Compatibility/similarity Of Chief Architect X3 And Home Designer 10

[JessCoville]

Hey everyone,

I'm hoping soon to purchase a copy of either Chief Architect or Home Designer 10 Pro and I need a little bit of information before I make the decision, so if anyone can help me out here it would be greatly appreciated. Essentially what I need to know, is to what degree are Home Designer 10 and Chief Architect compatible and/or similar? i.e. Can I open files created in either program in the other program? Is the toolset similar? Are there any major inconsistencies I need to be worried about? If I was being instructed on use of X3, how much difficulty would I have using Home Designer 10?

Thanks again for any help you folks can give me, it would really be a huge help!

[lbuttery]

to what degree are Home Designer 10 and Chief Architect compatible and/or similar?

 

Jess:

 

I assume you mean HD 10 PRO ???

 

I have lost track of which HD product line was compatible with Chief X3

HD 10 sounds about right

 

take a look at the X7 feature chart and the current HD PRO feature chart

and there should be a similar "lack" of features back then also

 

basically HD PRO sells for about 20% of what Chief Premier sells for

so that should give an idea on the limit of features in PRO

 

PRO is the only HD product to have manual roofs, and framing and cabinets etc

 

the layout tool  in PRO is very limited in features and restricted to 1 page at a time

max size is 18 x 24 but using 1/8 scale can double that to 36 x 48 at a print shop

 

for HD products to edit a plan modified by Chief Premier the edit flag must be turned on

even then the HD product can't edit any features that it doesn't have

 

it is feasible for an HD user to work with a Chief Premier user

if they have the comparable version if they understand that there are limits to that cooperation

 

Lew

[DavidJPotter]

X3 and Home Designer Pro 10 can share .plan files. The X3 layout file is not compatible, the reason for that is that pro has a single page .layout and Chief's layout is a multi-page file that will not open in HD Pro due to Pro's innate limitations. Otherwise you should be all set.

 

DJP

[Gawdzira]

I suspect that cost is a major factor but I will throw this out anyways. Until X5 the odd numbered X* versions were inferior to the even numbered ones. X1, X3 and somewhat X5 had some issues that were frustrating more than X2 and X4 where those issues got worked out. I believe it was in X4 where Annotation sets showed up. That is a game changer for production work.

[DRAWZILLA]

If you will be using it for a business, to make money, then get Premier, you'll need it. 

[lbuttery]

The X3 library system was horrible

and required subscribing etc

 

not even sure if someone can get the X3 libraries and install them now

even if someone had them to share

 

???

 

Lew

[JessCoville]

Thanks for the information, everyone! I have decided based on your input to just go ahead and purchase a CA X7 license as it has turned out that my tutor has a copy of X7 as well, anyway.

[Alaskan_Son]

Welcome to the family!!!