Chief Architect has been created to meet the specific needs of building professionals… those of you involved in every stage of the design and/or construction of single and multi-dwelling residential, and medium sized commercial and industrial projects.

Architects, builders, building designers, interior designers, kitchen and bathroom designers, landscapers… Chief Architect software will give you ‘the edge', an ability to communicate your ideas to your clients that can only come from a powerful 3D design and drafting tool. Chief Architect uses the very latest in ‘Object' based technology… and once you've seen what ‘Object' based CAD can do for you there will be no turning back.

Most people in the building industry don't come from a computer background… they get into it because they like to design and build things. You don't want to be forced to think in terms of co-ordinates or bisected planes do you? Of course not! You want to get your ideas out to the people who need to see them... today! That's what's attracting people to Chief Architect software… it is fast and easy to use, and it talks your language. A wall is a wall, a window is a window… simple, both for you and the people who need to see and understand your ideas.

At Chief Architect Australia we realise that people who design buildings don't design stealth bombers… and so they shouldn't have to persevere with the same complex CAD tools. We also wanted to eliminate the ‘six month to never' learning curve of most of the traditional CAD systems, so in creating Chief Architect, the thing uppermost in our designers minds, above all else, was that it had to be easy to use and quick to learn.

Using our ‘Getting Started Guide' you can design your first house in around 30 minutes right out of the box… guaranteed! Whilst you're creating your floor plan, Chief Architect is working hard for you in the background… dimensioning, scale, perspective, 3D, everything is being taken care of so that you can think about what to draw, not how to draw it.

Just by placing and arranging walls, windows, doors, cabinets, and other architectural objects and textures from a structured library of over 8,500 items, Chief Architect software gives you the means to present and communicate ideas to your clients and trades though unlimited views of a very detailed ‘virtual' 3D model which it generates around information within your floor plan.

Research tells us that many ordinary people can't visualize what is presented to them in a floor plan, so Chief Architect's 3D capabilities will really build your client's confidence in you as a building professional by indicating to them that you have understood and interpreted their ideas and requirements correctly. This has the added benefit of reducing the chance of any uncertainty, frustration on their part… and contract variations down the line .

Use Chief Architect's Terrain tools to build a very realistic interpretation of the proposed site for the building. You can either create the site and input the elevation information using Chief Architect's own powerful tools, or import your surveyor's site plan and contour information and have Chief Architect automatically build the terrain for you. Proposed retaining walls, roads, out-buildings, trees and other landscaping features… all can be incorporated into your finished model to make it as realistic as possible; and to satisfy shire planning requirements Chief Architect can use all of this information to automatically produce accurate sun-shadow studies for the project with the click of a button.

Use Chief Architect's built-in POVray ray-tracing technology to produce dramatic 3D interior and exterior rendered views that include the realistic use of proposed materials, lighting effects, shadows and reflections… and share the magic of VRML with your clients to enable them to walk through and around their ‘virtual' project, and really experience just how it will look and feel when it is finished with all of their colour and material choices.

Once the design process is finished, all of the design information can be used in Chief Architect to very quickly document the project in a very complete set of working drawings… plans, site plans, elevations, sections, perspectives, details, etc; and even produce a detailed list of the materials required to construct the project. As these items can remain linked to your initial model, any subsequent variations to any part of the project can be automatically updated where necessary, i.e. moving or deleting a door or a window in your floor plan can automatically update any elevation, cross-section or other detail in the project that uses that information, potentially eliminating hours of tedious work and undetected errors in your drawings.

At any stage during either the design or detailing stages, planning and design information can be shared with shire, engineers or other people who will be involved in the construction of the project through Chief Architect's sophisticated tools that import and export this information in AutoCAD DWG/DXF file formats, and Windows Metafiles.

So in a nut shell Chief Architect gives you the complete tools to…

• Create one-off designs or to customise one of your standard plans for clients to visualise as a 3D model in minutes using ‘drag and drop' tools, and items from a structured library of over 15,000 architectural objects and textures, or those that you have created or added yourself…
• Produce photo-realistic 3D views of any part of the project…
• Create a virtual walk-thru to share with your clients…
• Create custom symbols or import them from manufacturer's libraries…
• Export or Import plan, details, site or other information to and from other systems in AutoCAD DXF or DWG file formats.
• Produce all of the construction drawings and documentation for your finished design.
• Produce a detailed list of the materials required to construct the project.