CARMELHILL

Maybe, but what's the deal with Archiframe? $5800 additional to do wood framing. Seriously? That better be one kick ass framing module if I'm going to switch for $8300.

After Autodesk went the subscription route, their corporate earnings and stock price did very well. But shortsighted I think. You don't screw over your customers just for quick bucks. I've been hearing rumblings that more than a few shops are looking at different CAD packages. Bricscad Bim emphasizes this a lot in their product presentation. But I don't know how much Bricscad is like Revit, or maybe more like Autocad Architecture.

Many other users have said this, and I have to grudgingly agree, there is no one platform that will do everything you want. You might need to adapt your own design and drafting styles to the limitations of your software, or have a multiplatform office. I crossed Archicad off my list because it didn't have cross referenced keynotes built into the program as a base feature. After spending $6g on the program you have to then add a monthly license for a plugin from Cadimage. AC 22 supposedly released a feature that addresses this, but it looked extremely confusing. Another plugin is buy once and you own it, but a $6g program? Come on. A super powerful commercial program should have this basic feature built in. Modern designs with slanted walls and curved roofs, or standard centerhall colonial houses, or commercial work, you need the program that fits your office. And don't forget added costs.......$6g for AC sounds like a lot, but what about the months of additional training, diminished office productivity while your training, etc......it makes more sense to stick with Chief and use what you have available.

Sometimes the auto dimension won't pick up the edge you want. I've had instances where I had to zoom in and add a point, real small and barely visible, then dimension to that. The only negative is it won't auto update if you change the design. But this is less a pain than converting the image to Cad Detail from View. I rarely do that, except for "dumb" generic details or elevations. What's the point of using a 3d BIM software package if your going to convert everything to 2d lines and then lose the ability to easily update the project later.

I think 7 years ago the great training videos and the amazing Bonus Catalogs were what won me over from Vectorworks to Chief.

I have to compliment Chief programmers on keeping Chief fairly intuitive and easy to use. I've been looking at some other programs to supplement Chief and some are an absolute horror of hidden values, hidden menus, and hard to use command lines. I am not, and never will be, a programmer, and never nearly as good as Joe Carrick or Michael Alaskan_Son at Ruby. A good design program should free up the designer to get work done, not to learn a crazy difficult and overly complex programming language. Otherwise go back to paper and pencil. This might be a naive statement or I'm taking my 7 years of Chief experience for granted. But between their interface, quality training videos, and the IMMENSE value of this well developed and very deep forum, I think this program is top notch and can easily be made better. I remember years ago looking at some of the cad program on the shelf at Staples. Punch 3D, etc..I was amazed at what some of them were able to do. But there is some of a tradeoff for keeping it simple and dumbing it down, many features were automated with no ability to customize for you own particular needs and preferences. Chief's Home Designer probably was one of those programs on the shelf. But I gotta say Chief Premier has a good blend of both worlds. Sure it would be great if they opened up the program to third partys for app developers and plugins. Some car turning radius apps would be nice. Cadimage Keynotes for Archicad would be nice. Third party hvac design pps would be cool. But I still feel this is a dam good program. Moderator: move this thread to Chat room if needed.

One thing I have noticed about this idea. When you physically draw all the details on the same plan, and send those individual details to different parts of your layout, Chief slows WAY down. I'm not sure if Joe does it this way and incurrs the same slow down. Maybe he keeps all his 1/4" scalel details grouped together and then send that to one sheet together? My work around has been to still keep all details in one plan file, but they are details in the cad detail management area, not on the plan. They are then sent to layout from there. It's weird though. When you open you detail plan file it looks blank. The details are there, just not on the page. No slow down incurred. Chief is probably going to give us a preview box in the next release of the details in the Cad Detail Management dialogue, just like we already have for the Cad Block Management dialogue box.

Agreed. I've noticed a move to yearly title releases for lots of programs, with Archicad and Chief so far sticking to numbers. Maybe they'll change to a different roman numeral. XXI. I hate the Superbowl numbers.

And that's why I am still here. Chief is rock solid stable for me. Rarely crashes, even on a 115 room hotel job. And it's basic rendering ability is top notch. I've looked at Archicad and VW. Switching to those would be, in my opinion, a step backwards when it talking soley about the design process....for houses anyway. But they need to work on the con doc tools. We as users need to always push for better tools.

Well I did put Elf on the Shelf out for my kids to find tomorrow morning. I also believe in rogue waves, the JFK conspiracy, Area 51, white cows make white milk and brown cows make chocolate milk, GOD owns a golden retriever, and a few others that keep me sane.

I don't want to say anything voodoo here because I don't want to be excluded from the eventual beta, but I gotta say.....there hasn't been an X10 update since June. Last year they released the last update in September. So that's an extra 3 months of development and programming time they are hopefully spending on X11. Maybe we can expect a colossal version release with lots of new BIM functionality, data tags, and some real 2d drafting tools? An updated interface might not be a bad idea since it's a little dated 90's looking. Everyone else has switched to contextual ribbon interfaces (Archicad, Revit, Intellicad) Vectorworks is still stuck in the 90's too. I'm personally not a fan of parent drop downs. Unfortunately I won't be able to make it over to Vegas for the National Builders Show to eyeball it with the head honchos. So what ya all think? Is Santa going to take a seriously look at the Wish List and grant us some miracles?

I'm hoping this means they are spending some serious programming time on a significant x11 release.

By the way, I was playing with Vectorworks 19 and a sample 5 story office model today. In 15 minutes of manipulating, it crashed three times when I tried to render a shaded black/white image. So I let the 50% discount offer expire without purchasing. Chief rarely crashes for me. RARELY. Let's see what the Chief beta produces in December.

The problem with Andy's version, is he used a continuous uninteruppted grid for the whole floor plan. Not every project is like that. Many projects require the walls go to the deck, or 6 " above the ceiling, so each room needs it's own grid centered in the room to maximize the grid/tile layout. That's trimming and extending for every room. Oh my god........

Andy, How about this? No trimming or extending needed!!!!!! And it was posted to the Wish List section a while back.....

I'm looking into an additional platform for my commercial projects, but I'm too old to learn something new. I used Vectorworks in 2012 but I don't recognize anything in the program anymore so I'd have to relearn everything, just for the odd couple of commercial jobs I get every year. Probably not worth it, so I'll continue to struggle using Chief for it. As for Chief, I've heard guys say they create a room polyline, then overlay a grid from their user library that is saved as a symbol for quick insertion. They maneuver it around to get the best layout of grid/tiles within the room poly, then explode it and trim the lines. TEDIOUS. Plus lights never seem to insert correctly into the grid. VW has a GREAT ceiling grid tool. Stupidly simple. I've begged Chief to implement something similar. I'm crossing my fingers for February's release of X11 to see what they come up with. But it's my understnading that it generally takes two years for a new idea to make it into the program.

It depends if your talking for residential, with lighting layouts, soffits, differing ceiling heights, and circuiting....... or for commercial with ceiling grids and easy placement of 2 x 4 light fixtures and scale-able symbols. If you meant commercial, forget it. Chief doesn't bother to provide or support any decent commercial tools. A lot of us are hoping this changes in X11. Better basic CAD drafting is hoped for too.

This isn't really Chief software related, so this thread might belong in the Chat section, but... The new Ray Tracing Video cards from Nvidia, the Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, is failing for lots of users. And the replacements sent from Nvidia are failing too. It's affecting some of the 3rd party cards too. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-rtx-2080-ti-graphics-cards-dying/ https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3065361/nvidias-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-cards-are-reportedly-failing-in-high-numbers

I think they'll definitively be spending more development time on this for a few reasons. If Lumion continues to develop fast renders and animations, then programs like Chief, Softplan, and some other lower end CAD programs will lose market share to users that decide to employ Sketchup and third party rendering programs. So Chief NEEDS to have an all in one competitive solution. Chief always spends an inordinate amount of their development time on eye candy rendering stuff, rather than 2d con docs tools that we REALLYy need. Look how long it took to get a cad stretch tool.....version 10. Still no keynotes. But we have virtual goggle, virtual panoramic, tablet apps and all that other eye candy stuff. Faster Real Time rendering PBR dedicated video cards are coming out this year.

Thanks Glenn. I must have read it on the Archicad User Forum when I was shopping around.

That's not what I'm talking about. I know the right preview pane can be enlarged, but I'm talking about the text ENTRY area to the left. Check my video. Your sort of right. I will be using this text more often. But the text entry dialogue box has always been too small.

Does anyone know how to change the size of the text your writing in the text entry field of the Standard Text Specification dialogue box? I mean the visible text your in the process of typing, not what goes onto the drawing. I know this was discussed once before when someone was changing to a newer monitor size, but I've searched the forum and can't find it. It's not in the Preferences. It always seems so small, especially when you're display resolution is up pretty high. See attached.

So here is the better video. I still can't figure out how to get Rich Text to do it correctly, but it works with standard text. It would be great if the leader arrows automatically resized correctly, but it's not a big extra step to fix those as the video shows. If anyone has any comments or suggestions to automate this further, please post up.

I figured it out. Actually it is possible, but not with Rich Text. I've been using a similar idea to automatically resize my room name labels when switching between 1/8" key plans and 1/4" construction plans and 3/16" electrical plans, and Thermal Boundary Plans, etc...... You're details have to use Text, not Rich Text, set up individual annotation sets for each scale, a Layer Set for each scale, and a Text Style for each scale. In the Layer Set for each scale the text needs to be set for the Text Style of each detail scale. Once you resize your detail scale, change the Layer Set to the corresponding Layer Set, and then select all the leaders and change them to the "default" size of the newly selected Annotation Set. The only negative is that the width spacing of the text gets all messed up and you'll have to resize them manually. But if you have a detail completed and you need to change the scale for some odd reason, now you can, and all your text will update, then you select all the leader lines and update their size in one shot. Adjust text column widths, and your done. I posted a crude video with no sound (I'm home and kids are asleep). I'll post a more detailed video from the office tomorrow.

I tried to set this up once and it failed, but maybe I was doing something wrong. Is there a way to set up text callouts and their arrow leader lines to automatically resize existing text according to the drawing scale your using? I mean existing text, not new text and callouts which are easily done with annotation sets. This would be useful if you've already drawn a plan at 1/4" scale but you realize it was overkill and 3/16" or even a 1/8" key plan would sufficiently convey the same information? Or if you had drawn a detail at 1" scale but you decide you need zoom in a bit, and go to 1-1/2" scale. Same for elevations, from 1/4" to 1/i8", or vise versa? I'm pretty sure it can't be done with Rich Text.