Revit or Chief? - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

Static Design · 11-18-2009, 10:42 AM

What do you guys prefer? I have both programs but haven't had time to dedicate to see what each program can to its full potential other then a few generic renderings. I am looking to put some serious time in one of the programs and leave the other one on the back burner. I have probably 9 or 10 years worth of autocad experience and years of sketch up but starting to like what I see coming out of these new programs.

What do you guys like?

J F · 11-18-2009, 11:02 AM

Ya may want to read through this forum: http://www.contractortalk.com/f82/

I doubt there will be many people who have used both for a good while to give a good opinion.

What you normally find is anyone who's used one or the other for any amount of time usually recommends that software.

Static Design · 11-18-2009, 11:06 AM

I don't need a link to a forum I already posted in

I am looking for personal experiences, not how to or need help threads.

J F · 11-18-2009, 11:08 AM

wellll, if you read through the forum (the same one you posted in) you'll find a lot of the very info you're looking for.

Static Design · 11-18-2009, 12:53 PM

Please show me a side by side comparison thread between the two programs until then, keep out or post your experience between the two.

J F · 11-18-2009, 01:28 PM

ScipioAfricanus · 11-18-2009, 09:09 PM

O.K. with all of that said in my humble opinion Revit blows. I have Revit 2008 and I have Chief X2. I got Revit to do some light commercial work as I thought that it might be the one to have for other than residential. I use Chief for all my commercial stuff too because I find Revit to be too damn cumbersome. Every time I need a window or door that is a little out of the ordinary I need to go through a lot of steps to find a family file with the door I need, load it, install it and hope it looks like I need it to.

Chief is almost too easy to work with with specialty items. I click in a door and if I need to I can change THAT door or window to suit my needs.

Revit is a powerful program to be sure and the cross sections are the best, lines clear and crisp, it has a great ability with materials and lists.

Revit is more powerful than Chief in a few respects like team members collaborating on the same plan file, and other things but for my money Chief is the way to go.

Andy.

Static Design · 11-18-2009, 10:25 PM

Thats the things I want to know, I started playing with chief today so far I really like the ease of showing the framing, etc. I haven't got to the part of adding materials and such for rendering purposes but so far I like what I see what others are doing with the program. Is this program capable of printing to scale?

ScipioAfricanus · 11-19-2009, 12:33 AM

Yes, it can print to scale on whatever sized paper you need. From A to D or larger if you need. I once did a site plan for a guy in Road Island that was on 72" X 36" paper in PDF format to 1/8" scale. It was quite nice and he got his project approved through the county.

The Layout pages for Chief I find to be pretty easy to set up and you can have a window to the plan or elevation at one scale and a blow-up of another area of the plan of another plan at a different scale.

Take a look at my website, it is in my signature. all of this was done in Chief. I have some stuff in Revit but I don't like it well enough to put it on the site. The newer Revit has a better rendering engine in Mental Ray and it does some really nice renderings but too much work to get to that yet for me.

The renderer that comes in Chief is called Pov-Ray and some can really make things look good with it but not me. I use a free renderer called Kerkythea that allows more control and renders much better than Pov.

Andy.

ScipioAfricanus · 11-19-2009, 12:38 AM

I don't mean to bag on Revit so much, it is a great program. It has some really nice features for the 2D aspects of design like the cross sectioning looks top notch, the walls and windows are more detailed and better looking over-all than is Chiefs but one of the really big draw-backs for Revit is that it is now an Autodesk product. I hate dealing with Autodesk and their stuff is WAAAYYYY expensive.

Just 2 more cents.

Andy.

**framerman** · 11-19-2009, 02:28 AM

Revit is for architects. CA is for builders. Generally.

Winchester · 11-19-2009, 03:18 AM

How accurate is CA's material lists for cost estimating?

is there some sort of fudge factor you add?

ScipioAfricanus · 11-19-2009, 08:11 AM

Ca's material lists are not as accurate as I think they should be, especially as regards the framing.
If it is framing and material lists and take-offs you need then Solid Builder has the best by far. The only problem with SolidBuilder is that it doesn't do anything else very well or easily.
I honestly don't know yet about Revit's material lists. I suspect that they are good though.

Andy.

**framerman** · 11-19-2009, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScipioAfricanus

Ca's material lists are not as accurate as I think they should be, especially as regards the framing.
If it is framing and material lists and take-offs you need then Solid Builder has the best by far. The only problem with SolidBuilder is that it doesn't do anything else very well or easily.
I honestly don't know yet about Revit's material lists. I suspect that they are good though.

Andy.

I used SoftPlan for awhile and have to say that the materials list that program generates is in the same ballpark as CA and Revit and every other program out there. It tells you exactly what you have it programmed to do.

For a generic example, in SoftPlan, if you are laying out the floor framing for a 28x40 with a beam down the middle, you need to split the joists your drawing on the beam and draw it again on the other side. Otherwise, you get a cutlist with

(15) 28'-2x12's

rather than

(30) 14'-2x12's

The example of Mike Finley's shower is another example where he wanted an accurate take off of tiles. There's ways to program it into the CAD, but you need to take the time to set it up the way you want it. Otherwise it will give you a generic (150) 4x4 tiles with 5% waste or something like that.

In general, you got what you put into it.

To elaborate more on Revit and CA, I have not used CA or even tried it. It looks very capable at drawing excellent plans. I think it is a perfect fit for builders. And it's cheaper, a lot cheaper, than Revit.

I'm on a few Revit user groups and it is almost all architects. They need the collaboration between Revit Architecture and Revit MEP and also with AutoCAD Architecture (AKA Architectural Desktop), AutoCAD Civil 3D, Inventor, MAX, etc. because they are all Autodesk products and the company has made it easy to save a file in a format that another Autodesk product user can easily open and manipulate.

This is where SoftPlan died on me. It was crap to collaborate with anyone other than someone who had SoftPlan and I assume it is the same with CA. While it exports a dxf file, it is not AS user friendly on the other end as someone who started with an Autodesk product.

bconley · 11-20-2009, 02:01 AM

I like Revit it is very intuitive to me, not much prior CAD experience to have to unlearn. I tried the CA 30 day trial but couldn't get into it after using Revit. I do like the ease of the framing and cabinets (quick and easy). You really shouldn't be modeling all of the framing (at least in Revit) anyway.
Chief just seems like a toy compared to Revit but it is very capable and a lot less expensive than Revit.
I'm not an architect but have friends that are, and they are all moving to Revit.
As far as the material lists go I haven't got into them too much very powerful but too much work for small projects, I can see how they would be valuable in large commercial building especially for MEP

bconley · 11-20-2009, 02:14 AM

On pricing buying Revit out right is expensive but the subscription rate is reasonable about $700 a year (many extra benefits too).
So depending on how often you have to upgrade cost may not be as big of a factor

Static Design · 11-20-2009, 03:02 AM

I have alot of problems being a cad user with these new programs, I like to be able to trim, extend, etc all of the fly or build something from scratch with a simple line if I have to do something and I miss my HOT keys defaulted in autocad. These tables are nice and quick for generic stuff so maybe I just need to get use to this newer style of drawing. I am going to play with it for a couple months and see what I can do with it. If im not happy I'll just go back to learning revit just say screw and stick with autocad haha.

Does CA do wall sections? elevations? etc? and give them to you in a CAD detail, not something generic looking like a sketch up drawing?

**framerman** · 11-20-2009, 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Static Design

I have alot of problems being a cad user with these new programs, I like to be able to trim, extend, etc all of the fly or build something from scratch with a simple line if I have to do something and I miss my HOT keys defaulted in autocad. These tables are nice and quick for generic stuff so maybe I just need to get use to this newer style of drawing. I am going to play with it for a couple months and see what I can do with it. If im not happy I'll just go back to learning revit just say screw and stick with autocad haha.

Does CA do wall sections? elevations? etc? and give them to you in a CAD detail, not something generic looking like a sketch up drawing?

I assume it is a click of the button for sections for CA.

That is the big problemwith being a CAD person. You have to let go of that type of program altogether. The longer you've been in autocad the harder it is to let go. Keep pushing. Once you break through you will never look back.

How many times have you needed to modify the drawings only to forget to edit one detail? Revit eliminates this. As long as your model is 100% architecturally correct, your prints contain zero errors.

Static Design · 11-20-2009, 12:13 PM

Yeah that's my problem I have always loved AutoDesk products and CAD has been one of my top programs so its hard to let go of something you're so used too haha. I am sure I will break the habit as I learn how powerful these programs actually are.