Nicinus

As others have said, it would probably be well worth the time to figure out your issues with X7 and make sure everybody is running the same version, instead of introducing another complication to your evaluation. Unless you are running very old hardware, in which case most alternatives would have problems as well, you shouldn't see much difference in performance between X6 and X7.

I'm using mine quite frequently but after a year of use there are some things to consider if you are thinking of getting one. The unit itself is pretty good, but not iPad good. It would be better if there for example was a hardware button for the screen orientation, some times you just want to lock it quickly. The "home" button is also very sensitive and I hit it frequently by accident, and then Chief disappears. Contrary to some others experience I find the touch screen to be a real benefit, and it is much faster to zoom in and out and panning, than picking up the mouse. The biggest problem is the pen. Chief isn't set up to be controlled by a pen like for example Word so it becomes a bit cumbersome. I've used it a couple of times to do field measurements and it is a bit fiddly to pick the right wall, selecting the dimension line, etc. In my case it still beats Room planner as I'm using the full Chief and also don't have to do a plan room by room. I need property lines, hardscaping features and so on. Would it in reality be faster to do it by pen and paper? I don't know, but those papers can be awfully messy and then when you get home you missed a crucial measurement or something doesn't add up. If we could see another level of 'cleverness' here, like some form of local zoom where the pen is, a small keyboard to enter numbers, maybe a special screen layout for field measuring, it would be extremely useful. I'm not a programmer so I don't know if Chief can distinguish between a pen or a finger (I would assume it) but maybe the market for this is too small. Hoping for general pen improvements in Win 10 now that Surface Pro seems to be a showcase product for Microsoft.

Thanks Glenn, I was accidentially in object mode but was for some reason convinced it was room mode so it didn't add up. Don't think I've ever used object mode actually.

I'm doing a plan using someone else's template and wall definitions and wonder if someone immediately knows under what conditions using the material painter changes both the interior and exterior? I can manipulate them individually on the material tab The wall type looks normal, but then we have this weird thing where a material can have another definition outside this.

Can you show your elevation lines in red so we can see what elevation data you've entered.

Agree with Bill's assessment, very useful on the run.

Hmm, that workflow didn't occur to me. I would add it to plan first as a cad detail to get the proper name and scale and have it listed in the project browser, and then send it to layout.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why it wouldn't be to scale if I use the library? Am I missing something or is there some form of bug that won't keep it to scale if you place it in the library?

Thanks, I will start using the library as that makes most sense to me, and I can always move to plans if I run into trouble. However, the issue is annotation, I typically have details in several different scales. It needs more thought but I think I would like to see some sort of link between the drawing sheet setup scale and the annotation layer, the annotation size should ideally adapt to the scale used to send to Layout.

Yeah, I've searched around on different threads and there was even a poll on this topic (that had voted on as well ) but I'm not entirely convinced about the plan model. For one, it seems much more logical to keep it in the library as it is always available, as opposed to updating a new detail into the correct plan. I'm also a big believer in working in real world scale. But regardless, how do you handle text if you decide a particular detail needs to be in a different scale? Do you know you will send all your details in a certain scale so your text is already set for it?

Joe, when you say you never use library for details I assume this is because you want to have details in real world scale, but what if you added them to plan first and then sent to layout? I've been basically going back to older projects to find earlier details or something similar enough, but have reached a point where I would like to build a more structured library, and this seems to work well for me. The only annoying part is if I can't decide the size of the detail ahead of adding notes, I will have to rescale all text. Can't quite seem to figure out how do this easily with annotations. What is the suggested workflow? To work in real world scale in plan and then set scale when sending to layout, or set the anticipated layout scale already in Plan drawing sheet setup? My view on this is that I would like to always work in real world scale in plan, but then when I set the scale sending to layout (or rescaling in Layout) I would like to switch the annotations to a corresponding scale as well. Is there a way to do this?

I sat next to this guy on a house tour bus in Vegas who happened to be a Softplan user, and he went on and on about some things he wanted changed in Softplan (I think stairs was one of his bigger gripes), and he ended the rant by saying if they don't fix it I'm switching to Chief Architect. The reason the grass is greener on the other side of the fence is because it rains more there.

Jason got it right in my book. If I was the architect I would be super annoyed if someone told me he noticed something like this 3 weeks ago and didn't say something.

I would love to see a residential level ductwork tool so that I can give the HVAC guys my view before they start to build soffits everywhere. I wouldn't mind if it could do basic Manual J calculations either. And while I'm at it it would be great to have simple load/span tables as well. I hope Chief continues to focus on making their program the most versatile residential tool on the market, it will take them a long way for the foreseeable future. The commercial race is over. If I was in marketing at Chief I would interview as many of their architect clients as possible to find out what they really need in terms of the occasional restaurant/store, and see if that can be accommodated (curtain walls I would assume) and then leave it at that.

No need to. IFC is an open standard that is now ISO and required for bidding by many governments in Europe on public projects. Autodesk was originally involved in development if I remember correctly and although they have been a bit slow on it in the last decade (probably due to having such a grip in the US with their own formats) they now seems more active and Revit is getting better and better support with each version. Again, probably not critical for Chief in the next couple of years but definitely crucial that they are aware so that it may be implemented down the line.

This means that IFC support will be adopted faster in the industry, so something for Chief to keep an eye on long term. For now I would personally benefit more from FBX.

I spoke to soon, original X5 has been overwritten so this is all that is available. X5 was used very briefly in the beginning of the project.

I sure hope its ok though, I've been continuing working on it, adding materials where missing and it has been ok so far. Will upload original X5 file.

Another thing that seriously bugs me is that when I want to change materials in the dbx tab, and there are say 7-8 materials and I would like the same material on perhaps 3 of them, I can't just drag and drop copy them onto each other. I have to go back into the library for each one and find the same material several times. I asked support about this and he said the best way is to make a copy into the user library, but if you have any kind of structure in your user library that is only going to be moderately faster.

I actually did call support, but it took a while to get someone on the line, and after getting the guy to understand the problem it ended with him wanting to uploading it to take a look, which he would have time to do tomorrow. Anyhow, it appears as if stuff changed a lot on the material side in those versions, and having a backed up version would most likely have helped on the stuff that became black. However, there seems to be no reasonable explanation as to why materials completely disappeared and says Nopattern and No texture, so I'll upload to support.

Can you elaborate a bit? I do not have X5 installed...

I've taken an X5 file into latest X7 version and many of my objects has materials with 'No pattern' and No texture', making them invisible in the 3D view. All these material definitions somehow got lost. A similar issue happened to all electrics, which turned black. The 110V outlet object in the electrical defaults refer to a symbol named '¨7.0 & Prior Compatibility:Outlets/Wall Mounted/110V/Duplex (low res)' if this is somehow a clue. Has anyone encountered this issue or something similar? Advice?

Interesting dilemma, I can't remember ever printing a drawing in color so I've never thought about it regardless of using Chief or Autocad. As far as I know there is no plotstyle in Chief the way you have in Autocad or Archicad.

Yes, I assumed it worked that way. However, I occasionally work with more than two plans in the same layout so not sure if I would like them all to show up in the project browser, but it would admittedly give a better overview. Well worth considering. Of course, the best solution would be if Chief somehow allowed a way to handle as-is and multiple design options in the same plan, so we wouldn't have to link more than one plan in general. At that point the plan and layout files could be merged to a single file format like Revit's.