Quirky - that is what I am talking about

[William H Lynch]

Take a clue from 'Apple', a smooth, cool looking interface can seduce the millions and can overcome any deficiencies in the program...

Bill

[William H Lynch]

Hey, I'm a big Godzilla fan...., Thanks, Perry for all you contribute to the CA community...

Bill

[rcole]

I am a +1 on wanting to know a little more about what is meant by CA not printing as wells as other apps. I am not questioning anyones opinion, I am just curious is all.

I have my own plotter and have for a long time, so I mostly see my own output. I also choose to print from CA because I personally like the options available from Layer Sets in Layout.

I also like a sharp looking interface, but it is not as important to me as being able to customize keyboard commands. The hot keys are a nice feature, but they are no where near the level that I would like to see it. At least two keys would be very helpfull.

It is the things like introducing Ruby, and then just leaving it go, or not putting the finishing touches on the Material List that I find the most frustrating about CA. That being said, I do find CA to be a very capable app in a great many ways.

I do think that there is progress in areas that would appeal to the professional market. Features like PDF import are a welcome addition for my work, and I am also hopfull that symbols and solids will see a little more developement.

Thanks for sharing your Elevation views, and good luck on your projects. I do have a question. Are the elevations live, or have they been edited? Apples and apples?

[Bruce MacNeill]

Interesting thread..

As a long time C/A user (originally 3D Home Architect) I'm not surprised to learn that it is not the best at its 2D printing. The core target market for the product originally was home builders, home plan providers (formerly known as draftsmen) and home 'do it yourselfers' allowing them to design and create home plans in a new way. More recently it has attracted Architects, rendering service providers, kitchen designers and others.

The software is conceived with the wood frame house in mind, walls, floor platforms, ceiling planes and roof planes. This is a limitation if you are modelling something else but otherwise it is a great plus.
With the developments from V10 to X4 I've found the software user experience (there is a new word for this) to be more intensive and technically demanding, (in other words exhausting). Can the software be all things to all users... I hope not because I'm worried if it tries to be it will be no longer be enjoyable and productive to use for its original purpose.

[Dave Pitman]

Printing the sharpest drawing possible is important. However, I have pdfs from others that were output with AutoCAD, and do not look sharper that those output with CA.

That doesn't mean that johnnyprc is incorrect, but without an example, it is difficult to take his claim as anything more than a rant. It would be simple enough to provide examples of 2D work that demonstrated Chief's shortcomings if they exist.

[perryh]

Chief can do elevations like shown, very easily. If you cant do it ,then get some training. Most of the problems are user error. Every program has some kind of problems, learn the workaround.

[dshall]

Chief can do elevations like shown, very easily. If you cant do it ,then get some training. Most of the problems are user error. Every program has some kind of problems, learn the workaround.

Sage advice from "The Slab Man".

[Doug Park]

As far as I know there should be no difference in the sharpness of prints unless you have set up your printer badly. When I updated the printing I compared it to printouts from a lot of sources and ours looked as sharp as the sharpest out there. However, some print driver settings can negatively affect your perception.

Whether or not antialiasing is used by the printer driver can change your perception of crispness. Some find that using antialiasing makes things look sharper others find exactly the opposite. I can't explain why, but I've seen this occur.

Much of the time people print using a PDF printer driver. By default some of those drivers have very low print resolutions which would explain a print that is not sharp.

If we have an issue I would like to know what it is because the statements that Chief isn't printing sharp don't make any sense to me.

As far as line drawings go, lines are lines. But your configuration of the weights, styles, colors, choice of patterns, etc. can have a huge impact on the differences in perceived quality. Heavy lines don't look as crisp, for example.

Toolbars are an area of weakness in the program that we are working to correct.

Our user interface does need some functional and organizational improvement and we are working on that as well.

I'm curious about what areas that you find quirky. I could guess about what those are, but I would probably be wrong because one persons quirky is another persons preferred way of working.

As always specific observations are a lot more informative than generalizations.

In any case we are always looking for constructive input to improve our interface.

[dshall]

I think the biggest difference for me is whether it it is PLOTTED in house vs printed by print company. Either way, it had been printed to pdf995.

[sutcac]

For schematic and design development stuff, I prefer to go with the watercolor with line drawing feature anyway, which can be done entirely native to Chief.

[HumbleChief]

For schematic and design development stuff, I prefer to go with the watercolor with line drawing feature anyway, which can be done entirely native to Chief.

That's really sharp Bryce!

[sutcac]

Thanks, Larry. It's an old, unbuilt design, but thought it was good to illustrate this.

[dshall]

That's really sharp Bryce!

I totally agree, but if I had the choice of a straight on watercolor elevation or a 3D watercolor, I would choose the 3D every time. My point is, why would I ever use this straight on view when I have the option of some kind of 3D view? What am I missing?

[yusuf]

For schematic and design development stuff, I prefer to go with the watercolor with line drawing feature anyway, which can be done entirely native to Chief.

here goes chief. excellent work.
ca can handle a lot and my friend's attitude towards ca is changing.
like it again, keep it up.

[perryh]

My opinion is the watercolor with line drawing, and final shadows, is way to slow for me anymore, what happened to it. It gets slower with every version. Raytrace is much faster. I really like it but, not ready for prime time yet.