mistertheplague

@Renerabbitt Those numbers are interesting. You have to account for the differences between a DIY customer base and a professional customer base, however. 50K Chief customers x $2000 = 100 million bucks in revenue every year for Chief to be funded and to secure more robust development. On the flip side, there's many more of us (at least there were LOL), but we're fickle because we don't use HD to make money for the most part. Even the folks I've encountered online who do use HD as part of their paying job (pretty much all contractors now that I'm thinking about it), don't use the program with sufficient regularity to justify a whopping yearly subscription cost. You said yourself most of us nonprofessionals skip releases. I haven't upgraded since 2021, because why should I? I originally bought HD, despite the fact that it was already priced at an eye-watering premium compared with similar programs, to remodel our house. I wanted the ability to account for structure, framing, etc. and to be able to print plans for the local building department (which Chief Inc. throttles in HD in the most absurdly antagonistic way possible). It was $500 upfront for 2020 and 100-something to upgrade to 2021. Ray-tracing would be cool but if I'm being honest not only would I have to cough up for Chief Inc.'s new rentware, I'd have to buy a whole new rig to run ray-tracing, as my current PC coughs and moans when HD's running as is. But practically speaking, why would I pay full MSRP every year? I only own one house. In spite of my wife's best efforts I can only remodel the kitchen so many times. Even if I was a landlord the use cases for this software would dwindle. A rentware model for a program like this only makes sense if you are using it regularly to generate revenue regularly as part of your business. In other words, if you're a Chief user. Really? You know more than I do but I would expect those numbers to reverse, for Chief Inc. to keep that many HD users. Because: see above. I assume this move is, as you said, intended to firm up predictable revenue estimates so they can plan -- which will likely mean the vast majority of the HD user base will be zapped but any who remain will produce reliable revenue numbers. I mean, look. You made solid arguments for why Chief Inc. might legitimately want this aside from it being a mere cash-grab, but at the end of the day the HD suite was always a weird unicorn-type product: considerably more powerful than anything else in the DIY home design space (though some apps might be catching up), but not really usable for architects, drafters cranking out x-number of as-builts every year, owners of design-build firms, etc. -- because of how thoroughly Chief Inc. has throttled HD for professional use. Chief Inc. may legitimately want to keep HD viable as a DIY tool and they may legitimately believe this move will not impact that. I have my doubts as it's always seemed to me that Chief Inc. views HD users with indifference bordering on benign contempt, as the colonial revenue generation model you outlined in your comment illustrates. Regardless, the market will have the final word, and I honestly don't see how this move is anything but a prelude to HD going the way of the shag rug. A lot of software is viable for SaaS, even if we deplore SaaS in principle. Home Designer is not one of those programs.

When they moved Chief to subscription you could pretty much set a timer to HD following suit. You don’t have to spend much time in the CA ecosystem to realize that Chief rules the roost and everything they do is with Chief users in mind. Not criticizing, I’m sure Chief customers are their bread and butter. The HD suite has always been a weird offering. Clearly they set the prices/functionality so that Chief users wouldn’t dump the product and downshift to HD. Likely with the added hope that HD users would become invested in the CA ecosystem and upgrade to Chief if they used it for business purposes. Other software companies do this. Quicken is a notable example. Quicken Deluxe is simply Quicken Premier with a bunch of features turned off. The difference is that in Quicken the turned-off functionality is straightforward. Don’t need investments? Get Deluxe. A lot of the features from Chief they throttle in HD seem arbitrary, weird, and highly irritating. I’m wondering if they’ve seen a number of SSA Chief users who didn’t need Chief’s full functionality dump SSA and purchase HD. Or they anticipated that happening as they raise SSA prices YTY to reach the Chief subscription price. Regardless, this removes HD as a realistic option for serious DIYers and small contractors who only model projects occasionally.

I've been learning how to use HD Pro for several months, and in addition to the Home Designer training videos, knowledge base articles, help file, and reference manual (of course HomeTalk), I've found a lot of the training material for Chief Architect Premier to be very useful, if not invaluable. There is considerable overlap between CA Premier and HD Pro. Many of the training resources for CA Premier go into greater depth on topics and tools that both programs have. You'll quickly figure out which capabilities are CA-only. I also read and search ChiefTalk, the HomeTalk equivalent for CA users. Very illuminating. This is a powerful and complex program. Take any help you can get when learning it.

@xJonQx @solver Just found this workaround. Brilliant.

This is my plan. Topographical data from handheld GPS imported into the software apparently creates more noise than signal, according to @DavidJPotter. Perhaps I'm misremembering what he wrote. Besides, in my jurisdiction (also in PA) a professional survey is required with any permits to alter the exterior of a residence or certain aspects of a lot. In which case you'd need a survey anyway and thus could use it to update your .plan.