ragetoca

Where Did you post the file to Joey?

I tend to use a lot of grey scale. I have created a style that I am very pleased with. There is a complete set of my plans on the Chief website.

Joey - that looks great! really like the style

You can customize your plan view to look anyway you want. Try downloading the trial version and play with it.

Tommy - I have the trial and I am playing with it, I wanted to see how YOU and others are customizing CA to their style etc

I would like to see some samples (single PDF or JPG) of how you have customized CA to achieve "your look" for your floor plans, for instance (attached) this is the way my floor plans look (currently in ACA) - The reason is I want to see how much one can tweak settings/style in CA - Thanks

I was responding to your comment "If CA was a $200 software I might understand". That is a ridiculous statement. Look at consumer products and see what you get for $200.00.

EXACTLY MY POINT!  Have a warm weekend

Thanks Ebdesign for that explanation. Is hard to undo 15 years of Autodesk's way of doing cad

IM me what you consider a fair price. Thanks

Tommy - I am not wasting my time here, I am trying to make a good decision before I spend 7k on 3 licenses - Raul

This is probably the #1 reason why I have not purchased Chief, but Archicad and Revit do a MUCH better job of sheet management and updating. If CA was a $200 software I might understand, but when you pay $2500 per seat I would expect a lot more, especially with sheets and layouts

Hello - we are building 2 new homes in a Historic district (you know how fun that is) - I need a rendering done of each house (See attached) for a meeting next week with the historic comittee. I would need them by Monday or Tuesday morning at the latest. I have floor plans and elevations done in dwg format (can send PDFs also). One house is on a slab and the other one on a basement. 

Please send me a private message with an estimate for both houses and also some rendering samples (a link is fine) - Thanks

Raul

I am creating a floor plan by using right click for continuous wall creation, but if Ihappen to pan using the scroll button, the command stops and ends. Is this normal? is there a way to stop that from happening?

Thx

Raul

Did you find a buyer?

My Desktop at work does that also and it is video card related - Do you know if it is a MB integrated video card?

Sounds a lot like Autocad Architecture, in my opinion, the best 2D/3D software there is, but at the same time, it has little if not, NO tools for residential design, it has a few usable tools that have not seen any updates since version 3.3, 15 years ago.......If Autodesk had not bought Revit, ACA would have become an amazing software 
 

Thank you all for the comments, some of those comments have answered questions I have but others have raised some doubts about CA      - I guess I won't really know until I make the switch.....

How would you describe CA's overall responsiveness to user's requests? Are the updates signifcant improvements? When is X7 supposed to be released?

Thx

Rt

Hi Raul, I use both Chief and ArchiCAD.

My view is you only load the apps you need to get the Job done.

Many use Chief and other 2d Cad tools together, I dont use Autocad but I see the many benefits of it.

I would use Chief for 3d presentations for cookie cutter homes or project homes.

It would be very easy to export a dwg file from Cheif and send it into Autocad to finish off while you are learning the ropes, I dont need any 2d cad programs to get the job done in Chief.

I would say Chief is a very good fit for your company and not that hard to learn either for the younger generation cad operators since you are based in the US, Chief was specifically made for the US style homes.

Give a good test run before you make your decision.

You havent told us what apps you use for material take off or cost estimating and if you are intending to use Chief for this as well?

We have an "in-house" estimating department who use "Marks System" for estimates and budgets. I called CA and they gave me a 30 day fully functional trial - I plan to build one of our standard houses and will present it to ownership in the next few weeks, I will need some help from this forum.

4hotshoez - thank you for the comments, I am hesitant to make the plunge to CA....decisions decisions

Thanks for the comments - We are going away from Autodesk products, not really interested in Revit, if I ever change to a job that requires Revit I will learn it - my goal is to be productive where I am now but I need real tools that were designed for residential designers. Even if the company I work for chooses not to buy CA I am considering it buying it for my own use, I do side jobs for other builders who are not in direct competition with us.

Thank you all for the comments, very helpful. We will not have the need to be working on the same plan at the same time. Our goal is to build 200-250 homes starting next year and eventually get to 300 homes a year.

I would like to ask a few more questions:

*What do you think it will be biggest challenge for us? Will it be learning CA or Unlearning Autocad? What/where would be the best place to learn and master CA? (I know it will take time, but I want to start "running" on the right foot).

*Periodically I need to outsource some work (right now I have a hard time finding people who use/own ACA2015, 95% of subs use Vanilla Autocad - not to mention that Autodesk makes it impossible for AEC objects to be compatible with older versions of ACA) - Will CA solve that? Can files be opened in older versions?

*What is the history of CA listening to user's needs and requests? Are their updates significant and helpful?

*Is CA customizable? Can one write our own macros/commands?

Thank you all,

Raul T

Hello CA users,

My name is Raul, I am a residential designer who manages an architectural department for a semi-custom builder (140 homes a year). We use Autocad Architecture for our house plans (I have been a long time Autodesk user). We are paying $5100 a year for 3 licenses, my frustration is they they have not done any major upgrades or new features in like 12 years, we are definitely moving away because it lacks the tools we need for residential design/ drawing production.

Over the past 2 months, I downloaded demo/ trials of other software platforms: Revit, Archicad, Softplan, vertex, Envisioneer, Vectorworks, and Chief Architect. Out or all of these I liked archicad and CA but heavely leaning towards CA because of the purchase price and the yearly subscription cost, CA seems to be the best option for us.

Now my question is this: Will CA be a good fit for a production builder like us? We build 3 tiers of homes: 1) production/cookie cutter homes in the $200-400's 2) semi-custom homes in the $400-600's and our high end product $600's to over a million dls. We make A LOT OF CHANGES to our houses, we work from a "baseplan" file system and then we create lot specific plans.

The only thing that concerns me a bit is the whole layout / printing process. I wish it was as easy as archicad where the program is building the sheets automatically etc.

Anyways, I would like to hear comments from users who might be in a similar situation as me. Thank you for your time.

Raul T