With ARCHICAD one can produce complete 3D construction drawings from sheds to complex tall buildings.
But as you gain experience the features built in reduce the time & repetitiveness of operations. You can type a letter right away without having to learn many of its feature. But I was producing decent construction drawings within 2 weeks.
One had to purchase the full version without the options we have today. When I first started my practice ARCHICAD had everything I was looking for. He ultimately turned back to AutoCad to increase his efficiency and accuracy.įor small buildings (under 6000 sq ft) I think SoftPlan goes head to head with Revit or Archicad but for larger buildings I have my doubts. A collegue of mine used it for a couple of years but always had complaints about non-standard roof creation. The output produces reasonable accurate contruction drawings. That could have been my inexperience but it turned me off completely. The last time I tested it I found that I had to try to defeat some of its common tool behavior to get it to do what I wanted.
I think its niche is limited to mainly small home designs. The final construction drawings it produces seem to me to be simple and inaccurate. I have found that to do anything creative beyond 4 walls is increasingly difficult. Before I purchased ARCHICAD 6.0 I explored and tested Chief Architect and Softplan and have re-evaluated both on and off through the last 18 years.Ĭhief Architect is quick to learn and use at a rudimentary level.