PSchuyler

I'd like to sell an active Chief Architect Premier x10 license (x10 is in beta) still under SSA until May 9, 2018. The price of a brand new X10 license $2,795, with the 1st year of free SSA content and updates. My SSA expires May 9, and it doesn't transfer to another individual, so to continue with SSA you'd pay $495 (but its not mandatory). My price $2,000. You'd save $300 off the same brand new license and get an extra 3 months of SSA coverage for free. If you're interested, please let me know at pfschuyler@gmail.com. Everything of course can be verified and checked with Chief direct, etc. Thanks, Paul Schuyler

Assuming you're using an HTC Vive, there are some comparable, but cheaper room-scale viewers. Room-scale for those who are not familiar...means you can walk around the virtual designs in 100% 1:1 scale. Not 360 images, not animations, but actually walking through the physical spaces virtually. In the thousands of years that humans have been building structures, this is the first time we have this capability. Prior to this, representing a building concept was always about abstraction: schematic or detailed drawings, physical models, floor plans, etc. Now with roomscale VR you can walk through your project in true 1:1 scale. Symmetry http://store.steampowered.com/app/585340/SYMMETRY_alpha/ Supports Sketchup's *.SKP format, which you can save to through the free version of Sketchup. AM Model Viewer ($5) http://store.steampowered.com/app/506750/AM_Model_Viewer/ Supports DAE format, which Chief Exports. These are both very similar to InsiteVR and IrisVR. Just import your file and walk around in 1:1 scale. They're not quite as nice, but they're also essentially free and not tied to any subscriptions, etc. Of course if you have the time and expertise, the Unity game engine is your most advanced choice (https://unity3d.com/). Its used to author about 80% of the professional Vive and Rift VR apps, and imports many formats including DAE directly (just drag your DAE file AND its texture folder directly into Unity). There is also Unreal Engine, which is fabulous graphically but only supports OBJ or FBX formats. Both of these major game engines are free for our typical use. Simlab Composer 8+ now supports room scale VR with the HTC Vive. It's VR portion is based on Unreal Engine, and it imports Chief *.dae exports perfectly. That's a very nice and easy VR viz solution ($200-400). Then there are the pseudo-VR viewers, which produce very nice graphics using adapted game engines to accelerate visualizations. They have not fully implemented real-time VR navigation...yet, but they are in various phases of doing that. They all export fabulous animations and graphics at unparalleled high speed: Twinmotion 2018 (https://twinmotion.abvent.com/en/), Lumion (https://lumion3d.com/), and Bentley's LumenRT. All of these are game engine implementations for easy and fast visualizations. They are expensive, but very fast and easy to use. NOTE TO CHIEF: If Chief's DAE export capability would enable light export, which it currently does not do, this would be a godsend for Chief visualization! If it did, you could just drop in your Chief files and do night visuals with any of these systems much faster than is currently possible within Chief.