Anyone use Chief Architect software?

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I have been for a year or so now, just curious if anyone else here uses it, or one of the competitors.

I really enjoy using it, and find something else new and useful pretty much every time I fire it up.

[Julie Moriarty]

I have the Home Designer version. I bought it about two years ago in hopes it would help us in making decisions about remodeling the house. Problem was I had a 32 bit computer and the program wasn't really designed to run on 32 bit. When I did walk-thrus, the program would hang up and sometimes I had to reboot the computer.

I'm working on a 3D virtual walk-thru of certain sections of our city now for a January presentation. I am using Realtime Landscaping Architect. But that 32 bit platform was creating problems as the RLA file sizes grew. I finally broke down and bought a decent graphics-focused laptop running on 64 bit. The other day I loaded in Chief Architect Home Designer to see how it performs. What a difference! Once this other project is done, I'm going back to CAHD and get to know it again.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I'm running X10 on an aging and marginal computer to, I can definitely understand the hanging up. I usually just keep the 3D renderings active limited to a couple and all plays nice. More than that though, and it gets a little unstable.

I haven't mastered the manual measuring tools yet, and one of my plans has something floating in space about a mile off, so when I perspective full overview, it starts a mile out, but that program is a game changer. I've tried several CAD options, had trouble with all but this one. If all it did was allow you to easily proportion windows and trim to play with appearances before they went up it'd pay for itself in my opinion. SO much more capable though. I ordered a couple hundred sheets of ZIP sheeting for a house a couple months ago and the materials list was exactly right for the walls and off by the two sheets we butchered for the roof. :)

[Chuck Saunders]

I have Home Designer Pro 2018. It has been very helpful to me except I keep running into issues where the answer is "You can do that in Chief Architect but not in Pro". I am enjoying the challenge of an I do this. Like you said, learn something new everytime I start it up
Chuck

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I wonder which features are locked in Home Designer? Can you guys acces their tutorial videos? They are priceless in my opinion, awesome resource.

[Julie Moriarty]

I have Home Designer Architectural. I looked at Pro but at the time all I wanted was to create a decent 3D walkthru to see how the plans in my mind's eye might look in 3D. When I loaded the program into the new laptop, an upgrade notice came up. Checking what the latest version had against the 2017 version I saw I could upgrade to Pro for the cost difference between Architectural and Pro. On the fence on that one.

[David Warkentin]

I have Chief Architect. Haven’t used it in quite awhile though.