[ LONG POST ] - I'm a new user, hoping to ask the Chief community if Chief Architect is the best program for my somewhat-unusual use-case. Would greatly appreciate help.

[TheKitchenAbode]

4 minutes ago, Ty_Tradeswork said:

I've actually already watched that whole video, thank you! Although the building looks decently nice from the outside, there's really nothing that separates it architecturally from a normal suburban home. Just four walls, roof and a floor, all plumb and level.

 

I think you are failing to see beyond the surface, it's a beginner overview so yes the structure is going to be simple. There's a reason programs like Revit are used to design the most complex projects constructed to date. Personally if I was just starting out and had a serious interest in architecture I would focus my time and effort on learning a truly professional level program. This is not to put Chief down but Chief is focused on and serves a very specific type of user, it's good but there are limits to what it is designed to do.

[HumbleChief]

Here's a house plan created in 2013 for a home I designed for a client in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe area. I'm including a screen shot from Chief and it will be hard to ignore how crummy it looks but there were over 60 iterations of the design and I don't have time to find the best representation and you'll just have to trust that the design and 3D were complete and the construction was permitted and built as the actual pictures of the home under construction depict. If I had to tackle this job today with Chief I wouldn't hesitate and would be much quicker with the skills I've gathered since.

 

There were steel beam superstructures, glass embedded into rock. Crazy stair details, a climbing rock inside the living room and a few other details baked in. Again the 3D from the plan I chose is pretty sad but the design was done completely in Chief.

 

[HumbleChief]

9 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

I think you are failing to see beyond the surface, it's a beginner overview so yes the structure is going to be simple. There's a reason programs like Revit are used to design the most complex projects constructed to date. Personally if I was just starting out and had a serious interest in architecture I would focus my time and effort on learning a truly professional level program. This is not to put Chief down but Chief is focused on and serves a very specific type of user, it's good but there are limits to what it is designed to do.

..and as always this discussion goes to the heart of your business model and your intention as a designer.

 

From your initial post "I'm trying to steer my life in a direction that will have me designing and building one-off, small but beautiful homes/cottages for clients, and friends/family." That could be your current goal and if it remains your business focus then learning programs like Revit and ArchiCad will be a pretty heavy lift for such modest goals BUT those programs will set you up not for 'if' but 'when' those goals change. Really not sure what I would do if I was younger because I find both Revit and ArchiCad cumbersome at best and Chief, again as the discussion always turns, fits my business model.

 

Again best of luck whatever you decide.

[rlackore]

15 minutes ago, Ty_Tradeswork said:

.... but being able to create accurate framing is arguably more important for me. Chief can obviously do the framing in an instant...

 

Don't forget that Chief only draws framing - it doesn't design framing. Unless you are willing (and able) to hand-jam the calculations, you'll need to invest in specialty structural design software. Empirical design and span tables will get you only so far. Not to mention that there are professionals who have dedicated their entire careers to mastering single disciplines such as timber framing.

 

I don't know how old you are, or where you are in life, but here's a suggestion: get a job with a multi-disciplinary firm, spend 10 years learning how the industry works and what's involved. Let someone else pay you to learn the software, the shortcuts, the process, etc.

 

But, we need risk-takers and visionaries to move the industry forward, so I wish you the best of luck and extraordinary success. Seriously.

[HumbleChief]

Here's a couple of RayTraces from the build above meant only to show Chief's capabilities. You can also see the steel beams designed to support the indoor climbing rock...

 

 

[RodCole]

I don't have experience with  Archicad, but I have worked with Revit on a daily basis doing commercial CAD Detailing for construction companies.  Revit, in my opinion, is a fabulous and fascinating tool and it is capable of some amazing things once you are very familiar with it's methods of modeling.  From my experience, anything remotely close to what you posted the link to would best be attempted while standing on your head using Revit.  Great program, even better marketing.

 

You have pointed out something that I feel is very important for this discussion, and that is the overwhelming number of perfectly fine programs that you could learn in an attempt to accomplish your goals.  Not my idea of a good time. This is a choice you will obviously have to make for yourself, but I would highly recommend that you choose one parametric automated architectural modeling system and supplement it's shortcomings, and there will be shortcomings, with one CAD slash Solid Modeling application that is powerful enough to do what you want without being to much of a brain burn to learn and will work well with the application you ultimately choose.

 

Regarding your comment about brute force as it applies to CAD programs, I happen view it quite differently.  My analogy is what I call the Hamburger Button, our marketplace continually tries to simplify and automate things down to the level that there is no need to think, just push the button.  For myself, I choose not to wait for any application to automate exactly what I want, just get as close as reasonably possible.  I would also like to point  out that as much as anything it will come down to your level of skill and knowledge of ways to do things that are not apparent OOB, Out Of the Box and that will take time and help from folks like those on this forum.

 

Finally, you appear to have overlooked that it is often times the builders who are the ones who make things happen, often in spite of the plans. 

 

 

 

   

[Reddoormedia]

"Finally, you appear to have overlooked that it is oftentimes the builders who are the ones who make things happen, often in spite of the plans."

 

I designed this house which is nearing completion.
https://michaelrichard.smugmug.com/Rockport-House/

 

The plans were approved by the local planning board. It's a Netzero passive design with 12 inch walls. I bought Chief so I could do the design. The point made above that the builder will have a lot to do with how things turnout can't be over looked. There are things that come up that can be done in multiple ways and since I have no history in the trades I depended on my contractor to make the right decisions. He has been in business for more than 20 years and what I have learned about the construction trade during this process has been astounding. These men are craftsmen. There were not any major deviations from what I designed, except we went from trusses to rafters which required moving some walls. I didn't do any framing and none was needed as the contractor made those decisions. I think that designing a building and building a building are two completely different skills. If you come up with a good basic design in Chief and work with a good builder then a lot is possible.

 

[johnny]

On 3/19/2021 at 9:15 AM, HumbleChief said:

Here's a house plan created in 2013 for a home I designed for a client in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe area. I'm including a screen shot from Chief and it will be hard to ignore how crummy it looks but there were over 60 iterations of the design and I don't have time to find the best representation and you'll just have to trust that the design and 3D were complete and the construction was permitted and built as the actual pictures of the home under construction depict. If I had to tackle this job today with Chief I wouldn't hesitate and would be much quicker with the skills I've gathered since.

 

There were steel beam superstructures, glass embedded into rock. Crazy stair details, a climbing rock inside the living room and a few other details baked in. Again the 3D from the plan I chose is pretty sad but the design was done completely in Chief.

 

 

 

 

Overall that is pretty good for Chief....especially in 2013.  Although, since you brought it up the issue with Chief compared to other BIM apps is those steel columns and beams show as place-holders only unless you wanted to do a massive amount of custom modeling after your engineer was done sizing them - and then the beams/columns would be a shape or symbol rather than an actual structural member (from the apps point of view).

 

In Chief we can change a post or beam to show as a Steel I-beam but we have no options for its actual sizing/capacity.

 

 

 

[Ty_Tradeswork]

I know I keep saying it, but thank you again to everyone who has kept this conversation going. I really didn't think I would get this much feedback on this discussion. The Chief Architect community is certainly a helpful one

 

I apologize for my lack of responses recently, just got a bit distracted with something.

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 12:05 PM, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

I think you are failing to see beyond the surface, it's a beginner overview so yes the structure is going to be simple. There's a reason programs like Revit are used to design the most complex projects constructed to date. Personally if I was just starting out and had a serious interest in architecture I would focus my time and effort on learning a truly professional level program. This is not to put Chief down but Chief is focused on and serves a very specific type of user, it's good but there are limits to what it is designed to do.

 

That was actually my exact thought process which lead me to learn Revit in the first place. It's the same reason why I went directly from MS paint to Photoshop, not bothering to learn the easier-but-less-powerful intermediate programs out there. I figure I'd rather just start at the top, and have nowhere left to go, even if it presents the steepest learning curve. From my pre-selection research, I knew that Revit was the most-powerful-but-cumbersome program, and so I figured that it would give me the highest skill and ability ceiling.... thing is, even with that consideration, I still underestimated just how cumbersome the program really is. It's not just cumbersome in the sense of "architecture is complex, so naturally, these programs will be complex too." Unfortunately, a lot of its cumbersome-ness stems from just bad UX-UI design, and a refusal to modernize or update. Even simple things, like hardware acceleration. That's what got me second-guessing my decision, and made me look into other programs, like Chief.

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 12:15 PM, HumbleChief said:

Here's a house plan created in 2013 for a home I designed for a client in Squaw Valley

 

Again the 3D from the plan I chose is pretty sad but the design was done completely in Chief.

 

 

Are you nuts? That's a great building, and a gorgeous model! I don't care if it's not ray-traced, and doesn't have displacement-mapped textures -- none of that takes away from the quality of the actual model. Thank you for sharing this build! I wonder how long it would take me to re-create something like that...

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 12:23 PM, HumbleChief said:

That could be your current goal and if it remains your business focus then learning programs like Revit and ArchiCad will be a pretty heavy lift for such modest goals 

 

 

Interesting that you say my goals are modest, and that these programs would be overkill, meanwhile some of the features of the buildings I'm looking to make are straight-up impossible to model in Chief, and extremely clunky in Revit. The general discussion seems to suggest that Revit/ArchiCAD alone won't be Enough, let alone too much.

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 12:26 PM, rlackore said:

 

Don't forget that Chief only draws framing - it doesn't design framing. Unless you are willing (and able) to hand-jam the calculations, you'll need to invest in specialty structural design software. Empirical design and span tables will get you only so far. Not to mention that there are professionals who have dedicated their entire careers to mastering single disciplines such as timber framing.

 

I don't know how old you are, or where you are in life, but here's a suggestion: get a job with a multi-disciplinary firm, spend 10 years learning how the industry works and what's involved. Let someone else pay you to learn the software, the shortcuts, the process, etc.

 

But, we need risk-takers and visionaries to move the industry forward, so I wish you the best of luck and extraordinary success. Seriously.

 

That's a very good distinction to keep in mind, thank you for mentioning that. 

 

As far as your suggestion goes..... haha... yeah... no time for that. 

 

Thank you for your well-wishes though

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 12:32 PM, HumbleChief said:

Here's a couple of RayTraces from the build above meant only to show Chief's capabilities. You can also see the steel beams designed to support the indoor climbing rock...

 

 

See, to me, that looks so good, and it looks like everything I would need in my model... but I know it just seems that way because I'm not able to see the details, or the actual model. Based on what others here have explained, I'm guessing that the model, as generated by Chief, wasn't enough to prepare all of the construction documents, right? You still had to have structural engineers and the like revise the model, and add details to the construction plans that are accounted for by Chief, right? Still, it looks great!

 

 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 8:47 PM, RodCole said:

I don't have experience with  Archicad, but I have worked with Revit on a daily basis doing commercial CAD Detailing for construction companies.  Revit, in my opinion, is a fabulous and fascinating tool and it is capable of some amazing things once you are very familiar with it's methods of modeling.  From my experience, anything remotely close to what you posted the link to would best be attempted while standing on your head using Revit.  

 

 I would highly recommend that you choose one parametric automated architectural modeling system and supplement it's shortcomings, and there will be shortcomings, with one CAD slash Solid Modeling application that is powerful enough to do what you want without being to much of a brain burn to learn and will work well with the application you ultimately choose.

 

Finally, you appear to have overlooked that it is often times the builders who are the ones who make things happen, often in spite of the plans. 

 

Good to know your thoughts on Revit! Thank you for the vote of confidence in it. As far as your suggestion goes, yeah, fortunately, I'm already familiar with SOLIDWORKS, which I'm hoping can serve as that secondary parametric CAD program, to build the custom features not present in Revit by default. Now it's just a matter of learning how to actually bring custom CAD models into revit and create families based on them. Still though, the cognitive load of all of this is getting pretty intense. Despite my desires, I'm the type of person to get burnt out a lot...

 

As far as the builder thing goes, though... ohhh no, trust me, I'm not overlooking that one - I am the builder. That's exactly the problem though. Although I have several years of experience in these fields, it's not enough to build an entire house just yet. That's why I'm trying to supplement my lack of knowledge, with more planning. Rather than starting the build, only to find that I have no idea how to actually frame a specific wall, I'd rather invest the time to figure it out during the design phase, when I'm in the comfort of my own home, in front of a computer.... not standing on the jobsite wasting time and money. It's like that old parable: the more sweat you expend in training, the less you bleed in battle. I don't have enough experience to just show up on-site and know how to frame everything... so I gotta take the time to frame it all up virtually, and make sure it all comes together.

 

 

 

On 3/20/2021 at 11:52 AM, Reddoormedia said:

If you come up with a good basic design in Chief and work with a good builder then a lot is possible.

 

 

Ahh, but what happens when you ARE the builder too, hmm? See my reply just above ^   

[Ed_Orum]

In my experience of using Chief since around the later part of the 90's, the word "workaround" translates into hours of frustration and never really getting what you thought a CAD program was designed to do in the first place.  Little things like Chief considering a sill plate to be part of the foundation instead part of the frame get to be very frustrating in section views and elevation views.  Things like adjusting wall heights seem to take a long, long, long time to get correctly.  And Chief seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to adjusting foundation wall heights to accommodate frost levels ang grade conditions.  
I have been slowly learning Softplan, and when I get a little more competent I will probably switch all of my new work to Softplan.  It seems to draw the model more like you would build the model in the field, and offers way, way more options for library objects, framing, and better material lists.
Chief is fine for relatively straight forward box on box construction, which is probably 80% of my work.  The other 20% though has compelled me to look into the other program to do the things Chief cannot do or does not do well.  Sometimes I sub out the Chief work to other Chief users who know more about the program than I do or are simply better at using it.
By the way, good luck in your endeavors.

[HumbleChief]

The framing model above was created using Chief of course and was created with the client's desires (for one) to run T & G ceiling boards longitudinally along the rafter/beams hence the purlins (or whatever one chooses to call those cross members) and by using TJI span tables and anything else I thought was relevant to the structural design. All of my designs leave my desk to a structural engineer's, every time on every job, to work up beam sizes, shear, foundation, connection etc. details. That framing plan was a very heavy lift with Chief and as I posted above, was intended only to show Chief's capabilities, minus the pain it took to get there. 

 

"I knew that Revit was the most-powerful-but-cumbersome program, and so I figured that it would give me the highest skill and ability ceiling.... thing is, even with that consideration, I still underestimated just how cumbersome the program really is." I am still surprised at how 'cumbersome' Revit appears every time I see it in action but have never used it so grain of salt and all that.

 

I have also found that certain software programs will fit certain brains better than others. For example I tried SolidWorks and the interface made me nuts, settled on OnShape for my CAD work as the interface fits my brain better. Your brain might fit Revit's workflow and interface and obviously some are not only comfortable but more than capable using the program.

 

I have fought Chief's interface for years and my brain just works differently than its paradigm and design intent. Multi story buildings are modified from the top down, not like you build from the bottom up and where else, and in what program, when moving down to a slab foundation would you get controls for room ceiling height? And a floor height? And the option for a roof? And some arcane "Room Supplies Floor For Room Above" nomenclature that many here on this forum can make sense of and operate through that bit of crazy with no problems. I've been using Chief for over 20 years and cannot understand how, when moving down to a slab foundation any of that is possible but it makes my point about the importance of the interface and whether your brain can deal with the paradigm and intent of the software you choose.

 

I'm posting a pic of the dialog box you get when moving down to the foundation 'floor' with a monolithic concrete slab - notice you are in a Chief version of a 'room'  - still do not understand it but maybe you will? Either way best of luck no matter.

 

 

[BluesArch]

Do it

[mthd97]

Hi, I am surprised that @johnny, hasn’t mentioned Vectorworks Architect as a very good program to design those modern houses in ?

Edit: Slanted walls in CA present no major problems for experienced users here. As mentioned, there can be many work arounds and with the use of roof planes you can achieve slanted walls. 
 

You could post a plan here of a model you want to do with CA and some of the Chief Masters will help you get through it. You can start with a trial version of Home Designer Pro becuase the outlay is considerably less than CA for starters. If it suits your needs you can always upgrade to CA.

 

Because you would like to design and build with time constraints in mind CA would be a good fit. Other CAD programs are not as user friendly and can take many more hours to learn and become productive in.