Existing, Demolition, and New Construction Phases

[scottkendall]

Hello Everyone,

 

A few years ago I was interviewing for a job and the company uses Chief Architect, So I spent a weekend using all the online instructional videos and basically crash coursed myself.  After the weekend I looked into replacing Revit and using Chief due to it running natively on the MacOS.  I ended up staying with Revit because of one nuance that I just could not live without and that was project phasing. If you do not use Revit you might ask what Project Phasing is?   Project Phasing is where you have the ability to make walls, windows, doors, roofs, etc. fall into categorizes.  So if you demo a part of a wall to make a hallway on the existing plan it will show the wall like normal, on the demo plan it will show it as being demolished and on the proposed it just simply will be open.   By the same token if you have a door and you demo it, it will show the door on the existing, it will show it to be demolished on the demo, and on the proposed the door will be gone and it will automatically fill the space where the door is.   This helps to maintain accuracy across all drawings.   That all said I am once again looking for a new job and the company I am interviewing with uses Chief and they are predominantly a company that does remodels.  Has Chief implemented some kind of tools for this kind of work flow or is the demo plan still some kind of line drawing imported as like a CAD detail?  I have downloaded a trial to refresh myself on the software and will likely watch some kind of training videos. 

 

Also, have there been any advances made on the site tools in the past 3 years as I remember them being a little more cumbersome to use.  Autodesk after 17 years has finally revamped their site tools and I have to say it was a huge step I the right direction.   

 

Please do not think that this is a post to slam Chief Architect I think it is a great piece of software and it has some really cool features that are really cumbersome to do in Revit like Base and Crown Moldings, or Cabinetry that you have to model from scratch.  Even the realistic rendering view mode on Chief runs more smoothly.   There are trade offs with every software...