ChiefArchitect

Chris placed 3rd in our Residential Home Design Contest in April. He has been designing since the 80's and has moved from residential design to the commercial marketplace. "I am an Architectural Production Manager for Daman + Lechtenberger Architects located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are a full-service Architectural Design firm specializing in big box retail and worship assemblies. My start in residential design started in 1988. My parents owned a design firm in Tulsa and I landed the “super exciting” job of producing foundation plans in CADD as my mother would hand draft the house plans and elevations. In 1989 I started my first full-time Architectural job working with Michael R. Dankbar, AIA. I was able to study under Mike over the next two years working on residential architecture. My ongoing relationship with Mike as an architect and mentor has been an invaluable asset. In 2002 I started designing my own homes in South Tulsa. Over the next 4 years I designed over 1,000 house plans. I had 10-15 builders I worked full time producing builder sets for construction as well as custom homes. As the residential market started to decline in 2007, I was hired on as a designer at a local firm producing house plans in the upper market. This was a great experience as it led me in into the commercial marketplace for design and drafting. "I have been with Daman + Lechtenberger since 2011 working on the production of Construction Documents. In 2012 I was promoted into the design side of our firm. Working directly with Brad Lechtenberger, NCARB, I started working with 3D models and renderings that we produced as a selling tool to the clients and also a guide for our production team. In 2013 I had the opportunity to design the Saint Jude home in Owasso, Oklahoma with Epic Homes. This was my first project with Chief Architect and we won the 2013 Parade of Homes Best Design in the $500,000 – $699,999 category. I have been using Chief Architect for residential house plans and design now for 4 years. "The best comment I can make about Chief Architect is the look on the client's face when they can visualize their home in 3D and see a 2D plan come to life. The toolset in Chief Architect is one of the best I have used. From the concept drawings, through the final stages of design, Chief has a proven track record with me that it's fast, precise, and extremely detailed. I still design with the lost art of pencil and paper. I love the ability to sketch out ideas and shapes. I think it’s important as a designer to be creative and allow the design to take shape naturally but also use the latest tools to produce an extremely detailed set of plans." Connect with Chris Daman + Lechtenberger Architects http://www.damanlechtenberger.com/ cmckillip@damanlechtenberger.com 918-933-5323

William of HearthStone Homes placed 1st in the Chief Architect Residential Home Design Contest in April! He fell in love with log home design back at the very beginning. “My family is my number one passion, and residential design is my second. I often find myself doing plans in my down time, just to relax. I fell in love with residential design in high school, when I took a board drafting class. Putting pencil to paper and laying out rooms and shading in stone hatchings, was a dream come true to me. I was already an avid artist, doodling my own comics and painting. I was the Art Letterman for my class and graduated with honors 12th in my class. Being from such a small town it is all about picking the right career when you finish high school. So I chose design. “After graduating from Walters State Community College Magna Cum Laude with an AS in Drafting and Design in 1999, I took my first design job as a Project Designer for Hearthstone Log and Timber Homes in Newport, TN. I started out right out of school working with AutoCAD to do revisions and with Hearthstone’s production software (Cadwork, Informatique) which is used for the CAD/CAM manufacturing of their log homes. Eventually, Hearthstone invested in Chief Architect (version 6) in order to create preliminary and concept design plans for their customers. Chief quickly became one of the primary design tools we used to generate design plans. “In 2001 I left Hearthstone, Inc and floated between a couple of jobs taking my knowledge of Chief Architect with me to each. Eventually, I went to work for R. Allen Design who was using Chief Architect X2 almost exclusively to produce plans for customers. Coincidentally, they sub-contracted work back to Hearthstone, Inc. Last year I was fortunate enough to return to Hearthstone, Inc. full-time. My experience with Chief Architect allowed me to jump right back into the deep end of the pool as if I had never left. Hearthstone began in 1971 as a restorer of old log homes in the Appalachian Mountains. It wasn’t long until there were more people who wanted those homes than there were old logs for restoration. So, they set about learning how to craft new homes in the old Appalachian style. Today we design and build everything from hand hewn log homes to timber frame homes, to hybrid homes that fuse both log and timber designs. Personally, I fell in love with the log home back when I started designing. The craft, the design, the look, and the feel of these style homes are in my blood. Being born and raised in these mountains, I really appreciate the hard work and determination of my ancestors and am excited to be back at Hearthstone Inc. doing what I love to do. “Chief Architect has provided our company with a quick and easy solution for us to get preliminary and concept plans, models, and renderings in front of customers. Chief also accepts exports from our production software, which we use to operate our CAM manufacturing Essetre and Hundegger machines. This means the actual timber we will eventually produce looks just as it is supposed to in a customer’s Chief model. “Over the course of my eighteen years of design experience, I’ve used AutoCAD, Revit, DataCad, Archicad, and more… Chief Architect by far has the most user-friendly interface and does the best job.” Connect with William Hearthstone, Inc. wwoody@hearthstonehomes.com 800-247-4442