Michael_Gia

Love that niche tool.

I think Chief’s “Standard” View with shadows, reflections and “edge smoothing when idling” is the way to go for construction documents. Or even the water colour with line drawing on top. Fast, not fuss, automatically updateable. Set and forget. If you really want to have something to impress clients you need to export out to programs like Lumion or Twin Motion. Cheesy Raytraces are too time consuming for what they produce compared to these other rendering dedicated softwares, why bother? My two cents.

Perfect! Thanks a million. I guess I’ll simply set the roof overhang back the thickness of the shadow board so that the dimensions to the front of the shadow board indicates my desired overhang. Credit to Chief for even having this many features attached to a roof.

Hey thanks for the exploratory video. That’s right the gap I’m trying to fill is the front boxed eaves on those gables. I don’t have a problem with closing them and maintaining the double facia on the front of the Gables but then I lose the double facia on the side just adjacent to those boxed eves. You did make me rethink how I’m using the shadow board. If you notice I have it set back with a negative value. That’s because this is how we build them up here in Montreal. When we build a double facia we always leave the main facia where it is as it comes in from the truss manufacturer and then we tack on a second 2 x 6 to the back of that facia. This is why I have my shadow board behind the facia in Chief Architect

If I do that then I loose my double fascia on the front of the gables. I can't seem to get the double fascia and a nicely closed up boxed eave on the front. P-solids to the rescue. Unless there's a smarter way to use a frieze instead? Maybe reverse the order of the shadow board? That is, a shadow board and offset it to act as the fascia.

If I set my eave fascia to 11" (2x5.5") then this closes up the boxed eave nicely but then I loose my shadow board.

Yeah, I was able to close the gap between the Shadow board and the fascia as well by changing the vertical offset to 5.5". I had mistakenly set it at 6.25" for some reason. The boxed eave gap on the front gables is still a mystery. I've tried quite a few setting changes with no success. I can always slap a p-solid on them, no big deal, but I'd like to understand if these boxed eaves are controlled somewhere.

Hi again, What controls the boxed eave construction? I created a double fascia by adding a shadow board. Now my boxed eave doesn't come all the way down leaving a gap. Also there is a space between the fascia and shadow board. How can I close this up?

I think I like the portrait view for my drawing sheet that way my plan is oriented the way I like to work on it. All that's left is for Chief to make this send to layout as I see it in plan view...

Thanks to both of you, Michael and Kyle! That’s what I was looking for.

If you make your drawing sheet visible in your plan file, you see the sheet size displayed and rest of the field is greyed out. I would like to rotate that sheet only. I don’t want to rotate the plan. Is that possible?

If not then, I would definitely post in suggestions. I would love if the way you place things in plan view are linked to how where they will display on your layout. Saves a step and makes you think before you place dimensions and other items.

In, Drawing Sheet Setup, in the File menu, I often like to “Show Drawing Sheet in View” checked (☑️) This way I get a sense of how stuff will ultimately show when sending to layout. Is there a way to rotate the sheet in plan view? For some plans the views are rotated in layout to fit on the sheet properly. I’m hoping to have a more WYSIWYG experience.

I still picked up a good trick. Although I knew about it, I just hadn’t used it in a while. That was to make the staircase fill 50% transparent so I can see those hidden walls underneath. For some reason I had developed the habit of turning the stair layer on and off instead. I still find these little gems in Chief’s videos from time to time.

You can do all of that in Chief but you’d have to build your cabinets entirely out of p-solids, soffits and moulding polylines. Before you laugh, this is pretty much the required energy to achieve the same in Revit or Archicad. Thankfully the basic stuff is automated, but like I said, you trade automated features for precision and control over display.

I think Chief doesn’t build the garage slab out to the exterior of the wall but at least in 3D it seamlessly connects to the foundation wall. Unless there’s a way to make the garage floor extend out under the garage door for the apron? Unless you have monolithic slab checked.

Now you have me questioning myself again, Richard. I have used Archicad and rent it from time to time. I’ve yet to complete a project in it but have used it to view and dimension large landscaping drawings created by our landscape architect. I build homes, and although I do my own plans for the homes I build, project wide landscaping and structural plans are contracted out. Chief can’t handle those files very well. I’ve attempted to build a full model in Archicad and although the model always comes out wonky and missing the detail I can get in Chief, like millwork, room finishing and cabinets, the construction documents in AC are on autopilot, it seems, they’re a breeze. Labeling and dimensioning in AC is also so much easier than in Chief. The way AC handles floor levels/stories is also very intuitive and when you place something on a given floor it stays there regardless until the end of the project. I wish I could build and “decorate” the model in Chief and then send it over to AC for condocs and annotation. On other hand, I just watched the new X11 bathroom demonstration from Chief and I just know that designing that bathroom in either Archicad or Revit would be an exercise in hair-pulling frustration and the end result would not encourage my clients to sign a contract. And that is the other big reason I use Chief. I don’t use a model home, so I rely on the visualization features of Chief to win contracts. I don’t think there’s a software better suited than Chief for this purpose.

The answer is, yes you can. Any cloud service will allow you to access and edit the file from any computer running Chief.

Wow, thanks for the detailed and unbiased response. I was hoping I’d hear something along those lines. It’s hard to get good answers from users of other software, mainly because they don’t use or know Chief enough to compare. I’m always looking over my shoulder to see what others are doing in Revit and Archicad because they do have a lot of great features and functionality that I wish Chief had. They obviously are not suited for residential, North American style construction and especially for solo practitioners like myself. I do learn a lot watching seasoned Revit and Archicad architects draw plans as they are pros and I, as a builder, have a lot to learn from them. (I’m not an architect or draftsman) thanks again!

The above is a Revit tutorial on placing garage doors. It would be the same process in Archicad. Keep in mind that even after you go through these extra steps you would have quite a bit of adjusting if you were to change the size or placement of your garage door. Chief automates this stuff for us. Although in Archicad and Revit you have far more precise control over every little detail, in general Chief gets it right for standard residential construction here. I was curious if any Revit or Archicad users would agree or if you would say that giving up total control over elements outweigh Chief’s automated features? This is only one example of where Chief is much quicker, intuitive and elegant than these other more powerful softwares.

Softplan only added dimensioning to elevation views in the latest update. Before that you had to take a cad detail from view and then add your dimensions. Their material list takeoffs are very nice though.

Looks like Las Vegas bought out Chief Architect. To each his own, I guess.

I will say that the real problem is the way layers sets work in Chief. It's far too easy to make a temporary change in a layer set and then forget to revert back to how you want that particular view to show/behave. The solution is that when you make a change in a layer set there should be a button at the bottom that says "update" or "apply" to make the change peranenet to that plan view and layer set. So that when you double click on that plan view again it should revert back to the "original" state of the layer set. In other words there should be a two step process in permanently affecting a layer set cjange as a safety.

Just looking at your baseboard at the end of the half wall that separates the shower, it seems the floors are at different levels since the top of the baseboards don’t line up. (1st photo) Really nice bathroom by the way!...

Ok, that was my problem. I always have automatic heights turned off. Thanks!