KevinWaldron

https://www.mozaiksoftware.com/ watch demo

Mark, Is a master at cabinets and his skill set is far above mine in Chief! The question was is Chief the answer for Custom Vanity or Furniture. The person asking the question will have to decide. Let me offer one more example of what programs like Rhinoceros and others are capable of doing that Chief can't. I've personally chosen to use my skill set learning other programs for doing furniture etc. as we often use CNC to make various items we sell in our homes. (we spent 15 years in manufacturing musical instruments now retired but often use the equipment for various home building projects) Blessings, kw

Let me say these are my thoughts not necessarily the majority of the CA users. I've been building furniture for 50+ years both primitive and Period pieces and I don't think CA is the best program for doing what you have shown. It's capable of doing a lot for sure but it is much better at designing houses, light commercial buildings, barns etc. and doing standard normal average house setup. Can it do these kind of projects sure with enough expertise and time. A rowboat can cross the Atlantic given the right criteria and conditions. I'd personally recommend programs like Sketchup, Rhinoceros, MOI, Solidworks, Inventor, and a slew more for doing custom cabinets, furniture, and the like. It might be that you can afford and learn to use several programs to accomplish your goals. For sure CA is not capable of producing CAM/Cad ready files for a CNC or Laser when detail assembly is required. CA does an outstanding job of doing what it was intended to do. My two cents and showing several JPG files from other programs that I've used for building said projects. Primarily Rhinoceros. None where done with CA. Blessings, kw

Possibly take your Chief files into a program such as Rhinoceros and convert fairly easily to curves (nurbs) and then use and Rhino add-on product such as Rhinocam or Madcam to run your CNC machine. Another alternative might also be a program like Aspire which has drawing and CAM features both along with various conversion tools. (We have CNC and Lasers and use all 3 of these programs for doing some of what your wanting to do.) kw

Pulled your plan up. Played with adding and changing walls furniture etc. and it was taking approximately 3-4 count seconds for things to move, change, or add. (My machine is a I9-13900k 5.4GHz with 128 GB ram with windows 11 Pro and TTX 4090 with 24 GB with 8 TB SSD for C drive and a 14 TB SSD D drive) Personally suspect your asking CA to do more than it was designed to do. You may need a more robust Cad program or a more robust computer. kw

I've used this program for years....... It does work great. kw PhotoZoom Pro https://www.benvista.com/

3D Warehouse https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/search/models?q=duct+vent&order=relevance&direction=desc

These are translation of Chief as 3ds files and converted to vector drawing using nurbs. (Rhinoceros) PDF was the only way to show the files as they looked prior to conversion as nurbs. kw

Not sure I totally agree with you Rab personally think a lot of the problem is Chief not exporting all the information. Attach a small garage I just exported out as 3ds with 4 views. Someone could use this to retrace in another program or convert mess to nurbs curves. kw 2024-07-29_18-45-29Test Rside Elev.pdf 2024-07-29_18-45-29Test Top Elev.pdf 2024-07-29_18-45-29Test Front Elev.pdf

Probably best to go back to surveyor, think I saw info on plat. Ask nicely if he would give you a dwg or possibly a 3D DWG. Lot of surveyors in my area use Carlson software so easy enough for them to do this. He also can do a 3D topo of all this data if he has typical surveyor software. ( He may charge additional to do this) kw

Might caution you to check Subdivision Restrictions. Many of our local Restriction say garage must remain a garage. Easy enough for the homeowner not to know or care. kw

1 Concrete Block 12-in x 8 x 12.daeDrew a concrete block this past weekend. It was drawn in Rhinoceros and then exported to Collada format (dae). It is a fully re-sizeable block and can be shrunk-enlarged etc. (Block Piers was my goal) Enjoy, kw 1 Concrete Block 12-in x 8 x 12.dae

A lot of cabinet folks (builders) are actually making the units with CNC thus 2020, Mozaik, KCD, Cabinet Vision, Sketchup with add-ons and a host of others. Not sure about your clients place in ordering or manufacturing. In our area many still build custom cabinets. Chief does not produce the internal components necessary to take a piece of lumber and or plywood/sheet goods to make cabinets. What we have for the most part in CA is a representation of components. Example: it want show front and or back drawer dovetails and internal dimensions or cut the dado necessary for the bottom of said drawer bottom, location of hinge screws, draw pulls etc. kw

Several Programs and companies that offer this kind of service of conversion of raster to vector. Personally use CorelDraw. It will allow raster to vector conversion by several different means including center line trace then save as a number of formats but if your wanting DWG that is one of the formats. If this is a big drawing probably not practical unless you want to spend a lot of cleanup time although Corel is one of the better programs I've found.

Rab, sorry, to disagree but with "Business Plus" we work live with Dropbox and Chief Architect. We do not autosaves through Chief but we all manually save and we do work from Dropbox as our save to directory. (Dropbox cost us about $2,800 per year for 6 people) If two people try and copy a file that is open or let's say you leave a computer on at the office with some file and you go home and try and work with this same file it will allow you open and save the file but it says "file name + Conflicted Copy.plan" when you save. So this is something that has to be resolved but it is still a valid file. We do keep all the C:document Chief Arch etc on local machines and periodically update the User_Library.calib files as well as keep the ProgramData files on local machines. We have found it easier to use a master file of "other details" for everyone. One reason I've been asking for outside links for this kind of file. May not be right, but it works for us and has been for a number of years now. Many of our files are 125-250 mb. Chief Architect is not the only cad program we use. May I also add we do not work / draft for the general public. We are design build / manage / sale firm who keep many of our properties and we are often working with all kinds of files and firms: From programs like Carlson Survey, Autocad Civil, Vectorworks, FormZ, Rhinoceros, as well as programs like Alibre, Sketchup etc. Residential work is not all we do.