Chief Architect User Stories

[Asie Mahone]

I remember my first time with Chief. It started with the 3d Home Design program. I was an AutoCad jockey, and I salivated on the 3d possibilities. I joined with a kitchen designer that bought my first version of Chief which was 6.0. I remember using both ACAD and Chief until I understood how to use the layout portion of the program. Once I figured this out along with a little help from Mike Newiss and DJ Potter, I have NEVER looked back. I looked at Revit, and all of the other progs, and test drove them all, and they all led me back to my beloved Chief. No program is perfect, but this one is perfect for me, and 12 years and about 300+ projects later, it is like holding a pencil and sketchpad for me!

[lgc30642]

I began Chief at Version 4.0. At the time, the only sales rep in the Southeast was some dude in Florida. Once I had the software delivered, he fell off the earth in terms of any support whatsoever. Eventually, I was contacted by Steve and Kaye Blake of Berryvale Software with info that they were now my sales reps and support avenue. Where the **** is Cornish, Maine, I thought? As all who knew and loved those two, you quickly found out that it did not matter where Cornish, Maine was.........you had a reliable and dependable source of getting answers to your many questions and support for your software!!

My use of Chief is spotty year to year. I'm certainly not an expert with the program, but it has consistently allowed me to "WOW" potential customers when up against the competition of other builders. I do not use Chief for full sets of drawings to the degree that others might, but I can get enough on paper to get the job done......

ChiefTalk has been an instrumental support network over the years because of all the sharing that the Users on here contribute.......so much so, I've only had to use Customer Support on very rare occassions, and those were technical issues more than solving design problems with the software.

ChiefArchitect has allowed me to be a very successful Custom Home Builder over an extended period of time. Customers marvel at seeing their dream design come to life in 3D with a photo backdrop of their construction site. I have beat out my competition numerous times because the customer developed greater confidence in my company by seeing how my previous projects had both "as designed" and "as built" photo comparisons as the means to understand that we do, in fact, provide the finished project exactly to their expectations. ChiefArchitect allows us to do that!

I skipped X4 and SSA for the past year, but now I am back with the Upgrade sale and looking forward to what X5 will bring.

[DMDz]

I started my designing career for Home Desperate (As I Like to call it) on their 3D program 20/20 Design. After 3 years and about 1,000 kitchens later, I got an offer to work for a local Contractor, so off I went, sold on the idea that the 3D software was the ticket I needed to make his company better.

That’s when I learned 20/20 can’t do anything but kitchens, and I needed Something stronger. So off to AutoCAD I went… Then I must have test drove every known software out there – DataSoft, VisaCAD, PlanSoft, Punch, Revit, AutoDesk, and on and on.

Then, one day, a friend of mine sat me down and turned on CA 9.0 – After 5 minutes of him drawing an entire house, framing it, roofing it, and putting in the foundation – I flew off my chair and began the journey. The very next day, I talked my boss into buying the latest Chief Architect 9.5. All those wasted hours @ the OTHER type programs, taught me what a gift CA was. With Chief Architect 9.5 it help me find a home as a LEAD Designer / Drafter for a major contracting firm, with Chief 10 I was able to out bid and out produce all Drafters & Architects in my area, we had become the go to design build firm for Orange County.

Then Chief X1 ushered in my solo career with David Michael Designs - And now with the latest CA version, I have had over 1,000 jobs completed in almost every State in the US as well as Canada and Mexico, not to mention, England, Scotland, Finland, Australia, Fiji, Brazil, and on and on. From residential to commercial, non profit to great profit - All from the comfort of my office, not more then 10 feet away from my Master. The traffic time I have saved in my life alone, do to CA – its worth a second lifetime. I can not say thank you enough to Chief Architect, but here I will try - Thank You Chief Architect, Thank You Chief Architect, Thank You Chief Architect..!

Giving Back I started the free website: www.ChiefTutor.com as a way to say I really do appreciate all that you have offered all of us users.

[marty]

Way back around 1995 I saw a demonstration of Archicad V1 and decided that was the way of the future and asked the price. I then found out the price - $8,000 for the software and $16,000 for a computer capable of running it. That made my pen and paper setup look like very good value but started me on the search for the same sort of thing at a price I could afford.

After a short stretch with Generic Cad I moved on to DataCad and the promise of 3D. After a year of so I got tired of telling my Clients that rendered 3D views were "just around the corner" and renewed my search which turned up Chief V4 which delivered the 3D presentation I was looking for. At that stage the CAD tools were very primative so I kept Datacad for Plot layouts, cross sections and details.

By about V6 Chief had developed sufficiently for me to abandon Datacad completely. I still remember that early presentation of Archicad and have continually said that when I get a big complex project that Chief cannot handle I will spend the money and move to Archicad. Despite having faced several complex multi storey apartment and commercial buildings I have yet to find a project that Chief could not handle.

One of the strengths of Chief as a program is the way they listen and communicate with their user base. We all still moan about the top items on our wish lists being neglected but the reality is you cant please everyone all of the time. Chief is now a mature product helping to keep me ahead of the competition and it will be interesting to see how it meets the new challenges that come with new technology. I can almost see myself working on a large touch screen mounted on a stand that allows it to be rotated to any angle and working on it as if an old drawing board - back to the future!

[SusanC]

I started using 3D Home Architect (Broderbund) in 1997 when we bought our first house in Palos Verdes, California and began gutting it from top to bottom. That program allowed us to pull building permits and have a successful remodel. My husband was an engineer at that time, but always wanted to be an architect (still does). We continued to remodel every house we lived in and in 2003, after moving to the east coast and having a baby, I went back to school to start a second career. I went through Boston Architectural College and after graduating, began working for one of my teacher's firms. He suggested we look at Chief Architect instead of going the standard AutoCAD route. I soon discovered that Chief Architect Premiere was the latest version of the 3D Home Architect that I started with so long ago. We've had great success so far with CA and look forward to many more successes!