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Chief & News

Comparing Chief Architect Premier and Home Designer Pro


Chief Architect Home Design Software

Phillip Gibney Profile Image By Phillip Gibney

Chief Architect Software is a leading software developer that focuses solely on home design software. Chief Architect Software offers two product lines: Chief Architect for design professionals and Home Designer Software for DIY home enthusiasts. If you are an industry professional looking for a design program or using Home Designer Software, you may have questions about the differences between our two software lines and the advantages of the Chief Architect line.

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Catalog Partner Program Brings Brands to your Fingertips


a grid of brand logos indicating those that are downloadable from Chief Architect's 3D Library

Author's portrait By Adrean Stephenson

At some point, your ideas and designs will become a reality. When things get real, you’ll be collecting part numbers and prices, then putting in orders, and finally seeing all of your visions come to fruition.

Life can be a lot easier when the goods you plan to purchase are plucked directly from your favorite brands’ digital catalogs and then placed into your Chief Architect and Home Designer projects.

One goal of our Content Development team is to make this process easy and accessible. We work with many brand partners to curate digital catalogs that are specifically compatible with the Chief Architect family of software. Our hosting tool for these brand catalogs, and an array of other downloadable content for enhancing your work, is the 3D Library.

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Living the Van Life


The Pedersens van, a 2001 Ford E350 extended body Sportsmobile with penthouse pop top and a Quigley 4X4 conversion.

Author, Kerry Hansen By Kerry Hansen

With adventurous spirits, and the feeling of excitement that spontaneity brings, the Pedersens answer the call of the open road.

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Mercury Mosaics Handmade Tiles – Now Available in the 3D Library!


Kitchen design featuring handmade tile from Mercury Mosaics.

Author, Kerry Hansen By Kerry Hansen

The addition of these handcrafted gems within the Chief Architect Platform bring design-dreams to life.

Mercury Mosaics’ Tile selections are now available in the Chief Architect 3D Library. Their addition to the Chief Architect platform benefits clients by showcasing how the tile will look in their space. The collection will be released in three phases, the first represent tiles available in Mercury Mosaics Fall 2020 Look Book! This collection embraces the simplicity of shape and pattern in order to focus on the soul of their work: exquisite, hand-painted color. Each piece is unique, created by hand-applying glaze that reveals stunning variation and depth.

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3D Viewer App: A New Way for Builders and Designers to Engage and Communicate their 3D design with Clients


3 Steps to upload plan to 3d Viewer, 3D plan pointing to Ipad

Phillip Gibney Profile Image By Phillip Gibney

Your clients want to see more than a floor plan and elevation, right?  Renderings help; but, what about a 3D model they can experience and virtually interact with?  Export and share your designs using the Chief Architect 3D Viewer.  With the 3D Viewer, they can view the design and model on their phone, tablet or computer – it’s a free app we developed exactly for sharing your designs with your clients.

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Student Design Gallery


Chief Architect Student Design Gallery graphic.

The Chief Architect Student Design Gallery is a great way to celebrate the talent and fresh design ideas of the next generation of designers.

If you are a student leveraging the Chief Architect student license or a teacher utilizing Chief Architect in your classroom and would like to showcase a student design, we’d love to hear from you!

Submit your designs for a chance to be featured on our social media channels.

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TheBuild.tv Launches for DIY Home Renovation Education


HGTV star, Anthony Carrino posing in finished kitchen renovation.

Author's Portrait By Kendra Dorosh

Dreaming of renovating your home, but not sure what to expect? Thebuild.tv by Anthony Carrino may just be the new series you’ve been waiting for.

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8 Ways to Be a Boss at Working From Home


An elegant home office, designed and rendered in Chief Architect.

Author, Kerry Hansen By Kerry Hansen

Whether an architect, interior designer, draftsperson or design-builder, working from home is a key strategy for many. Carving out a personal work space for yourself can serve as an essential resource and is one of the keys to success and productivity when working from home. Here are a few tips to get going.

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The Value of Hiring a Certified Living in Place Professional (CLIPP) for your Next Design


Kitchen Elevation showing accessible grab bars.

Author's Portrait By Kendra Dorosh

Did you know that a person aged 60 needs three times the light as a 20-year-old?

That may seem like a drastic amount, but Certified Living in Place Professional (CLIPP) Adam Gibson explains the reasoning behind this statement: people over 60, “need more light, and everyone needs a high Color Rendering Index (CRI) to best reveal the colors of various objects. It’s no fun going outside in your black socks only to realize they’re blue. One solution? Light-colored walls washed in light provide more ambient light than the same quantity of recessed lights pointing toward the floor.”

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The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture: Through the Eyes of an Apprentice


Michael Rust in 1987 enrolled in the Taliesin Fellowship at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

Author, Kerry Hansen By Kerry Hansen

Like many, when we learned that after nearly 90 years, the iconic School of Architecture at Taliesin would be closing its doors later this year, our hearts skipped a beat. Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the founding visionaries of Modernist architecture and a towering figure in American culture. For a first-hand perspective on the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West, we turned to Michael Rust, an architect based out of Chandler, Arizona. Rust, a member of the Taliesin Fellowship for over a decade, was the recipient of the third Master of Architecture degree ever issued by the prestigious school. Michael’s architecture is featured on the cover of Chief Architect Premier X11 and X12, and atop our booth at the International Builders’ Show.

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