Ca And Multi Family Design

[aftercorbu]

Hello,

 

And happy thanksgiving to fellow USA dwellers.

 

I am an Architect that is fed up with PC and AutoCAD, but use them (and have since AutoCAD "one") in my office setting. 

 

My wife and I (we work together currently as well) are exploring the creation of a virtual studio model [namely the two of us working out of our robust home office and using remote contract employees as needed) going forward.  No time is set for the change to this model.

 

My current firm is a 'commercial' architectural firm but our profitable work is very heavily loaded to residential... just not the single family sort.  High Rise Condominium, Mid Rise Multi Family, Hospitality, and Retail are the responsibility of my studio.

 

My wife and I are Mac based at home and within our virtual studio model.

 

I am testing out CA and there are many things I really like about it.

 

Conceptually here is what I am thinking as to multi family mid and high rise.

 

Create the shell with floor structure, columns, demising walls, exterior walls, foundations, and roof.   Our high rise is cast in place concrete > so concrete columns, concrete shear walls, CMU exterior walls, and metal stud corridor walls and demising walls.  So I think I can customize CA a bit and pull that all off very efficiently.  Our mid rise is mostly wood frame.  Sometimes wood frame on concrete podium and sometime on slab.  Often our condo work is a wrap with parking in the center either structured or surface.

 

Then Create the unit plans file.  All the detail for the units (CA excels at this it appears) resides in a single plan type - Unit 'A' - so to speak graphically keyed into the overall plan using the demising center walls.

 

Keep these two files separate and coordinate the geometry of the exterior walls, columns, and the demising walls carefully.  Assuming there is not an Xref equivalent in CA.

 

This would allow me to handle the shell, structure, etc.  And my wife to handle the unit planning and detailing.

 

Thoughts?

 

Part of the decision as to which software to use must consider the nature of our work.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and respond with your thoughts - and suggestions.

 

I did search for terms like multi family and condominium but came up mostly blank on these forums.

 

Best,

 

Jim

[DRAWZILLA]

Hi Jim welcome

I personally just do single family residential and Chief is the perfect software for me. It does everything I need to create full working drawings complete with structural,and 3d renderings and raytraces. Some people here that come from AutoCAD aren't happy with the 2d drawing tools, but if you build your model correctly you really don't need much in the 2d tools area. IMO Chief is more than ok for 2d detailing. The idea behind Chief is really to eliminate 2d drawing of anything. You can just bring you details into Chief from AutoCAD and put them in your lib. Chief is a completely different way of thinking, and I love it. I would think if you do multi-family and high rise you might ask some here how that's working, and you might need a monster computer for that.

[chief58]

Jim you might want to check out chiefexperts Dan has done some amazing things with chief and is a good trainer doing classes he has done whole developments using 

chief and I have done 3-4 unit townhouses with chief, like Perry says once you get to think like the program its a great too, Scott Hall has a lot of video's also he is a great help

you might want to check youtube for them or his site chieftutor.com great people along with all the Chief people on here they are very very helpful

[imodel]

Hi Jim,

 

I think your approach is correct.  The Main building elements are relatively efficient as far as polygons are concerned.  While Chief unfortunately does not have X-Ref  you can keep things oriented in the X and Y to match the main buiding.  Using copy/paste/hold postion can be useful.  Import/Export 2D will also stay oriented with proper setup.

 

Good Luck!

[Richard_Morrison]

I think you will find that Chief is excellent for planning a single floor, with a single designer. For the scale of project that you are describing, I would consider ArchiCAD, both for the Teamwork function, as well as its robustness in creating CDs with larger projects, especially using hot-linked modules.

[aftercorbu]

Hi Jim welcome

I personally just do single family residential and Chief is the perfect software for me. It does everything I need to create full working drawings complete with structural,and 3d renderings and raytraces. Some people here that come from AutoCAD aren't happy with the 2d drawing tools, but if you build your model correctly you really don't need much in the 2d tools area. IMO Chief is more than ok for 2d detailing. The idea behind Chief is really to eliminate 2d drawing of anything. You can just bring you details into Chief from AutoCAD and put them in your lib. Chief is a completely different way of thinking, and I love it. I would think if you do multi-family and high rise you might ask some here how that's working, and you might need a monster computer for that.

 

Thanks for the response.  I am working through the tutorials and i am likely going to do a small project with CA soon.  Much appreciate the advice and look forward to participating on the forum.  What I think can work to keep the model sizes down is to detach the multitude of units within the floor plate into bays, with a noted reference to a particular unit plan.  This is how we handle work flow in AutoCAD now, but we do Xref the units into the overall floor plan frame work.  There is an advantage to having all the units defined across a floor in context for some engineering purposes.  I am going to keep thinking through the options here and keep this thread up to date with my findings.

 

Jim you might want to check out chiefexperts Dan has done some amazing things with chief and is a good trainer doing classes he has done whole developments using 

chief and I have done 3-4 unit townhouses with chief, like Perry says once you get to think like the program its a great too, Scott Hall has a lot of video's also he is a great help

you might want to check youtube for them or his site chieftutor.com great people along with all the Chief people on here they are very very helpful

 

 Thanks!  I will check out those two resources for sure.

 

Hi Jim,

 

I think your approach is correct.  The Main building elements are relatively efficient as far as polygons are concerned.  While Chief unfortunately does not have X-Ref  you can keep things oriented in the X and Y to match the main buiding.  Using copy/paste/hold postion can be useful.  Import/Export 2D will also stay oriented with proper setup.

 

Good Luck!

 

 

Cool!  My thoughts exactly.  

 

I think you will find that Chief is excellent for planning a single floor, with a single designer. For the scale of project that you are describing, I would consider ArchiCAD, both for the Teamwork function, as well as its robustness in creating CDs with larger projects, especially using hot-linked modules.

 

 

Thanks Richard.  We may well end up in that software, but am studying CA hard right now.   Our team building work flow will become an issue if we get busy.  In the meantime I am looking for a unique software that will be useful as a bridge to that expensive software and its presumably steep learning curve.  

 

 

___

 

Personally I don't have a problem integrating traditional 2D CAD into the work flow and SU as well for very early down and dirty form and massing studies.

 

I don't believe there is a one size fits all software package at this point.  But CA's very robust residential focus would be helpful for at least my potential wood residential frame projects.  Just need to sort out the best way to handle repetitive units within a floor plate and stacked.  My concern is that for a larger building the software will bog down if I populate each unit with all its data.  Unless there is a the equivalent of blocks in CA.

 

Our high rise work is actually very straight forward from a drafting standpoint except for the building envelop.  Receptive correctness of the unit plans is where the magic occurs in terms of efficiency and scale.

 

Also we need to start thinking about how our engineers would coordinate with us.  I suspect sending them .dwg files will not be possible with CA?

 

I will starting thinking through a hypothetical CA work flow and share it in this thread as it develops.

 

 

Thanks to all for your initial feedback! 

[scottharris]

Jim, you can find a sample construction drawing completed in Chief Architect on our samples gallery.  If you have time, take a look at the "Riverstone" plan.

[Joe_Carrick]

Jim,

 

The scenario that you outlined for your projects is very workable.  For the CDs you can send Plans, Interior Elevations, Sections, Schedules, etc from both the overall structure Plan and the Individual Unit Plans to a single Layout File.  Keeping the Plan Files separate makes a lot of sense since that keeps the Plan Files relatively small and manageable. 

[rlackore]

One aspect you will want to think closely about is collaboration with outside firms and your contract employees. What software/format do they work in? Chief does export to dwg, dxf and other formats, but it's not a seamless transition. If exporting for dwg/dxf is a requirement, I would recommend some testing fist. Here is a link to a Legacy Forum thread that discusses the issue:

 

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?65204-Line-weight-changes-when-sending-elevations-to-dwg-file-to-open-in-AutoCad-Lt-2010&highlight=dxf+autocad+export

[DRAWZILLA]

One aspect you will want to think closely about is collaboration with outside firms and your contract employees. What software/format do they work in? Chief does export to dwg, dxf and other formats, but it's not a seamless transition. If exporting for dwg/dxf is a requirement, I would recommend some testing fist. Here is a link to a Legacy Forum thread that discusses the issue:

 

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?65204-Line-weight-changes-when-sending-elevations-to-dwg-file-to-open-in-AutoCad-Lt-2010&highlight=dxf+autocad+export

Just remember this is an old forum link and may have been fixed in the current versions.

[aftercorbu]

One aspect you will want to think closely about is collaboration with outside firms and your contract employees. What software/format do they work in? Chief does export to dwg, dxf and other formats, but it's not a seamless transition. If exporting for dwg/dxf is a requirement, I would recommend some testing fist. Here is a link to a Legacy Forum thread that discusses the issue:

 

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?65204-Line-weight-changes-when-sending-elevations-to-dwg-file-to-open-in-AutoCad-Lt-2010&highlight=dxf+autocad+export

Actually two of my outside guys are experienced with, and enjoy Chief.  That is what started me down this path.  As I had mentioned I have been a PC and AutoCAD user since day one'ish...  well actually i got my first job because of my lettering, but cad followed pretty closely behind.  I am 49.