA kitchen shows the potential, but it is difficult to design for movement as the destination space size will likely differ. Being able to walk around a design is amazing though. Some form of teleport mechanism is recommended. Another note, and I think it is an adjustment issue, but oddly (given that they have basically the same specs) our impression is that Rift has a slightly better image quality.

     

    On the other hand, if you want to offer interior experiences from a fix camera location, IrisVR is fast and easy and a 360 cubic map can be rendered out directly from Max.

  3. Having said that there's no reason Chief has to be anything like Revit and no reason they can't implement their own version of 'phases' and make it easier to use and understand. After all it's only a series of layers turned on and off for each 'phase'. We currently have the ability to do everything that Revit's phases does except place walls from different phases in the same location(s).

     

    I would welcome a feature like this with open arms and he!! yes, steal every good feature from every competitor out there until Chief becomes even more powerful and useful.

     

    Bingo! That's how we should look at things.

  4. That could be a lot more difficult to program than it would be worth.  It would most likely have to work in a manner very similar to your current method.  The alternative of having Wall-Types, etc associated with different Layers (Existing, New, Demo) that could coexist within the model would IMO be a nightmare.

     

    Hate to pull the old Revit card, but over there they have a concept of 'phases'. When you draw a wall it is automatically assigned to the phase 'existing' and if you then switch to 'new construction' and draw walls Revit will know that these are new. You can mark walls to be demolished, and they will only show up in views that includes that phase. This way I can work on multiple views/plans in parallel, one existing, one existing with demolish, one new construction with demolish, or just the way it will look as new construction. It is just different view modes so you keep working on your model just like normal but make sure different things belong to their proper phase. (In a similar fashion one can have different 'design options' in the same phase, such as different roof styles or entry doors and so on.) I'd love to see something similar in Chief but I agree with you that it is most likely require a major change in the code.

     

    Have a look at this video for a relatively quick overview. This guy is unfortunately a bit tedious in his explanation, but I couldn't find any shorter video.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un25LGpykfs

  5. ...the downside is missing something in the as-built after you've created your proposed plan. Then you must go back and make changes to the as-built.

     

    And this is the big issue. I realize that we all work differently and I may be particularly sloppy in that I want to measure up a rough building and then start working on ideas for the remodel immediately. One reason for this is that I many times needs to get a feel for what is possible before I take the job (or buy the property).

     

    All major disruptions in terms of software tools has in one way or another offered a work paradigm that is not linear. Word processors allowed us to edit text without using Tipex. Non-linear video editing allowed us to put video on hard disks instead of doing rolls between two tape recorders. CAD itself allows for unlimited tweaking. Chief needs to find a way to allow multiple versions of the same house in the same plan.

  6. One aspect of Chief I think we sometimes forget is that everything they do in Premier is dumbed-down to make their DIY products.  None of us really know how much that market effects the "pro" version of CA, but the problem with Chief is they have somewhat opposing views from their clients as to what's important.  How important is sophisticated modeling and scheduling to a DIY user?

     

    I really think Chief has a lot of potential, but I often think that other apps designed only for professionals may end up moving so far past Chief in key areas perhaps I am wasting my time on a product that is attached to DIY niche market.  This also explains why the eye candy aspect has been so important.

     

    I had the same concerns about this after using Chief for a while but then was fortunate enough to spend some time with them up in the impossible to spell city. I think this definitely used to be true, they came from very basic origins with a founder that wanted to create his own house plans and then felt the product could be useful for others. It is now a sizeable company though and ambitions have grown. They say Chief Architect reflects at least half of the revenue and most new development is done for Chief and then trickled down after a while.

     

    I must agree that there is a concern in that this history has led to the company being 'backwards' driven for lack of a better description. Since their professional/Chief Architect market demographic seems to be older with relatively few architects in it, the majority of user requests and needs are not going to push the software into cutting edge territory anytime soon. We see that even in this forum, any comparisons to other other tools such as Revit and Archicad are typically frowned upon, and expressing a certain frustration over workarounds is seen as not being proficient enough, and so on. If I was Chief I would probably also wonder about the return of investment of doing the program multi user or becoming more advanced in some areas.

     

    Then again, I think X8 was a major step forward and the fact that a user panel was created. I realized that most of my wishes wouldn't be implemented, if nothing else for time restrictions, but at least they were on the table and I know they've heard them. The next couple of releases will tell, I'm hoping X10 will be major since it is such a version milestone. With Archicad and Revit being $5-7K products I truly believe they have a major opportunity to insert themselves into the architect market.

    • Upvote 1
  7. This is without doubt the best version I've used and ready for the big league. Sure I've had a weird thing happening or two but I'm also pretty sure nvidia drivers are playing tricks. You should see how something like 3ds Max behaves on a bad day.

  8. This one threw me off in the beginning as well, inconsistent behavior but it does the trick. Ideally Chief is working on something like view modes so that we may show poche or wiggly lines with creating weird wall types.

  9. I use both CA and Revit.  I'm trying to find myself just using one program, and i wish CA was more like Revit in the renovation area.  In Revit, walls are simply tagged as Demo, and then you just filter them on or off, in a Demo plan.  For making a Demo plan, you show the New phase, and set the filter so only previous phase (existing) and walls to be demo'd are shown.  You can make the existing light, and the demo walls dashed, or whatever.  This is the only stumbling block for me using only CA.   

     

    This is for me the most serious deficit in Chief, and I have no way around it. I make a rough as-is to get critical measurements, but then I want to start playing with design ideas, and end up having to update and maintain two different plans. It gets even worse if I want to try another design option so I get three plans. I end up copying layers between plans but it is time consuming, easy to make a mistake and quite frustrating. I've discussed this with Chief in length and we can only keep repeating the request and hope to get traction. Unfortunately it is probably a substantial rethink of the code, and many existing users are either to used to it to be bothered, or haven't experienced any alternatives. In all fairness I guess, it's one of Revit's true strengths.

  10. I think I saw that video, Glenn, or perhaps you showed me some stuff at the user group meet. Even so, I think it can sometimes be a bit more intuitive to set the levels in an elevation view, and then use these as constraints for walls. For example, all of these walls go to level 1, whereas these are going to split level 1, etc. Probably equally powerful and possible to do, but doing it on a room basis can sometimes be confusing, at least for me. Suddenly there is a darn closet or something that wrecks havoc.

  11. I absolutely love the Dulles video, it's a couple of years old now, and good inspiration. However, it is a very particular building and lets face it, neither of us will ever do something like this. Zaha Hadid and other organic architects use nurbs based tools for these studies anyway.

     

    But to your point I'm quite familiar with the massing tools in Revit, but even if it is a neat tool you can't seriously see that as a serious deficit in Chief, right? I'd like to see a tool similar to this, it is very useful for FAR and energy calculations but nothing that affects my daily workflow. The only times I've ever used massing tools in real life was in architecture school when designing a sky scraper and a hospital. I did all more advanced studies in Maya or 3ds Max, and then documented them in Autocad.

  12. I'm the kind of guy that needs to understand the work flow, and I found some of the house building overview videos on Chief's sample scenes being very helpful. Once I understand how it is supposed to work I can usually hammer it out by experimenting and asking people here on the forum. I must say though that the library system is an absolute mess and it is no coincidence that the Chief demos always have everything needed conveniently collected in user libraries.  :)