Richard_Morrison

I've used both AC and Chief since the 90s. Probably 50/50 right now. In general, you should use the program which meets your needs best. From what you've described you are looking for, Chief may be a downgrade. Color is no problem, but Trace Reference in AC is WAY more powerful and flexible than reference layers. For things like furniture building, AC has morphs, very malleable walls and beams, and 3D tools that Chief does not have. You can probably get there in Chief, but you are likely to be looking at Sketchup and Chief together to do what AC can do on its own.

You clearly have not been in business for yourself before, and is the way some clients think. Most sole practitioners I know are pretty happy when they can get 50% of their time to be billable. Of that billable time, 50% going to overhead costs is pretty normal. So you might actually be averaging the equivalent of $37.50/hr. with a $150/hr. billing rate. So, with a gross personal income of $75,000, less taxes, you might actually be netting $45K disposable income. That's not a terribly high standard of living in this part of California. Of course, if you can keep your butt in the chair for more hours, or reduce overhead to the bone, you can do better.

Jerry, I have mentioned this as a suggestion over a number of versions. It seems to me that a "viewer only" file would be easy to implement, and avoid the issue of turning over a full plan to the client that someone else could use. Because of this, I use SketchFab.

You can try changing it to hot pink, or something. Should be easier to spot.

I have a project that is VERY documentation intensive (CalGreen, T24, Tree Protection, etc. etc.), and I am anticipating maybe 15 - 24x36 sheets with multiple PDFs on each sheet. Has anyone successfully handled such a project without huge slowdowns? Or should I be looking at more firepower for this one?

It might be worth pointing out that conduit is virtually never modeled in 3D. While your teacher might be doing it as a class exercise to see if you can do it, if it is for the purpose of doing a standard electrical plan, this is typically done in 2D CAD only.

The Arcways stair library is available.

Joe, If you write in all caps in your CAD docs, then CAD styling is fine. If you use upper/lower case, as I do, then some fonts look terrible with a line spacing imposed by the CAD program, especially if you are using large blocks of text like specifications, and in fact, the program may cut off the bottom of the descenders.

Curt, this isn't an issue of a specific font, it is a checkbox in Chief.

Here's an issue, though. 4.5 WITH CAD Font Styling is pretty much the same height as 6 WITHOUT the Styling. So it depends. I'm not sure which Wendy was using. I'm not even sure which is more appropriate for people to use with upper/lower case.

Johnny, I like putting construction details into CAD Details in LAYOUT, so they don't bloat the main plan file size. Also, keep in mind that each CAD Detail can have a different scale. Personally, I think that CAD details in layouts are the best place to keep standard details. (with a duplicate copy in the User Library, just in case.) You can have a CAD detail for foundation details at 1"=1', and another CAD detail for countertop edges at full scale, etc., then delete the ones you don't need.

No, it doesn't do rich text, which is an advantage, I think. The text will take on whatever characteristics you have set up as your default in that anno set. An advantage of this program is that you can name the text block whatever you want, and sort them however you want by dragging the names around in the list. You can even have headings like "Foundation Notes" followed by 10 or 15 foundation-specific notes. Give it a quick try and let's hear what you think.

Keeping everything in one program is nice, but if a little accessory like this can save oodles of time, it's worth it. It pretty much runs in the background, and can be called up just by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen. Copy/paste is really fast from here. For $3, it can save lots of time, and there's even a 30-day free trial.

Here's a very inexpensive program that might be of interest: http://m8software.com/clipboards/pigeonhole/pigeonhole.htm 3,500 ready-to-paste user-created text blocks that can be organized, sorted, etc. PC only, though.

Lest we forget, here's a bunch of sneaky tricks started by Wendy: http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?40904 Still a lot of useful things there.

If the elbow falls within a text box (where the fill would be if you turned it on), then the lines don't join properly. I have reported this as a bug over a couple of versions, but it never gets fixed.

These are VERY good videos which would be enhanced by using YouTube to make them continuous. But maybe the time limit helps you stay succinct. (dshall, you paying attention?) I vote for terrain. The only sane terrain I know falls mainly on the plane.

And if the patch has a nice thick outline, and it's larger than the view, it can serve as the oh-so-satisfying line itself.

I have recently come across www.rubysketch.com, which has a very large selection of low poly count, but nice-looking, manufacturer-specific content. Both SKP and 3DS formats. Especially good with contemporary plumbing fixtures. Slightly skewed towards the Australian market, but plenty of U.S. relevant content. If you're tired of taking a chance with huge amateur symbols off of 3D Warehouse, take a look here. Need to register, but FREE!

I haven't tested this for a single default, but it's worth remembering that there is a default rich text for every anno set. If you change anno sets, the default may change, too. Could this be what's going on?

It's worth pointing out that "plan stamping" (even if the architect reviews the plans) can lead to an architect losing his/her license. If you are getting paid by the builder, and then paying a fee to the architect for the stamp, then that architect is violating the Texas Architectural Practice Act. I'm not saying you won't find someone to do it, just that a licensed architect who would stamp someone else's plans doesn't have a lot of common sense.

Scott (or should I say "Ms. Hall"?), maybe you could do Sherry the courtesy of using the feminine form of mon, i.e."ma." Ma Cherie (feminine form) or Mon Cheri (masculine), and yes, I realize that Cherie gets an accent over the first "e" which I'm too lazy to look for on the keyboard. Having gone to school in France, mixing genders like this is grating, which just shows that Sherry is far more polite than I am to not even bring it up. ;-)

I agree that the issue with architects around here is mostly that they haven't heard of Chief Architect. Also, many are doing commercial or institutional work where they want or need BIM, along with residential work. For them, BIM=Revit. The ones that don't use BIM are using AutoCAD, mostly because that is pretty much what the entire workforce is trained for. But most of the firms advertise for Revit skills now. However, I think there is a whole bunch of residential-only architects who might gladly embrace Chief, if they were shown it persuasively.

This may be one of those "be careful what you wish for" kind of things. From what I've seen in the above Vectorworks video, and the capabilities I know to be in ArchiCAD, these both already HAVE these capabilities. So why aren't we just using these programs, if we really need these features? For me, the answer is that these higher-level programs are now so feature-laden that the complexity of use overwhelms what I need to get done. I look at the Vectorworks dialog boxes within boxes, and my brain turns to mush. From what I've seen, Revit is worse. There are many things that need to be improved in Chief, for sure. But I do not need clay-like modeling, "Teamwork" features, IFC compatibility, or the ability to show phased work. For the type of projects that I do, the current level of features are pretty much fine. I don't WANT Chief to become ArchiCAD, because the relative simplicity of use that I depend on would be gone. I can now sit in front of a client and design some pretty good floor plans with furniture and trim, especially if using the House Wizard features. (Including in addition/alteration projects.) I can't do that with ArchiCAD, because there are so many damn settings to be juggled. I'm not doing "sculptural" works. If I were, I would use a different program. What I would lose by the addition of all of these modeling features would be too high of a price -- and we are fooling ourselves if we don't think there is a price in piling on features. In the hands of an expert user, any program is going to seem amazing. "Snobby architects" may use these modeling programs to their advantage, but that's not my market, nor the market of 95% of most projects out there.

I also awarded myself a few reputation points. ;-)