Do I convert to Chief?


KHawkins
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5 hours ago, KHawkins said:

I have been a user of Softplan for many, many years.   Thinking of converting - anyone else made the switch?  Pros and cons?

I was a Softplan 14 user. Had been using the software since version 12, so probably from 2011-2013?

Anyway made the switch and glad I did. 

The tool I missed the most and still miss is the “repeat edit” tool. 

Softplan is way too constrained in its procedures, example, select the roof, now select the move tool bla bla bla. 

No such thing in Chief. In Chief you grab that sucker from anywhere and start moving, stretching anywhere you want. You show it who’s boss. Way more ways to get things done in Chief, you’re only limited by your imagination. There really is no such thing as it can’t be done in Chief. There’s always a way. 

 

This forum is way more active and responsive. 

 

Chief’s free training videos and resources are much more plentiful with actual human beings as presenters instead of that android Softplan hired. 

(Sorry has to get that shot in)

 

Chief’s roofs are more flexible and intuitive than the Softplan lollipop system. 

 

Standard 3D View, PBR, and the other rendering styles are much nicer in Chief. 

 

Convert to Symbol tool is better in Chief. 

 

Molding polylines are more flexible. 

 

Softlist is still better than what Chief offers unfortunately. Way better. 

 

Chief has had live elevations and the ability to dimension those live elevations and cross sections forever while Softplan only adopted this ability this year only. Far behind.  Up until now in order to dimension an elevation in Softplan it had to be converted to dumb cad. 

 

Customization wise I would say Softplan is Apple and Chief is Android if we were to use mobile phones as a metaphor. (And this is coming from a self proclaimed Apple fanboy)

 

Its time to jump ship. 

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I'm not going to bore you with my history of 25+ years of CAD program usage, but will say that Chief by far is the easiest one to use right out of the box (yes, we used to get a box with disks, manuals, certificates, etc., not like today with the ease of 'Download').  I looked into Softplan and compared it to Chief and found that Chief was just a better program.

There's a good tutorial on YouTube that goes through an entire project start to finish.  It's a little over 1 hour but shows you a ton of the features.  

 

I agree with Michael, it's time to jump ship.  Good luck.

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Thank you everyone - this is great information for me to think about.  

 

What about construction drawings?   I know everyone is all about seeing pretty pictures and what the house will look like in this color - but it needs to get build.

 I can have 20 projects running simultaneously and no room for downtime to learn something new......  

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Just now, KHawkins said:

Thank you everyone - this is great information for me to think about.  

 

What about construction drawings?   I know everyone is all about seeing pretty pictures and what the house will look like in this color - but it needs to get build.

 I can have 20 projects running simultaneously and no room for downtime to learn something new......  


I've done plenty of them with Chief Architect. No issues whatsoever! :)

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Been doing construction drawings for 20 years with Chief.  Recently shared some commercial plans with a large firm in the Bay Area for coordination because our respective buildings will abut each other, and they looked at them and assumed they were Revit drawings.

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21 minutes ago, KHawkins said:

Thank you everyone - this is great information for me to think about.  

 

What about construction drawings?   I know everyone is all about seeing pretty pictures and what the house will look like in this color - but it needs to get build.

 I can have 20 projects running simultaneously and no room for downtime to learn something new......  

Although Chief is much more versatile and flexible for creating construction documents, you will miss Softplan's all in one place, plan and layout system.

In Chief you have to create a separate layout file and keep it in the same folder as your plan file.

Weird system that almost everyone on this forum thinks is totally normal and awesome!

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Here are my thoughts about it.

Our trade requires a toolbox with several tools for specific tasks

We receive plans in all kinds of formats that we can in turn either convert to or work directly on

To streamline the tasks and expand the services to as many markets as possible we “add” tools to the toolbox

Archicad, Chief Architect, Softplan, AutoCAD Bundle.

All very similar to learn and use (except AutoCAD) So, not really a conversion right?

Chief is a great tool! No disappointments at all (Now, none are perfect either).

Good luck!

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7 hours ago, Michael_Gia said:

I can have 20 projects running simultaneously and no room for downtime to learn something new......

 

In that case, better off sticking with what you have got because learning any piece of new software will entail downtime.

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