X18 Public Beta.......when?

[para-CAD]

Ball park time frame would be nice.

 

Thanks.

[Mark3D]

Another post said early July

[para-CAD]

Public Beta?  So when is Release Candidate?  When I started with X7, it seemed that new versions came out in FEB/MAR timeframe.  I've heard online debates where people make the claim that if you're paying a subscription to something, then the updates should be incremental and ongoing throughout the year. as opposed to when you own the software and you have to be enticed into paying for a yearly upgrade or an SSA.

[Smn842]

4 hours ago, para-CAD said:

 I've heard online debates where people make the claim that if you're paying a subscription to something, then the updates should be incremental and ongoing throughout the year. as opposed to when you own the software and you have to be enticed into paying for a yearly upgrade or an SSA.

 

I've worked in software all my career and in general yes subscription does reduce the need for annual releases and shifts the balance of needing upgrade selling features in each major release.   

 

There is a limitation for desktop software that some changes affect the database schema and for Chief this could require a change to plan file format or other general program storage.   This means a software company doesn't want to be making such schema changes too often as it would be a support nightmare and confusing for customers. Customers would need to ensure all their or their teams installs updated in sync as is done for major releases now, and Chief Support would need to have all the versions at hand for testing customer data. 

 

That said there are still changes that do not need schema changes, and in the software I've worked on we often had  2 and sometimes 3 schema changes a year (marked by a new point releases so v4.1. 4.2 etc) and that gave us a good balance of getting features that needed schema changes released without overly complicating things.  Including the non schema breaking changes we often released 4+ times per year not including important bug patch fixes. That didn't limit major changes as in parallel we would work on those longer projects that were in development for 12 to 18 months before finally being merged into the next release.

[para-CAD]

Thank you for sharing your experience and educating me a little bit deeper into the software design process. It’s much easier for me to be patient when I understand the depth of effort that is required in upgrading a software app or platform.

[JonathanK]

You can apply to be on the Beta team as well...so you get the goodies just a little bit earlier 

[amddrafting]

On 6/10/2026 at 5:34 PM, para-CAD said:

Ball park time frame would be nice.

 

Thanks.

Just saw it available in my account today.

[kellyh]

X18 public beta is officially live. You can get access to it in your Digital Locker. You can read about the new features here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/whats-new/

 

Also don't forget to sign up for our webinar on June 25th at 12:00pm Pacific going over the features and capabilities of our new As Built app. Find out more details here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/events/#as-built-app

[mtldesigns]

@kellyh

will there be a android version of the As Built app?  

[Chrisb222]

Wow, nice to see several things I've asked for. Fill Style by Layer is huge for me. Looks like a really good upgrade. Thanks @ChiefArchitect!

[para-CAD]

I believe the as-built app requires LiDAR which you would have to have on your Android device.

[KilianDrafting]

Any way to adjust color of icons in X18? I use a dark mode on my pc, so it changed the default icons to a light color. But when I go back to classic theme, the icons keep the light lines on the default icons.

[kellyh]

13 hours ago, mtldesigns said:

@kellyh

will there be a android version of the As Built app?  

Unfortunately As Built is iOS only.

[Dermot]

Quote

 

X18 public beta is officially live. You can get access to it in your Digital Locker. You can read about the new features here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/whats-new/

 

Also don't forget to sign up for our webinar on June 25th at 12:00pm Pacific going over the features and capabilities of our new As Built app. Find out more details here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/events/#as-built-app

 

 

 

To add to Kelly's post, if you find any problems with X18, either in the public beta or later in the full release, please be sure to report them directly to our technical support team (and don't just post them on Chieftalk).  We do not have resources to monitor this forum looking for potential bugs.

 

You can contact our support team here:

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/