Draw4Food wrote:I am thinking about getting a new residential drafting software. There seems to be a lot of buzz about Revit, Archicad, and Chief Architect. Other than price, what advatages are there to Datacad over these?
My objective is to complete basic construction prints as quickly as possible. A lot of my work involves making changes to a base model, so I am particularly interested in how datacad compares to a fully parametric application.
Dear Draw.
I am a very loyal user of both DataCad and Chief Architect. I believe there are more than just me that have found that DataCad just isn't up to snuff as a modeler and have gone to Chief A. for that. But Chief is a lousy drafting program. In my practice, I really need both. In Datacad, you can draw anything you want, in a parametric modeler, like CA, you can only draw what is in the database. This can be limiting, but if you're mostly modifying stock plans, it is unlikely you would need anything beyond what CA can give you.
Chief Architect currently retails for about $2400. This is a lot to spend if you need to buy a basic drafting package as well. But my investment has paid me back many times. The software is amazing and the company is constantly upgrading in huge leaps.
But if I only had one platform in the office, it would be DataCad, no question.
Spend some time looking over your options and see if you can get a demonstration from someone who uses the programs you're interested in. You really can't judge things on a web site.
Good luck.
Ernie