kvolanti Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 How well does Chief handle apartments? I have a 16 unit 2 story apartment I am considering using Chief to build in. Other software I'm considering is Softplan and Revit. I want to be able to model the building and use it for construction drawings and getting quantities to get estimates of cost. Would chief be able to handle this type of building? Any articles or training docs/videos that you can link me to so I can see if Chief is right option? Thanks for your help in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 CA X11 premier should work just fine for your needs. CA has a lot of very useful tools for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorgearaya Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 Perhaps your question should be, how well does chief handles large files? Or, has anyone had experience with large buildings? I certainly have not, we modeled an eight unit three story complex and had to move it to ArchiCAD. Back then Chief and the computer or a combination thereof were not able to keep up. Look through the Galleries and see who has large projects. The same goes for Softplan, and for the other one, unless I’m being paid a lot of money I wouldn’t bother even trying. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe_Carrick Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 If you add all the detail to each apartment you might have speed issues. OTOH, if you do a detailed plan for just 1 or 2 apartments (typical) and then show just the perimeter walls, doors and windows for the rest of the units it shouldn't be a problem at all. This is the same procedure we used to use for such buildings when using manual drafting. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinWaldron Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 Personally would not recommend Chief...... not enough muscle ....... we have moved projects that are not houses to VectorWorks...... enclosing several JPG's of what we did in Chief prior to the move. We are a design build firm and we must estimate accurately and to get accurate material estimates we also needed to look beyond Chief. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basketballman Posted April 23, 2019 Share Posted April 23, 2019 Just finished a 3 story, 60,000 sq ft senior housing complex. It certainly slowed things down, but still completely manageable .. And running material take-offs, renderings, etc. was no problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kvolanti Posted April 23, 2019 Author Share Posted April 23, 2019 Thanks everyone. I still need to do more research but it sounds like Chief can handle the size of the model based on a few peoples comments. I have a powerful computer so I think the software will be fine. I'm still wondering how the material take-offs will be handled and Chief will be able to handle the amount of information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlackore Posted April 23, 2019 Share Posted April 23, 2019 A colleague in my office did a 42-unit project; it was manageable because the only interiors that were developed were for the model units. He also did a lot of detail work in AutoCAD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhistlerBuilder Posted April 23, 2019 Share Posted April 23, 2019 Chief is one of the best design software for single family homes. For larger multi family projects you want to be in Archicad / Revit / Vectorworks. Chief runs into problems with performance speeds in larger multi family projects. It is also not set up well to do copy/paste of identical units as the process generates a very large amount of errors that are time consuming to fix. In the multi family projects I have designed with Chief, we always moved to a different platform for building permit drawings. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
architect Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 Just completed a 74 unit project and now working on a 42 unit mixed use.... I think it works well if you are working solo and know the program a bit. It does slow down once you add all the individual unit details/symbols...hold off on adding this stuff as long as possible. I use a separate "detail" file that contains... well... details, notes, etc. to keep the main file size down (not sure it helps). We do need a way of having a typical unit "block" that can be utilized My guess is the other platforms like Revit slow down also when you have large models???? Maybe not. I do find the size of Chief PDFs Con Docs to be way to large compared to other peoples work. I have to use drop box to distribute. Eric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AriseDesign7 Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 On 4/22/2019 at 7:47 PM, KevinWaldron said: Personally would not recommend Chief...... not enough muscle ....... we have moved projects that are not houses to VectorWorks...... enclosing several JPG's of what we did in Chief prior to the move. We are a design build firm and we must estimate accurately and to get accurate material estimates we also needed to look beyond Chief. I cringe when I see 1/16" or 1/8" dimensions, even 1/4" is too small unless you are getting into the minute i C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now