Integration of Chief with Other HVAC Software

[KWALDRON3435]

We are General Contractors that used to design build and long time user of Chief who for several years have pro sued other interest. We are re-entering the building business and possibly considering doing our own HVAC work, we are licensed..... so not a problem from that side.

Question:

With all the code changes in the 2012 code ( at least for our area..... Blower Door test, Duct blaster Test, Manual J.... etc. ) We are interested in any information from other users connecting HVAC software like Elite, or WrightSoft software or ?????? with Chief. According to the two companies that I listed both can import DWG or DXF format which Chief can produce...... We 'd be interested in any feed back with anyone who has some knowledge in these two pieces of software or others. It appears at the present time that nothing more than a 2D file is transferred so volumes, windows, doors, etc. all have to be reentered. We'd love to ad void double entry if at all possible.

Personally think Chief should now incorporate much more HVAC drawing and calculation tools with the new energy requirements that builder/designers now have to offer for building permits and code departments.

Thank you in advance.

God Bless.

Kevin

[lbuttery]

Kevin:

if you are looking for BIM integration with other BIM software
Chief is sorely lacking in this area

I can't speak to how useful .DWF or .DXF files will be
but I would suspect it won't be 100%

Chief has Electrical tools but has nothing for Hvac or Plumbing
concerning MEP features

I started using Chief in 2004 and a decade later these capabilities are still missing

Lew

[Ben Palmer]

Kevin, I would love to see this integration as well, but I don't think it's going to happen since that is not Chief's focus...those manual calcs are fairly intensive, and not sure Chief has interest in incorporating them.

If not, tt would be nice for Chief to allow plugins of some kind and companies could create modules that would perform these functions, but Chief has not shown any willingness to allow it thus far.

I recently starting using WrightSoft for our calculations as more municipalities require them with the 2012 codes...and the dwg import is very rudimentary as you mentioned, and serves as a reference to recreate rooms, windows, doors, etc...so I start over with the drawing, and the drawing tools are very weak (compared to Chief). Would be nice if WrightSoft and Chief could work together and create some kind of import function that could take Chief's file and have the rooms and openings already figured into the drawings, and all we have to do is the layouts, and other necessary input for the calcs to be produced.

You have might vote either way.

[KWALDRON3435]

Lew,

Thank you for the response..... we tossed out version 7 material/boxes last week while cleaning up. We have been doing of recent a lot of 3D cad for CNC and Laser's...... ( Solidworks, Rhinoceros and others....) and yes, we walked back into Chief hoping for a lot of changes.... and find we can't even use our 3D Space mouse...... real bumper....... after you learn how to use the space mouse.

We were hoping someone had found something that was somewhat efficient for the HVAC and Chief (next stop may have to be Autocad MEP).

Blessing,

Kevin

[gteacher]

Chief does Export a Rescheck file which you can open in the free version of Rescheck to give you total UA and by component.

You can also use the material list to give you wall areas and door/window areas for walls , but you have figure out for your self what area goes with what. This data can be exported to excel.

Chief also has a software tool -- Ruby-- which can create a custom data files and lists but, this tool, by Chief's philosophy has little, if any, access to the data in Chief. Useful only for labels.

In other words, you should probably look elsewhere, at least, until Chief changes their present policy of not allowing user access to their internal data. That might be awhile as this feature has been requested, by many, (squeaky wheel does not apply in this case) now for many years as Lew noted-- nothing significant expected in near term. You may want to look at other CAD programs as several others do permit this, although generally through their own custom scripts. Chief just targets a different market.