
If I need a nice rendering, I like to take the model over into Autodesk VIZ. While Chief does some nice quick 3d, Softplan is the better tool for construction documents. Basically I came to the same conclusion that Joe wrote above. This is also coming from someone who never thought he would leave Autocad! I feel Softplan does twice as much for half the price. I worked with both Chief Architect and Softplan and decided that Softplan was right for me. I did some research to see what was out there before I bought. I had planned on using Architectural Desktop or Revit for residential work. Also tweaking wall alignment and intersection issues as well as more and separate dimensioning tools (2d CAD only dimensioning mode etc).-BB PS the -BB at the end of my post is my initials (Brad Boltz) so was only referring to X9 not X9b, sorry for any confusion.I used Autocad for 13 years and was with Autodesk for the last 6 before I went out on my own. A giant step forward for Chief Architect and small step forward for the programmers of this app. I would say, that this is the biggest of all problems with Chief Architect, If we can fix this in XX we would have landed on the moon with XX. Like we can lock a roof plane, we should also be able to lock room heghts etc when making any changes to the 3d model to overide automactic rebuild updates that throw the modeled room shapes out of place. Has X9b fixed this ? If not then, can we please make serious progress in XX thanks. I wish they would stabilize or provide floor platform thickness and floor elevation locks so that a floor platform remains as drawn when moving interior partitions." Quote: "Chief's roof tool is the most versatile and creates the most stable areas of a drawing (roof doesn't automatically change hgts when you move walls or adjust floor hgts etc.). This is what I was concerned about in my above post. Įven while the rest of the 2.4GB libraries et al were still downloading, i reached for the "kill switch" and activated the full nuclear termination! Get the impression there's more of this attitude lurking there.

This is the 21st century, and this by now "take-it-for-granted" CAD capability is ABSENT from this (not exactly cheap) program. I CANNOT add /move / modify walls in this mode.

Go to have a look at playing with this in 3D view So I construct the simple 4 wall test house in plan view. Your criteria may be very different, but these are my go-to hot buttons. Elegant and useful UI design, Ease of use, Simplicity, and Flexibility are the key factors that interest me in this regard. I downloaded a trial version.Īfter installing the program I was keen to see what the User Interface was like. After all the talk about "Softplan" here.
