birneyd
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Posts posted by birneyd
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On 12/6/2022 at 2:09 PM, Chrisb222 said:
The current rental program now allows you to start and stop - and restart - whenever you want. A post by CA earlier in this thread mentioned that will still be an option going forward into the new pricing plans.
Somehow, I don't think that means that if you use the program for a day a month that one month's rent will now last for 30 months. Having to choke up $200 every time you want to visit a plan is not workable.
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On 12/6/2022 at 1:36 PM, DavidJames said:
The only way the billed-per-hours-used model would work is if Chief received some major polishing and improvements.
When I was using Chief solely for new-builds and renovation plans, I constantly encountered myself having to spend hours upon hours trying to figure out why the software was doing "x" when I wanted it to do "y". As the projects became more complicated, the frequency of issues I encountered also increased. It was incredibly frustrating.
I can only imagine how much that frustration would get amplified if one was now having to spend money on those hours where there's almost zero productivity.
Yes, annoying, but I think still better than going through the hassle of restarting the program and coughing up $200 for a month of use when you just want to make a minor change to a plan. A rental model would be workable, but only at a sensible price. 5 copies of MS Office for $100 per year is reasonable. Adobe's photo plan at $10 per month is actually quite cheap. Even the full boat Creative Cloud at $50 per month isn't too bad a deal when you look at the expanse of software involved. By comparison $200 per month for a single program is highway robbery. I get the (small) vertical market issue, but there should be a way around for folks who use the program on a limited basis. One approach would be to charge separately for support as I suspect that is a big piece of CA's cost structure. Support plans at different levels from basically none to as many calls as you need (essentially the current model) could be priced very differently with nominal pricing on the software itself. With that kind of model, the current SSA pricing should easily support development. Support is another animal and the high intensity users really ought to pay their way. With the currently proposed plan, most of the casual users will eventually go away and CA will lose considerable revenue that incrementally costs them very little to support.
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On 12/2/2022 at 8:37 PM, Bondbuilding said:
Hello Friends and Chief Sales!
24 year user here... I have recommended and gotten more friends using this software than I can remember.
This is interesting news from Chief. For me personally it has provoked a lot of thought about my personal situation and relationship with Chief going forward. I have read the entirety of the comments which mainly seem focused on the SSA relationship in the future. The comments are interesting and I get that Chief needs to make a profit! I think the issue with me is that not one size fits all, and It seems that the new pricing program is geared towards a "Heavy User", someone making a living drawing plans. I want to make some comments that don't seem to factor in to Chiefs thinking about the purchase model going forward. I totally get that all the big players have gone to the subscription model.
I started with Chief 6.. 22 some years ago ...upgraded to 8...then to V10 ...then to X7 Premier which is where I am now. I want to say Chief 6 was $1400 all those years ago. (which seemed like a lot!) I have seen the software evolve quite a bit over the years. I have never had SSA other than the original purchase included. (this was generally offered/presented as Customer Product Assistance/Service which I very rarely if ever needed)
I am a Home Builder/General Contractor and I only use the program to design homes that I personally speculatively build or custom design for clients to custom build. This amounts to probably an average of 2-3 plans a year. I am getting near the back end of my career and it makes absolutely no sense that I would need to or want to pay in perpetuity $2000 a year or $200 a month just to use the work already created, or draw a handful of additional plans per year. Obviously I can always open the files with the original program......but we all know that once you open a file with the new version you can't go back. The situation does present some concern if the program fails or ceases working will a new future operating system. This could put me in a situation where I really don't have a lot of options. I feel pressured now to buy an owned version of X14 before Jan 9th...or use what I have until it dies. If I buy X14, how long will it be supported as an owned version?....
Then what?
I go stints where I don't use the software for months..maybe as long as a year and then may draft 3 home plans with it. I had a fairly significant run in the 2009 bust where I didn't use it at all for a couple of years.
The software is an absolute marvel, ...but the fact is it does about twice as much stuff as I could actually care about. I'm not trying to create perfect 3D houses with perfect renderings and imaginary accoutrements. I am drawing 2D house plans. Obviously the function of drawing and creating in the program is in 3D, but the end goal for me is to have some 2D plans. It's is, and was, a brilliant concept. A person composes a a 2D drawing dictating its 3D properties and can see and take views of it. A person can draw an awesome 3D house if they want to put the time in! One of the things I say to my customers is that "while we are going to have some 3D modeling, the focus here is to complete a set of 2D plans to build a Real House ...not create a perfect "virtual one"".
Other features the software does, again, are not super useful to me, (estimating, generated materials list, intricate framing diagrams etc) ...because they require too much time perfecting the "virtual home" to use. For me the time effort for me as a Builder is better spent doing it old school...labeling the 2D plans with the methods and features... "floor trusses 16" OC" etc and then sitting down and figuring it out. (This is just me...to each his own)
Lastly... My younger brother who does remodeling uses Home Designer Pro. He doesn't typically do whole homes and does not want to pay big money for software for a handful of remodels per year. I have helped him finish some plans in Home Designer is not significantly different or better than my X7 as far as functional modeling...but it does kind of stink as far as the restricted feature set...(no preset plan views, inability to change views on the Layout Page, only 5 Layout pages...and a few other things). Honestly, if Home Designer Pro did just a few more things it would work for me perfect.
If the whole method is going to subscription, then it seems that Chief should have some sort of cheaper subscription for a light or intermittent and Long Time User.. like me....or .....something a little better than Home Designer but not quite as full fledged as Premier 14. I'm sure it's a fine line to determine the feature set of Home Designer Pro so a person will buy Chief Premier....but $60 a month going to $200 a month with nothing in between is a big leap when there are a significant amount of features in the step up software that a Builder Type or Remodeler Person could care less about. Maybe a light user lease or legacy plan. ( I get this would be super hard to administer but might be worth retaining some users).
It's been a long ride ...hopefully its not over for me. ✌️
I have many of the same concerns. I have used Chief primarily for my own home construction (at x14 and started well before they had "x" versions). I have found CA very useful for visualization, but not very practical for detailed structural design because it is simply too automatic and doesn't deal well with unique structure designs. For example, our house uses drop trusses for 2nd and 3rd floors and Chief insisted (at least at the time) on using rim joists. I patched around the issue for the 3d view and made a lovely set of visuals, but still had to draw all the structural cross sections in a 2D CAD program (Visual CADD is my program of choice). I don't think that has changed much over the years. I still keep CA active as the house is a continually evolving beast and I try to keep the plan up to date. I also occasionally draw plans for neighbors' projects so they can see what they are going to get with a planned remodel, but CA is not a revenue generator for me. I will probably keep the SSA alive until or unless CA prices it beyond good sense, but I unconditionally dislike (maybe even hate) the rental model. In my view, it is much like phone plans that are where they are because the phone companies are either too lazy or too stupid to manage their businesses based on usage revenue.
If CA is bent on going to the rental model, then my suggestion would be to add an additional feature that allows the program to be loaded for a nominal fee and bills by hours used (the license activator connects to mommy in any case). That would allow for casual users to have access to the program and potentially increase the user base beyond the high-output pro base that will be the only users left with the current new model.
Chief Architect Software Licensing Changes Beginning January 10, 2023
in Announcements
Posted
I think you are at the core of the issue. The S and the SA need to be separated for CA to keep their user base. A lot of comments here from casual users like myself who have been diligently paying the SSA but are offended by the price of the rental model. A far better solution would be to charge a sensible fee for the SA part (i.e. development) and then work out a schedule that makes the S (support) part pay for itself. A combination of per call, and a few call packages (i.e. 10, 50, 200) should cover the bases. Software support is expensive, particularly for vertical market SW that, by definition, never gets tested to the degree that mass market SW does. I have to believe that Support is a big chunk of CA's budget (maybe more than half), so cost-plus-margin based pricing makes sense. Make the support function pay its way. The alternative will be an eventual loss of all casual users and judging by the comment base, that may well be the majority. One has to wonder if this change isn't just a knee jerk reaction to the housing market going in the dumper. If so, a better choice would be to accept reality and downsize accordingly. The market is going to be in the dumper for at least a few years. Economic cycles (particularly forced ones) don't heal very quickly. The announced path suggests that either CA is desperate or suddenly very greedy. There has been no evidence of extreme greed in the past, so maybe desperate is the logical conclusion.