HumbleChief

Been there more than once and have found no argument for a policy that's not ambiguous and for a building official who decided to enforce that policy where others have not. The code you referenced has no accommodation for anything over 12 ft. and it seems the plan checker has every right to require engineering even though other have not. That inconsistency within cities drives me nuts. In our City of San Diego there's a height limit certification issued by the FAA that must be signed stating that your 2 story building won't be hit by an airplane in certain areas of the City. NOT making this up. A few plan checkers are embarrassed by the requirement and ignore it while others can't/won't ignore it. Again super frustrating, and in this case downright stupid and literally requires an act of Congress to change and I tried to get it changed but ran out of energy. So yeah, never been enforced before but look, here's the code. Not sure what you can do about it. Oh and the client's involved in the interpretation? They need to be educated as well but can be even more frustrating.

Steve, is it possible that the local building official can't certify anything over 12 ft. without an engineer's stamp because the IRC code doesn't address nor accommodate any structure over 12 ft.?

Here's a couple of RayTraces from the build above meant only to show Chief's capabilities. You can also see the steel beams designed to support the indoor climbing rock...

..and as always this discussion goes to the heart of your business model and your intention as a designer. From your initial post "I'm trying to steer my life in a direction that will have me designing and building one-off, small but beautiful homes/cottages for clients, and friends/family." That could be your current goal and if it remains your business focus then learning programs like Revit and ArchiCad will be a pretty heavy lift for such modest goals BUT those programs will set you up not for 'if' but 'when' those goals change. Really not sure what I would do if I was younger because I find both Revit and ArchiCad cumbersome at best and Chief, again as the discussion always turns, fits my business model. Again best of luck whatever you decide.

Here's a house plan created in 2013 for a home I designed for a client in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe area. I'm including a screen shot from Chief and it will be hard to ignore how crummy it looks but there were over 60 iterations of the design and I don't have time to find the best representation and you'll just have to trust that the design and 3D were complete and the construction was permitted and built as the actual pictures of the home under construction depict. If I had to tackle this job today with Chief I wouldn't hesitate and would be much quicker with the skills I've gathered since. There were steel beam superstructures, glass embedded into rock. Crazy stair details, a climbing rock inside the living room and a few other details baked in. Again the 3D from the plan I chose is pretty sad but the design was done completely in Chief.

Late to this great discussion and some very good points from everyone. I've been using Chief for over 20 years for small, residential construction with a couple of fairly crazy designs thrown in and it fits my business model to a 'T'. If I had ambitions of entering into the world of extremely eclectic design then Chief would not be my choice. Even though the program can be stretched to do much more than initially meets the eye some of the steps take many years of knowledge or the knowledge of this great forum to complete. I don't have any experience with other CAD building software because as I mentioned Chief fits my business model perfectly. I watched some of the Revit video above and was once again struck with the amazing complexity of the program for designing a rather simple house. Sure the design is 'modern' but it is at its core a fairly conventional built with conventional wall and roof structures with an ode to modern design. The one thing you will notice in the over an hour long video is the presenter (extremely talented) doesn't show you the kitchen cabinet design and a lot of detail that's shown in the final renderings. Look for a video showing how Revit handles those things and the 'families' of cabinets you must purchase to have even 1/10th the capabilities of Chief and its cabinet and kitchen bath design tools. I'm convinced that the house shown in the video could be created by an expert Chief user in half the time with excellent results. The down sides with Chief are that with the complexity of Revit comes the detailing and other capabilities that Chief lacks. But as far as designing that 'modern' structure, which again is only modern in design but not structure, give me Chief all day long. For truly eclectic designs Chief will be difficult but for a house like that shown in the video Chief won't even break a sweat. Best of luck in your search and again the previous advice has been very valuable and hope this might help a little as well.

THANKS Eric!!!

Doesn't seem to be a link in the announcement page. thanks

https://www.google.com/search?q=alternatives+to+CamScanner&oq=alternatives+to+CamScanner&aqs=chrome..69i57.400j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Long time user of Chief here and can appreciate the difficult learning curve but all the things you are asking about can be done with Chief. Finding where those changes need to be made can be daunting at first look but once understood Chief can be very powerful for the needs you've outlined above. The advice given above to check the help files and to learn the specifics more on your own is given knowing that when a user dives in and learns Chief's nuances without absolute specific help the user is better served long term. Frustrating because Chief's learning and programming paradigm is very specific to Chief and can defy logic (or some people's version of logic, mine included) at many turns but once understood, as alluded to by many within this post, can be very powerful. One distinction that any Chief user should understand is the 'defaults', mentioned above many times, are plan specific and 'preferences' are global and affect every plan. The 'defaults' are where you want to create and save your plan specific dimensioning preferences as well as many other specifications, then use that plan as a 'template' for future plans as it will retain your default choices. Many of us revisit those 'templates' and update them with any modifications as needed, resave and use again. Hope that helps and good luck.

Yes highly recommended unless you need to pass the structure through a city's engineering department because as soon as you cut a hole in any wall that wall becomes structurally compromised and another, separate, super structure needs to replace that compromised structure. In a back yard with no inspections? Golden. In a regulated city environment? A real challenge.

I don't remember someone asking for a curved arrow added to a call out either but that's not the point of the posts above. Is it possible that you simply don't remember requests for segmented call out lines? Or custom arrows for same? Here's a couple posts from the suggestion forums. Not expecting anything to change in this regard and Chief (Dermot) obviously has no interest in the idea but it, again, is something I would use in every plan. Adding text lines to call outs should not be needed IMO, The options mentioned below should be (have been years ago) a part of any architectural program.

Segregate the room with 'bearing lines' then open the joist direction dbx and change the spacing there.

Nice, What if we could do that with Call Out Cross Section Lines?

And PLEASE let us know if you add that M2 drive if it makes any difference in the lag you are experiencing - I for one will be surprised but optimistic for you.

And wouldn't it be nice if we could add segments, as well and many other options (arrows, arrow types etc.) for Call Out Cross Section Lines? Something that would be used in EVERY plan on this desk and something that has been suggested for YEARS.

Jerry, can you post the plan, or a link to same, to see if others experience the same slow downs? I've had a couple plans, and am working on one now, that will just get slow as they get more complicated. More RAM will most likely not help and even more CPU and video card may not help as was the case with a previous file of mine but you've got a lot of computer muscle and the file is not that large so hopefully it's something that can be changed as the frustration with slow downs can be a real pain.

Oddly enough there's an "Italian Manor" sample plan with a turret on the Home Designer web site that loads OK in X12. And again oddly enough it shows the same sort of not quite right framing and gaps as all my current attempts. Maybe there's a clue in that plan that will help. There's also a picture of a Chief model showing that turret from the pic above but can't find that sample plan.

Thanks Michael and yes a low setting in the segment box draws a pretty nice circle and frames OK, only with a second floor from my experience so far. The challenge then gets interesting as we want to frame the upper roof with 45 degree segments to create an octagon roof over the circular walls and am attempting to retain planes and framing for those upper 45 degree segments, but the 45 degree won't work on the lower roofs which need that 6 degree segment and haven't found an auto frame combo that will work. Will most likely manually frame everything as even the circular walls create really wonky so-called 45 degree segments. Needs a rest for now....

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WOW, this is proving to be an absolute nightmare. Maybe I can download the house plans for the image shown above advertising the Home Designer Suite? Clearly it shows that this type of building can be created in the software? Or can it? And mad props to you Mark for getting as far as you did with your design...

Fascinated by this idea as it might solve another challenge but can't find a way to "us(e) a true curved polyline to create a true curve to that roof plane." Is this possible?

Thanks Scott, the second floor option works great and not going to mess with the only one floor option. Have you ever tackled a tall turret like shown?

Funny - but wait it is possible to create the illustrated structure in Chief Home Designer but....

Thanks Glenn, AND the roof frames to inside of the wall above roof plane instead of the outside edge when a single floor is used. A second floor solves that and the roof frames completely differently. Here's a shot of a roof plane framing to the inside wall of the wall above the roof plane. Seems like it simply cannot be done with a single floor. The turret in the background has a second floor.