HumbleChief

Just got off the phone with Patrick from Core Logic. The cheapest plan they had (today) was $100/month and the cost of each download would be deducted from that monthly charge. Perhaps you (Perry) signed up before they went to a monthly charge? Reports looked very nice and complete but $100 a month is too much for the amount of reports I'd need.

The county parcel map search site is there for what you want to do - get parcel maps. Very easy. Perry, I tried to get on the Core Logic Site and have a request to sign up but don't know any details yet. Looks like a pay site with a monthly fee? Some times I need more info than Zillow (great for year built) Google and the County site and it would be great to have access to more info like Core Logic. I'll wait till they get back to me about signing up.

Would you mind letting us know what you end up using? Thanks.

Try the county Scott. Used Netronline for a long time then it just quit giving me info. When using the County use ONLY the APN. If you HAVE to use the address just put in number and street, maybe the St. Dr. Ave. etc. If you put in all the info in the address field like 123 Any Street, Any Town, ZIP it will get you nothing. https://arcc.sdcounty.ca.gov/Pages/parcelmaps.aspx Cost $2 a page plus $.61 processing but it's good if you know the APN. I use Google Earth pro for APN's or call the county in a pinch if that doesn't work.

Patterns show in Vector view and textures show in Standard and Ray trace views. Change the spec. that effects the view you are wanting to change.

http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00683/

Thanks for following up - keep us posted on problems if/when they arise.

I hope we can agree there's no right way to do this. I'm an experimenter and like to see what the problems really are before trying to solve them, others are more comfortable just doing the plan over - pick your poison. Curious about the outcome. Here's an idea - post the old plan. Would LOVE to see how the older plan behaves in X7.

Very helpful Scott. Never used those labels before. Would love to have the text relocate and keep the offset, and having a leader line would be epic.

Nice Yusuf - very ambitious. I have the same question as Perry.

I think you must mean Layout instead of plan?

It can't be that hard to test the plan and see what problems come up, if any. I wouldn't do anything drastic like start over until you know it's unworkable as is. Do a bunch of "Save As" as you proceed to catch any problems and see how it goes.

I agree.

it does...

See - I told you it was easy. I think this is one of those things I forget to remember...zzzz

I constantly fight this 'feature' and have just learned to ignore it. Sometimes the counter top will move to the front, sometimes not. PIA for sure. Here's a plan conuter top 1.plan

What are your current settings?

If they aren't worried they wouldn't be in business. Sketchup has always been an amazing 3D piece of software but Chief and SU are really apples and oranges IMO. If you look at the model shown at approx. 6:50 in the video and you built that in Chief it would take a decent user 20 - 30 minutes, maybe an hour to get a few more details done. I bet it would take a SU user at least twice as long, depending on how many components they have in their library but the paradigms are so vastly different there's almost no comparing the two soft wares. I've watched a couple of videos of SU users building a house and was blown away at how much has to be done to get walls and windows and roofs compared to Chief but what you end up with IMO is vastly more flexible but you earn that flexibility. I very much admire SU users and their abilities but I need to design homes quickly and even though both programs have pretty steep learning curves I prefer Chief's approach.

That's a great call Mick

Annotation Sets are an absolute must learn tool. Not easy but the (very) basics are you set up an Annotation Set for each plan view type. i.e. Floor Framing will have it's own Annotation Set and within that set you set dimension layers, text layers, CAD layers etc. When you change to that Anno Set all your dims, text etc. are on the proper layer. Now you want to work on the Foundation. you switch to the Foundation Anno Set and all your dims, text etc. are on their own, separate Layers. Complex but no short cuts. Google Annotation Sets Chief Architect - there's quite a few videos out there. http://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01167/

Great thread, great tip - Thanks for following up Arun

Interesting observation. Maybe send Scott the PDF instead of posting it here so it stays confidential.

...been making this point for a long time and it's time for Chief to change. Keep the genius software programmers designing software. Let the users or some other group design how those tools should be used. We need some easy to understand and easy to implement interactive tools just like it was 2015. Did I just type easy twice?

Check parcels next door and see if you can get any 10 digit number that should get you the proper Parcel Map and you can get the number by coordinating with goog maps

No can open