Chief Architect Premier is for all aspects of residential and light commercial design. Powerful building and drafting tools help professionals quickly create plans according to standard building practices. Every element placed in the plan has commonly used defaults to make the design process efficient and productive. As you draw walls, the program automatically creates a 3D model and generates a Materials List. There are powerful Automatic and Manual Building tools to produce Construction Documents with Site Plans, Floor Plans, Framing Plans, Electrical/ HVAC Plans, Section Details, and Elevations. Finally, Chief Architect includes design tools for photo-realistic Renderings, Artistic Renderings and Virtual Tours to help clients visualize your designs.
Powerful Building & Design Tools
Automatic Roofs: hip, gable, shed, saltbox, gambrel, gullwing, half-hip, mansard – plus Dormers. With the manual roof tools, create any style including curved roofs.
Materials Lists for Cut, Buy and Lineal materials for cost estimating and bidding
Schedules: Windows, Doors, Cabinets, Rooms, Fixtures, Furniture and Plants
Dimensions for One-Click Auto Dimensioning™, End-to-End, Interior, Point-to-Point, Baseline, Angular and Centerline
Advanced Stair & Ramp tools for curved, flared, split and straight
Automatic Framing. Define hand Framed or Truss framed roofs and floors.
Electrical and HVAC tools
Design with Smart Objects (BIM) windows, cabinets, doors, framing that have properties and behave intelligently in the design
Elevation and Cross-Section tools
Kitchen & Bath Design Tools
Create any style of custom cabinet including shaped, framed- and frame-less with the Cabinet Designer™ tools
Select from a library of thousands of custom door and drawer styles, cabinet feet, pilasters, hardware, wood species and colors
Extensive Catalog of appliances, fixtures, millwork and furnishings – import tools extended the Catalog to additional manufacturers
Block cabinets, fixtures, appliances & accessories to create architectural blocks such as a kitchen island or an entire kitchen. Save to the Library for future use – a great time saving feature
!Material Painter and Color Chooser tools allow you to import specific materials and customize for limitless design combinations
CAD tools to design custom shapes such as tub platforms and add Section and Wall Elevation details
3D Design and Modeling Tools
Seamless and simultaneous editing in 3D perspective, 2D plan and elevation views
Artistic Rendering – watercolor, painting, line drawing, technical illustration, duotone and Glass House™
Photo-Realistic 3D Ray Trace Rendering
Ray Trace Wizard with predefined settings for indoor and outdoor scenes
3D views for elevations, overviews, cross-sections, framing and Doll House™
Material Painter™ – apply colors, materials and textures from any image or website
Color Chooser™ – Choose manufacturer colors, materials or textures for your design – or from a digital photo
Record 3D views for virtual tours
Powerful CAD Tools
CAD Solids – produce slabs, moldings, and shapes. Draw molding profiles, custom countertops, driveways, and other architectural objects or CAD details.
CAD Drawing tools for lines, polylines, splines, arcs, sun angles and shapes
Align, Distribute, Copy, Replicate, Reflect, Extend, Fillet, make Parallel and several other CAD tools for precision and productivity
Convert CAD objects to architectural objects – draw a molding profile and save as a stacked crown molding for a room or cabinet
Draw custom CAD details, access built-in CAD details, import DXF or DWG CAD files
CAD-to-Walls tool imports an AutoCAD® file and provides a mapping for layers
CAD tools to detail Cross Sections & Elevations
Plan Sets and Construction Drawings
Create construction documents with the Layout tool – send any view to the Layout – define scale and link to the drawing to update as your design changes
Multiple Layers and Layer Sets – mask layers to create the view you need
Annotation Sets (like Layer Sets) to group control Dimensions, Text, Arrows, Markers, Callouts, and Layers to streamline the annotation process
Create Detailed Plan Sets: Site Plans, Floor Plans, Framing Plans, Electrical/ HVAC Plans, Section Details, Structural and Foundation Plans, Room Finish Schedules, Elevations and 3D Perspectives
Use a PDF print driver to print to any size paper
Time Tracker™ to monitor time spent on specific projects
Site Planning, Terrain, Deck & Landscaping Tools
Terrain Modeling, Landscaping Tools and Site Planning Tools for single or multiple lots
Terrain Elevation Lines and individual Terrain Elevation Points
Terrain Feature tools for Hills, Valleys, Flat Areas and more to modify the terrain attributes
Import Terrain or GPS data and quickly produce the 2D and 3D terrain detail
Road, Sidewalk and Curbing tools
Set the north pointer and define seasonal settings for detailed shadow overlay
Automatic and Manual deck framing; customize deck planking and materials
Plant Encyclopedia™, with detailed information about each plant including integrated Hardiness Zone Maps
