By Phillip Gibney

Designing the perfect shower is about more than aesthetics; it’s about creating a functional space that optimizes your daily routine. Whether designing a shower for a new home or remodeling your existing space, a thoughtfully designed shower must be created with your everyday routine in mind. This guide will help you navigate the key steps to design your dream custom shower.

by Phillip Gibney

A plumbing system is a network of pipes, fittings, fixtures, and valves that delivers water where needed throughout the home while safely removing wastewater. While often one of the more underappreciated and unnoticed parts of a house, a well-built plumbing system is critical in ensuring health and sanitation.

With potentially hundreds of feet of piping navigating through a home’s structure, envisioning how a plumbing system is built can be challenging. 3D plumbing isometrics solves this challenge by allowing designers and contractors to visualize in far greater detail how a plumbing system may come together. This can help avoid problems during construction by highlighting conflicts between the plumbing system and the home’s structural components. For example, by visualizing in 3D where the plumbing lines are running, you could easily recognize a scenario such as a floor joist interfering with the placement of a toilet flange and its respective wastewater lines. Identifying and correcting such conflicts in the design phase is faster, easier, and less expensive than correcting them in the field.

By Phillip Gibney

Chief Architect offers online and in-person training classes. These classes are an excellent way to increase your knowledge in the software, get your questions answered, connect with our staff, and network with industry peers. As a class participant, there are several things you can do to help prepare and ensure your success in a training class.

By Phillip Gibney

For many, a home is not just a place to live, it’s also a way to build wealth and financial security. A common strategy for millions of homeowners looking to increase their home’s value is to complete home improvement projects. When considering which projects to pursue, estimating the project’s return on investment (ROI) early in the planning process is essential.  The ROI for a given home improvement project helps predict how much your home value might increase based on how much money you spend on the project. This is important because it can help you prioritize which home improvement projects to undertake based on your goals.  For example, if you spend $30,000 on a home project and this project increases the long-term value of your home by $30,000, then the ROI is 100%; however, if it increases the value of your home by $15,000, the ROI will only be 50% and may have you reprioritizing your list of home improvement projects. In this article, we will discuss home improvement projects that consistently have the best ROI and learn how 3D home design software can help ensure your next project is a success.

by Phillip Gibney

Do you periodically take the time to evaluate your use of Chief Architect and improve your productivity and skills in the program? Doing so can streamline your workflow, reduce the time it takes to complete a project, and provide you with higher-quality renders and construction documents. This may entail breaking bad habits and forming good new habits, updating various aspects of the program, or simply learning about unfamiliar tools.

by Phillip Gibney

Design options are choices provided to the client that offers variations in design concepts. Design options can range from design styles, floor plan layouts, and elevations, to material finishes, interior selections, and more. Using the tools in Chief Architect Premier, you can help clients visualize design options to ensure they are satisfied with a home design and provide upsell opportunities.

by Phillip Gibney

You may have outgrown your current space in the house and have an unfinished basement that is not utilized. Finishing a basement is an efficient way to increase your living space. Finished Basements can be fitted with plumbing, electrical, HVAC systems and provide a blank canvas for utilizing the space.  From home theater and rec. rooms to bedrooms and kitchenettes, the options are virtually endless for providing comfortable living quarters for an evolving household. Whatever your needs require, you can finish your basement to fit your lifestyle.

The Chief Architect Challenge is a fun exercise designed to test your skills and encourage learning. See how many design elements you can recreate in 10 minutes – a layout page is not required. We recommend starting from the default template file and spend 10 minutes on the design. If you are using a custom template, no problem, be sure to clear out your time tracker entries before beginning. Make sure to download the challenge’s library files. Chief Architect staff will judge the entries – architectural elements are more important than colors & materials.

Chief Architect will host a live webinar each week showing how to create the design in 10 minutes, and a winner will be announced. Each Chief Challenge winner will receive a limited edition Chief Gear kit.

How to submit your design:
1. Email a zipped backup of your plan and material files and one rendering of the project to submissions@chiefarchitect.com
2. Include your name, company information, version of Chief Architect, and in the subject line write “Chief Challenge.”

• Bath Vanity, “All the Vanity”
• “The Mailbox!”
• Kitchen Island, “Round the Island”
• “She Shed”
• “Dawg House”

We look forward to seeing your work!

By Phillip Gibney

Chief Architect produces 3D Home Design Software for professional designers and DIY homeowners. From automated features for quickly creating floor plans, section details, and layouts to photo-realistic 3D renders for visualizing the design, the software is a powerful tool for those with residential design needs. Because the software is so powerful and robust, a question we often hear at Chief Architect is “what type of computer do I need to run the software”? Many computers are capable of running Chief Architect; however, depending on the specs, some will run Chief much more efficiently.  Investing in the right computer will also help ensure that the computer will run future versions of Chief effectively for a longer period of time, making your investment more cost effective over time.

by Phillip Gibney

Post frame construction is a building method in which a structure is framed using posts that are connected on the outside with 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 horizontal framing known as girts. The posts are typically placed in a concrete footing or can be connected to a steel fastener that is anchored into the concrete footing. Trusses are typically used to support the roof system. Once the framing is complete the structure can be finished for its intended purpose.