Nicinus

I don't find that entirely true though. Many 3D objects starts as a polyline and then get extruded or lofted. The other issue is your statement on details. Don't you ever have to create details, or are you not personally creating the construction docs?

Others will undoubtedly chime in, and I'm honestly a relative new user, but having said that I think you will be very happy with Chief. I've used both Revit and Archicad and although they are both very fine programs, the way Chief is tailored towards the residential market is hard to beat. The historical user profile seems to be builders and building designers so there is ton of tools tailored for all sorts of practical construction intricacies. My hope is that they more directly start to address the one man architect firms, and pinpoint their needs more in the future, which to me seems like a natural market segment to grow into especially now that there is a Mac version. Many like you are looking for the next step from Autocad and if they find Revit to expensive or lacking in residential focus, Chief would in my mind be their best bet. It is probably fair to say that the construction documentation and detailing process is lagging compared to some of the other areas of the program, and since the trend in the industry right now is to offer as photorealistic output as possible, that deficiency may continue for a while before they hopefully put more focus on the quality of printouts. That is not to say that it is bad, but you certainly don't have the amount of control of line weight and hatch patterns, sheet administration, etc as in Revit and Archicad. Well worth some workarounds in my mind though if your focus is residential. Super friendly and helpful forum as well to help you out.

I just can't get it to work, done it three times now with different emails. :/

Maybe there is a correlation to more demanding use of the software?

I actually don't think it really depends on the high poly count as it is Chief that is starting to become bogged down by lots of objects it has to keep track of. Ofcourse more polygons makes it heavier, but I can have millions and millions of polys in 3ds Max whereas software like Chief and Revit comes to a crawl at a fraction of that. I can for example easily orbit and spin around my full model in 3D perspective, but the slightest adjustment sometimes takes forever. I've found ít most effective to close all possible tabs and layers to keep updating to a minimum.

I think so. Few forums confuse the terminology around this like ChiefTalk. I was in another thread where people confuse realtime graphics with processed renderings, ray tracing, etc and I opted out.

Does a hidden layer affect responsiveness?

Would hate to know how it sucks without one then...

Todd, I downloaded it and it is pretty slow for me too. Funny enough the file I\m working on myself is just about 40MB too at about 6,000sqf. I have two screens and usually a 3D perspective on one and then floor plan on the other. I've noticed that it slows things down the more tabs I have open in parallel, as Chief needs to update in several places so I make sure to always close everything that isn't needed. I also keep open and visible layers to a bare minimum. But it becomes slow at a certain point, yes. The undo is a pain and seems to be a special solution in Chief, it actually seems as if it reloads the last version of the whole plan from disk somehow. Not a memory buffed differential undo apparently.

Lol. I would love to see a way to search on only 3D plants as I've basically stopped using the at least the flat trees, which I feel look really crummy.

Lol, I'm sometimes a bit thick...

Graeme, the file is in the first post. Rename it from .plan to .dwg. So it works in Autocad, Draftsight and Othercad but not Chief and Accelicad. That's almost funny but to me it actually indicates a problem with Chief, as it seems more programs than not can open it. What I can't figure out is what makes that text different from the other items that do import.

I just can't figure this out. I looked at the detail in Autocad and everything seems normal, but as soon as I import it into Chief some of the text is lost?

Yes, there either seems to be a problem with Chief's import, or there is some option that strips away this text that I don't understand.

Well, now I can't remember of course but I searched for Myhand2 and then skimmed through a couple of them. There was some with My Archi font or similar as well. I'll give it another shot. EDIT: this thread had several, one of the zip files included Myhand2 as well http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?47420-Hand-letter-looking-font&highlight=myhand2

That seems to vary though, the one example I have above with the lost text is from Nichiha and came in with 6-7 layers. Would anyone mind loading that detail in the first post and see where the text went?

Thanks, found it (and some others too). A bit more readable I think, wider.

But what happens when you import dwg's? Won't you get a mess with layers? Btw, you say your details are at 1/2" scale, I typically use at 1 1/2". Do you use 24x36? How big are your invisible boxes?

I downloaded it and think it looks great, especially the site plans! Is that Chief's own Blueprint or which font are you using for notes?

That certainly sounds like a good way of organizing them, and you don't have to have separate plans for them. Would be interested to hear Joe's view on advantages with using separate plans instead? I've noticed that it seems to be a good idea to work on exploded details in a clean plan so that I don't mix up layers with my typical setup, as a blocked detail only uses one layer.

Why separate plans for these categories and not one with several detail pages? To avoid a mess in the Detail Management dbx? There doesn't seem to be a way to create sub directories in the Project Browser (except cameras where I have an Overview folder for some reason.) How do you handle layers for these details? Are they all in Cad, default or do you separate out text and dimensions? What is is that designates a drawing to a certain category like being a detail in Chief? I would for tidiness like to have an elevation category but it all ends up in 'Cross Sections'. Sorry for all my questions, but I find the reference manual to be very dry when it comes to motivating different options, and searching usually results in very old threads and Choef versions.

Interesting. So you have one dedicated plan file for all your details, and then you copy from that one to your working plan or directly to layout?

I have some issues with 2D dwg import for details and just wanted to get some feedback on whether I've understood it correctly, or if there is a better way: 1) In order to import a dwg detail I create a new detail in 'CAD/detail management' in plan, and then import the dwg. 2) Hatch patterns are lost or converted to solid polylines. 3) I mapped all layers to a single layer, but created a new CAD, details in order to "minimize" the mess For some reason all notes disappear in the import. Initially my dimension notes disappeared as well, but came back after I told Chief not to import as cad block instead of dimensions in the import dbx so I assume this problem is related. I've enclosed the cad detail in case anyone would like to import it and see why the notes are lost. You have to rename the file call 'Wd_Std...." from .plan to .dwg as the uploader refused to let me upload neither dwg nor zip. Wd_Std_SPS_Window_Silly.plan

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

Thanks. That's it, the 'display on floor above' command for roof planes! That would come in handy on other things as well it seems.