rockside Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Has anyone used Chief to produce Shop Drawings ? We have primarily been using CA to produce plans and renderings for renovation projects. Our shop also produces high end millwork, and we are requested to produce shop drawings for the millwork. With a basic cabinet project, we use Mozaik Software, which we use for CNC work as well. But for more custom and specialized commercial millwork jobs.... we need something different. I would rather not purchase AutoCAD if Chief Architect is capable of producing what we need. Thanks ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChiefArchitect Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Are you looking for construction documents like this example? Riverstone Sample Plan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry_Sweeney Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I'm assuming by "shop drawings" you are referring to 2D cad. I used ACAD for years to do all my cad work. I started using CA in version 10 and have been trying to use CA's cad tools ever since to do my cad work, but at times it has been very slow and frustrating. There are many on here that will tell you CA's cad tools are just fine, but I think many of them have very little experience using other cad programs. CA was developed as a modeling program first and seems to just have "thrown" in some 2D cad tools to quiet the what they think were a few percentage of the whole users. There goal is to make the model so accurate that 2D cad isn't necessary and that's great, but I think that's a long way down the road. They MUST do more to improve their 2D cad (and 2D dimensioning). There has been many threads over time talking about this problem, but for the most part they have gone unheard (my opinion). So, to answer your question, yes you can make shop drawings in CA, but you may get very frustrated at times using it for 2D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HamlinBC Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 @rockside I've used it a little...for some very basic plans (see attached), but it sounds like what you want you'd be better served with Draftsight or some other version of CAD. Draftsight is free... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gawdzira Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I have done small shop drawings for my metal shop details. I have not done a full set of cabinet shop drawings as that has not been needed. The basic cadd and dimensioning tools are solid in my opinion but I am not familiar with what something like 20/20 puts out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodCole Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I hear you, but I would not hold out much hope that you would be satisfied with either the final outcome or the effort required to use Chief's CAD tools. I would recommend that you look into TurboCAD Pro Platinum for your needs. It is a bit spendy, but they used to offer competitive upgrade pricing that made it more affordable. For the type of things you will want to be doing make sure that the version you get has the lightworks rendering engine. The latest version has it available only as an option. You will need this in order to flatten or export PS views out to other file formats. Once this is done you can then import the saved views into Chief's layout pages for documentation purposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Anything like this?? I often send in something like this along with the plans, elevations and schedule to the factory. Special openings, turnings, hoods, angled cabinets. I copy what I have in model to another room or blank wall somewhere (often a garage)- Forgot to mention- I then get rid of all the doors and drawers of the copies.... in a pinch to another plan then shoot sections elevations, then CAD detail from view- finally dimension after that. (not before). I used to use TurboCad (Deluxe) for this stuff but rarely need it since I switched to premier. Once in a while if there are really complicated dimensions. I have an earlier version of Pro and have not use that in a long long time. Deluxe is much less $$. I don't find it very friendly exporting 3D into either to turn into 2D- CA is easier IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gawdzira Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Nice trick to just delete the doors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Maybe someday we'll be able to toggle doors, drawers and shelves... and maybe even snap to rails and stiles to keep it "live" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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