X17 PM Pitfalls, Risk Assessment, & Suggestions

[KTransue]

Hey folks,

 

After evaluating X17’s new Project Management system in real-world use, I’ve pulled together a summary of how it works, where it shines, and where it’s falling short—along with a few serious risks for anyone relying on it for production work.

 

This is a summary of a longer, more detailed critique I’ve written (with scenarios, risk cases, and proposed improvements). I’ll post that here or submit it directly to Chief if there’s interest.

 

This isn’t a rant—it’s meant to help prevent avoidable problems and encourage practical feedback from those using the system daily.

 

What It’s Supposed to Do:

 

Chief now groups your plans, layouts, and assets into a single project file (.caproj) stored in your Documents folder. Chief manages the structure and linking. This is meant to:

• Keep everything organized

• Eliminate broken plan-layout links

• Simplify project sharing and exports

 

That’s the goal. But it’s not quite working as intended yet.

 

What’s Not Working (and Why It Matters):

 

1. Layouts lose their links to plans when imported.

You have to reconnect them manually every time.

Risk: Incorrect or mismatched plans can get printed or submitted—potentially triggering permit rejection, construction errors, or liability for the designer.

 

2. Duplicate files are accepted without warning or distinction.

Chief allows files with the same name to coexist in the project—even if they contain different content.

Risk: Users can unknowingly work on the wrong version, or issue a file that appears correct but contains outdated or unapproved content—risking rework, confusion, or legal exposure.

 

3. No metadata or file history is visible.

No tracking of who made changes or when.

Risk: Teams have no way to verify the status or history of a file, leading to loss of accountability, inability to verify approvals, or untraceable errors in submitted documents.

 

4. There’s no clean way to share or extract a subset of a project—like multiple design options.

You can export/import individual files, but not a bundle that retains internal structure or references.

Risk: Collaborators can’t isolate just the pieces they need, and reviewers may receive extraneous or obsolete content—introducing major clarity issues and potential misinterpretation of the design intent.

 

5. If a team member is unavailable, their work is locked away.

Project containers live in hidden folders. No export = no access.

Risk: Deadlines can be missed, approvals delayed, or teams left unable to submit or revise work without access to another user’s machine—an operational and contractual risk.

 

 Why It Matters:

 

These aren’t just workflow annoyances. If a designer delivers incorrect plans, or can’t deliver at all, the blame lands squarely on the designer—not the software. These failure points can trigger missed deadlines, rejected permits, lost revenue, or worse—career and legal consequences tied to what should have been a manageable design flow.

 

What Would Make It Better:

• Prompts on import for duplicate filenames

• File tagging (draft, issued, archived)

• Metadata tracking: author, modified date, version

• Support grouped import/export of project subsets, like multiple design options, with links and structure intact

• Persistent plan-layout linking across exports/imports

• Shared-access fallback or override for unavailable team members

 

Happy to share the full document if folks are interested. It goes deeper into each point, shows examples of where these issues crop up, and offers practical suggestions.

 

Thanks for reading. Hope this helps someone avoid trouble.

[Renerabbitt]

Going to help you out, most of this info is incorrect....which should make you happy 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

Chief now groups your plans, layouts, and assets into a single project file (.caproj) stored in your Documents folder.

It is spread out around a number of different folders, and careful with the wording, this almost implies all layouts and plans get stored in a caproject file. A .caproject file only exists outside of your machine if you export one, and then and only then does it become a project file and it includes whatever plans and layouts and other documents were chose to be exported with the project as well as any assets such as material texture files.

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

1. Layouts lose their links to plans when imported.

You have to reconnect them manually every time.

Risk: Incorrect or mismatched plans can get printed or submitted—potentially triggering permit rejection, construction errors, or liability for the designer.

This is not true if you import a layout file only and chief asks if you would like to import the associated plan files, the links will be retained. Also the links will be retained for a caproject file if they existed. If you are seeing otherwise then please report it as that shouldn't be the case and you might want to double check that before you exported a caproject file

 

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

2. Duplicate files are accepted without warning or distinction.

Chief allows files with the same name to coexist in the project—even if they contain different content.

Risk: Users can unknowingly work on the wrong version, or issue a file that appears correct but contains outdated or unapproved content—risking rework, confusion, or legal exposure.

It gave me a warning if I tried to rename to the same name and it gave me a warning if I tried to drag and drop into the project with a file of the same name as another that exists in that project:


 

Quote

 

3. No metadata or file history is visible.

No tracking of who made changes or when.

Risk: Teams have no way to verify the status or history of a file, leading to loss of accountability, inability to verify approvals, or untraceable errors in submitted documents.

 

A team cannot work on a project file within your version of the software. It's currently not possible, so I am not sure what kind of a risk this proposes. For someone to work on a file, you would need to export it, which is very very similar to the process that it was before. Thus producing the meta data. In bried, exporting a caproject file replaces hitting save at the end of a session...and in a team workflow, the caproject file should be deleted from the project browser upon export which you can do by clicking delete, which will give you the export and delete option.

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

4. There’s no clean way to share or extract a subset of a project—like multiple design options.

You can export/import individual files, but not a bundle that retains internal structure or references.

Risk: Collaborators can’t isolate just the pieces they need, and reviewers may receive extraneous or obsolete content—introducing major clarity issues and potential misinterpretation of the design intent.

We can do exactly this in the export project option, picking and choosing which files to export:



 

Quote

5. If a team member is unavailable, their work is locked away.

Project containers live in hidden folders. No export = no access.

Risk: Deadlines can be missed, approvals delayed, or teams left unable to submit or revise work without access to another user’s machine—an operational and contractual risk

This is really up to you and the team for what your standards are. If its a collaborative team, then there should be an export at the end of each drafting session. Also their is an automatic backup system as well as the archive system, both of which could be pointed to a team cloud and accessed there as well. This is really no different than it was before, since before if a team member didn't save their work or didn't have their cloud updating you'd be running into the same issue. The different is very slight. you export a caproject folder to your teams cloud..then do as you normally would.
I would also suggest that if a project is being exported, it should at the same time be deleted from that machine's project manager, as now it is the obsolete version in the project browser
 

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

File tagging (draft, issued, archived)

We have this its just called folder...which is abhorrently obnoxious, since we call other things "Folders" but it works lag tags do, such as a project being tagged with multiple folders

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

Metadata tracking: author, modified date, version

Also have this in the time tracker or revision tool

 

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

Support grouped import/export of project subsets, like multiple design options, with links and structure intact

We have this see above

 

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

Persistent plan-layout linking across exports/imports

Double check this, it works on my end

 

 

5 hours ago, KTransue said:

Shared-access fallback or override for unavailable team members

automatic backup is your friend here, you can also point the archive to a shared folder so automatic archive backs up plan and layout

[DRAWZILLA]

Nice info here but as a single user, I just don't need it and will turn it off for now.

[Steve_Nyhof]

11 minutes ago, DRAWZILLA said:

Nice info here but as a single user, I just don't need it and will turn it off for now.

I am also a single user and have come to really love it. I just think there is more we could do to make backing up our .caproj files. 

 

I'm hoping Chief can jump in some time to explain to me what I am suggesting does not work for xyz reasons...

 

[joey_martin]

25 minutes ago, DRAWZILLA said:

Nice info here but as a single user, I just don't need it and will turn it off for now.

Even in my office of 10 designers we don't use it. I may play around with it when I get time, but all the exporting/importing is a no go for us.

[Steve_Nyhof]

5 minutes ago, joey_martin said:

but all the exporting/importing is a no go for us.

So please go to my post above and read what I am proposing. I am addressing exactly what you would want for a team. I feel like too many Chief users accept the statuesque too quickly when a few more voices might gain some momentum. I think what I am proposing would work amazing for a team. Please check it out and share your thoughts about what you would need.

[Chrisb222]

1 hour ago, Steve_Nyhof said:

I'm hoping Chief can jump in some time to explain to me what I am suggesting does not work for xyz reasons...

 

Steve, the staff sometimes participates in the Q&A forum but they specifically state that they don't read all of these threads, and if you want to make a suggestion to enhance the program, to use the Suggestion forum.

[Steve_Nyhof]

Just now, Chrisb222 said:

 

Steve, the staff sometimes participates in the Q&A forum but they specifically state that they don't read all of these threads, and if you want to make a suggestion to enhance the program, to use the Suggestion forum.

Yes, I asked them to move this over to Suggestions - Thank you

[KTransue]

9 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Going to help you out, most of this info is incorrect....which should make you happy 

 

So happy, Rene.  Always happy for you to blow holes in my arguments ... You do it with such finesse!  It appears "crow" is on the menu again ... (I keep embarrassing myself … I'm gonna have to learn to keep quiet).

 

I've been running through your responses and there are definitely things I either missed or took a left turn on.  A few of my issues, though, I’ll still defend.  And, I'll keep doing what I do best ... Looking for all of the frustrating ways that'll lead a desperate man in front of a bus, and I've found enough of them that I had to start writing them all down to keep a path back to them, like bread crumbs in the forest.  And, I've knocked it on its butt several times in the last two hours, just trying to find something consistent that I can pass along as fodder for continuing conversation.  Too many to summarize here, though,  without doing another deep dive first, but this time I have your input to lean on as well (and I really do appreciate that!).  I've proven a couple of your responses true, haven't gotten to a couple, and a few I still can't get to due to brain fog and Chief programming idiosyncrasies (e.g. greyed out selections that shouldn't be greyed out, etc.). Each of them burns up some more time, and now I just want coffee or a nap, or both.  However, I will concede that even without employing a true application system designer, they've still managed to get 80% of the way there, and we can probably find a way to get around that last 20%, just as we have in every other version.  I just feel sorry for those that will be left confused, frustrated, and hopeless.  On the other hand, it does provide more opportunities to teach, so there's that.

The overarching point I was trying to make in my post wasn't the correctness of each bullet point -- there are many more -- but that the system design itself is incomplete and lacking, and the resulting PM behavior is underdressed, with holes in its genes (pun intended).  The PM system's current state is born of a design that's trying to reinvent the wheel, and it's designed to rely on human behavior modification and habit more than it relies on systemization.  Technically, though, I took your responses to heart, and it seems you're right … there are ways to force things to work ... if you’re curious enough to look for alternatives, resourceful enough to find them, committed enough to apply them, and rigorous enough to remember them.

I know I'm probably spitting in the wind, but damn it, I want all this stuff to be as good as it can be and I just wish they'd ask for help; not just "reports" and "suggestions"!  Sorry everybody ... I'll climb back down off my high horse now ...

Oh, and I really don't know where this should be posted.  It seems that this thread is better attended than some others, and it's more than a suggestion, and it's not a feature request, which leaves "bug report" and I don't yet have enough details written down to list all of those.
 

[Steve_Nyhof]

27 minutes ago, KTransue said:

I'm gonna have to learn to keep quiet

Please don't!

 

I'm sure there are many who are messing with this PM for the first time and running into a number of things just like you, and others can come along and help answer those questions. There is a number of things about the PM I really like, although I have not made a list. But I have used it now exclusively for maybe going on three weeks. There are things I want to be added which I have stated above, but so far I feel it has kept me focused within Chief as everything I am working on is right there is front of me.

 

One of the biggest things is creating a Template Project. This way you can link the .plan and the .layout with your views and details. I start a new Project by copying the Template Project and giving it a name. The Templates in the Templates folder cannot be linked, so they to me are a bit useless. You update your Template Project with your defaults, not your templates. As least if you want to link your .plan and .layout - which I did in earlier versions in a round about way. With X17 it is more intuitive and designed to be linked.

[mtldesigns]

7 hours ago, DRAWZILLA said:

Nice info here but as a single user, I just don't need it and will turn it off for now.

I'm with Perry here.  I have a .plan and .layout file, all under a project folder on One Drive, files dragged and dropped to a Google Drive and Dropbox for a backup at certain stages of the project.  Easy peasy..

 

So is this PM addition, an option where we don't have to use it?

 

I hadn't seen much of X17 besides the vids and comments, not a beta user here.  And I understand some peeps might like the PM stuff, but I'm looking for more bread and butter in these upgrades not just a different bread box to store it.  That's what I am excited to see..  Did we fix stair issues, pony and railing walls issues, dimensioning options, basically most of the suggested items this past year.   Honestly, I don't recall anyone suggesting a project management system, or I just missed it.  

 

My $0.05 because two pennies are more than a dime. 

[Mark3D]

11 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

I'm with Perry here.  I have a .plan and .layout file, all under a project folder on One Drive, files dragged and dropped to a Google Drive and Dropbox for a backup at certain stages of the project.  Easy peasy..

 

So is this PM addition, an option where we don't have to use it?

 

I hadn't seen much of X17 besides the vids and comments, not a beta user here.  And I understand some peeps might like the PM stuff, but I'm looking for more bread and butter in these upgrades not just a different bread box to store it.  That's what I am excited to see..  Did we fix stair issues, pony and railing walls issues, dimensioning options, basically most of the suggested items this past year.   Honestly, I don't recall anyone suggesting a project management system, or I just missed it.  

 

My $0.05 because two pennies are more than a dime. 

You can turn it off in preferences also it ask when you install if you want to use it

[mtldesigns]

31 minutes ago, Mark3D said:

You can turn it off in preferences also it ask when you install if you want to use it

thx, good to know

[Renerabbitt]

53 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

stair issues

which stair issues? maybe I have answers
 

 

 

53 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

ailing walls issues

Which? maybe I have answers

 

 

53 minutes ago, mtldesigns said:

dimensioning options

We did get some new ones yes

 

Quote

project management system, or I just missed it.  

 

This is one of the most requested things for the last decade..to specifically address the issue of broken links and missing files across machines and inter-office sharing
It's also Chief's number 1 support call I believe...and though its not perfect..its a big step in the right direction .


Also there are a ton of bread and butter things. just the 3d temp dimensions are HUGE productivity time saver.
 

 

[mtldesigns]

2 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

issues?

I really should have used the word "improvements" on stairs and railing walls instead of "issues".  It def is better than it used to be.

 

I guess I nvr had the linking issues others have since it's just me.. even though I go from desktop to laptop, being all on a cloud and only one license to move back and forth, it's always seems to work fine.

"KNOCK ON WOOD"

[Chrisb222]

Quote

3d temp dimensions

 

That's the only thing I got mildly excited about. It piqued my interest about 2% as much as Saved Plan Views. 

[ComputerMaster86]

I would consider myself to be a one man band and don't normally have a need to share any Chief files with other users.  I am the only employee at my part-time morning employer that knows how to use Chief Architect.   I own the software.  Things could always change in the future, who knows?  Questions I post here on the forum and bug / suggestion reporting, might be about the only time I share chief files.  With that said, I have been using the new "Project Management Mode" for a while now and have generally come to like it overall.  I feel like I am a little more efficient from not having to navigate between Chief Architect and File Explorer as much.  I like how it bundles plan and layout files into the concept and construct of a project.  Although as Renee has pointed out, files are not always stored in a .caproj files unless you manually export one or more of your projects.  I am choosing to store my recent Chief files inside Chief using the new "Managed Mode".  I make use of chief's new backup tool.  The way I do versioning within a project is super easy.

 

     

 

I do see areas where I think Chief could improve on the new managed mode.  I personally would like to see the ability to expert all projects as separate .caproj files by right-clicking on a "Top-Level Folder" or "Folder Tag".  Maybe as a secondary option bundle all projects together in a single zip by right-clicking on a "Top-Level Folder" or "Folder Tag".  I perceive my project browser is going to get bloated with projects in the future.  I think we need a more robust method to add and remove projects from the project browser with out completely loosing them or deleting them.  I have used the term "Archiving" when talking about this.  It may not always be formal archiving.  I like and use the new back-up tool but, it's not a complete solution for what I just mentioned.

 

A secondary thing  I would like to see a "Trash Bin", like we have for the Library Browser.   I am super careful but, I am also human.  It would be super easy for me to not think straight and delete something I didn't intend on deleting.  A trash bin would provide a little extra piece of mind and the option to retrieve something from a "Oh Crap! Why did I do that ?" moment.

[SHCanada2]

1 hour ago, ComputerMaster86 said:

With that said, I have been using the new "Project Management Mode" for a while now and have generally come to like it overall.  I feel like I am a little more efficient from not having to navigate between Chief Architect and File Explorer as much

I would concur, less going to windows explorer, saving a few clicks here and there 

[Steve_Nyhof]

2 hours ago, ComputerMaster86 said:

I make use of chief's new backup tool.  The way I do versioning within a project is super easy.

But isn't this a more bloated file with all the other things that are also backed up in it? I like it, but just not for daily backing up the work for the day.

 

2 hours ago, ComputerMaster86 said:

Maybe as a secondary option bundle all projects together in a single zip by right-clicking on a "Top-Level Folder" or "Folder Tag".

And this is fine with the PM for added manual control over our projects, but if it were also a project backup system, it would on a daily backup (or trigger) send our project)(s to Disk, but not as a .zip file, but as the .caproj files they are, and under the "Tag Folders" that are assigned to them so they show up in a C:\root folder inside their respective sub-folders. Then this could be backed up by our cloud backup systems... Mine runs every hour, backing up non open files.

 

The current Chief software in PM mode will in fact save your projects, plans, etc on your Disk, somewhere. But if I had a fire before "Chiefs" backup ran, I would lose all the work I did on that day. The above Project Backup would solve that, IF, when the last file of a Project was closed, Chief would Export that Project to, again, the same C:\root folder inside their respective sub-folders.

 

[Renerabbitt]

18 minutes ago, Steve_Nyhof said:

I would lose all the work I did on that day

Do you have your auto archive folder set to your backup system? You would only lose the work up to the point of your archive.

[Steve_Nyhof]

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

Do you have your auto archive folder set to your backup system? You would only lose the work up to the point of your archive.

Hmmm. I see what you are saying. I do also have my cloud backing up my archives, but I was focused on the .caproj files as a Project backed up.

 

So now I do see that I can always get back to an archived .plan or .layout, but it would not be a "Project". So this is cool! For some reason I did not think the PM was archiving the same way.

 

I still like the idea of Projects themselves being backed up like a normal file in a place we can choose. When I see them here I know I can delete them from the PM when I am completed with the Project. Otherwise, if I want to store my Projects in this way I need to manually Export them. It also seems like a more normal way to share projects with a team. 

 

Edit: Is an archived file the last saved file? Meaning, as the system is generating archives, when you save last and close the Project, is an archive generated with the last edits? That would be important.

 

 

[Steve_Nyhof]

20 minutes ago, Steve_Nyhof said:

Edit: Is an archived file the last saved file? Meaning, as the system is generating archives, when you save last and close the Project, is an archive generated with the last edits? That would be important.

So the answer is no. I just made a new Project, opened the .plan, added a circle. Saved it. Closed the file. Opened the file to get to the Archives, a .plan was generated. I opened it and there was no Circle.  Work lost.

 

 

So if I save 20 times in 5 minutes of work, no archives are being generated. How often is the file archived? I do not think my last work being saved is placed into an Archive. This fails a true backup of my current plan.

[Steve_Nyhof]

I like the idea of an Auto Archive for Projects then. Only, when I save my work (Ctrl+S), it is backing up and overwriting the Project/files (.caproj) on disk. And the archive folder can be one we select. Or some form of this process.

[SHCanada2]

47 minutes ago, Steve_Nyhof said:

So if I save 20 times in 5 minutes of work, no archives are being generated. How often is the file archived? I do not think my last work being saved is placed into an Archive. This fails a true backup of my current plan.

this is how it always worked. if you want a permanent backup everytime you save, you have to make a copy. the good news is the new PM allows you to make a copy even though the file is open

 

I think you are looking for more of a checkpoint functionality where you state that you want a copy at a specific moment that you have done a bunch of work, where backups have tradionally run at certain times of the day

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Steve_Nyhof]

3 hours ago, SHCanada2 said:

I think you are looking for more of a checkpoint functionality where you state that you want a copy at a specific moment that you have done a bunch of work, where backups have tradionally run at certain times of the day

I do not mind making a copy of the .plan within the Project where it makes sense. Meaning, the client is heading in a different direction or wants to see some options. But I am not going to just make a history of .plans in my Project, that is why they invented Cloud backup systems with multiple options.

 

I would like a backup that could backup new and updated Projects of the day. I may work on two Projects, so the backup would backup two Projects. But I would also like something more like a Save for a typical file. A typical file when saved, overwrites the file on disk. It is the current data at that time. When we Save and close we know what is saved on disk. The Project could behave similar where we are asked for the disk location when we first Export the Project (have that now), and then it could auto update/overwrite that Project file on my disk while I work... If Ctrl+S saves the .plan file that is open, something like Ctrl+Shift+S (for example) could Overwrite the Project (.caproj) file on disk with it's current data. 

 

The reason I like the backup, is because that is just what it would be, a backup of all new and changed Projects. I am currently manually Exporting my Projects and overwriting the ones saved on disk. Especially when I am done with a Project and before I work on the next, I am Exporting the file to disk. I know my cloud software will pick that up within an hour and make a copy or version of it outside of my Hard drive... Now I am wondering if Exporting can be more automated in some way like I am mentioning above. Ctrl+Shift+S (for example). If the Project does not exist on disk, I would get a popup like I do now asking where I want to save it to. If the Project already exists, it would just overwrite the Project.

 

I do not know the logistics of this based on the Folder Tags, but I think they could play a part in generating sub-folders under a selected /Root folder on disk.

 

Edit: I will add that if I made a new Project and worked on another existing Project, and closed Chief, it would auto update these Projects on disk. Again, when I make a new Project, I can Export that to disk like we can do now, asking me where I want to save it to. Now Chief knows the Project file exists and its location. When the software closes, the software could auto save (export) the worked on Projects, overwriting the Projects on disk. And maybe overwriting is an option.