Switching over...

[Canuck]

My wife and I do residential design. We are licensed to up to 3 stories and 6500 sf. This covers about 80% of the market here on Vancouver Island Canada.

As to why. Revit is good software but it really hasn' the rendering capacity that Chief Architect has. I wasn't impressed with Revit's capacity for kitchen design either. It just seemed to me that I needed something that was more suited to the smaller residential design market.

I know there is a learning curve and I'm prepared for it. I have carved out 2 hours a day just for learning the new software. I suspect I will curse, but that's normal for me....I was in the military for 23 years so I come with a colourful language capability. I never fault software, it's always the user.

The new laptop arrives tomorrow or Thursday, and we should be downloading the X5 the following day. Come Monday I'll begin watching and learning...and asking you folks all sorts of dumb questions! ;-)

[dshall]

My wife and I do residential design. We are licensed to up to 3 stories and 6500 sf. This covers about 80% of the market here on Vancouver Island Canada.

As to why. Revit is good software but it really hasn' the rendering capacity that Chief Architect has. I wasn't impressed with Revit's capacity for kitchen design either. It just seemed to me that I needed something that was more suited to the smaller residential design market.

I know there is a learning curve and I'm prepared for it. I have carved out 2 hours a day just for learning the new software. I suspect I will curse, but that's normal for me....I was in the military for 23 years so I come with a colourful language capability. I never fault software, it's always the user.

The new laptop arrives tomorrow or Thursday, and we should be downloading the X5 the following day. Come Monday I'll begin watching and learning...and asking you folks all sorts of dumb questions! ;-)

The dumber the better. Having a very colorful language repertoire in the beginning is very helpful. I believe you have the right attitude and I predict you and your wife will be very successful.

[function9]

Canuck, I'm in a similar situation, altho I'm not leaving Revit just picking up CA and looking forward to it. I'm in the same boat re: Residential work
If you need a dedicated CAD app for anything I would recommend TurboCAD LTE v4.. its basically ACAD and can be configured the same ie.alias commands, workspaces etc, best of all it costs $150

http://www.turbocad.com/TurboCAD/Tur...6/Default.aspx

[Doug Maddox]

Canuck

I recently changed from AutoCAD (started at version 2.5 back in the 80's) and came to CA. Best way I found was to do a project - imagined or real - and go to manual, Chief Talk, and videos as I needed to. Been here a year or so and am absolutely sold on the software. Rendering qualities are excellent particularly in version X5 and I can now do an entire home design ready to rock and roll in half the time I spent on AutoCAD - client's dalliance aside.

Enjoy and welcome.

73, Doug