Renerabbitt

Hello Home Designer users — I’ve been reading through the concerns, and I wanted to share a few thoughts from the perspective of someone who develops products in this space. First, about subscriptions: When you’re building software in an industry being reshaped weekly by architectural AI tools, it becomes extremely difficult to plan development using the old “large update once a year” model. A subscription isn’t about squeezing more money out of users — it’s about stabilizing and predicting revenue so development hours can be budgeted accurately. Without that predictable baseline, the risk of under-delivering on annual features becomes very real. And whether we love it or not, most companies producing software worth improving will be moving to subscriptions simply because the AI-driven volatility in the market requires it. Chief isn’t an outlier here — they’re trying to ensure they can continue delivering steady updates instead of falling behind or shipping underbaked features. For those considering canceling services: You would be genuinely hard-pressed to find a software package comparable to the Home Designer line for anything near the annual cost. The value per dollar is still extremely strong. For those planning to use their final perpetual version forever: Just keep hardware and OS compatibility in mind. The relationship goes both ways — new graphics cards and new operating systems eventually drop support for older applications. We’ve literally seen this happen recently with Intel-based Macs losing compatibility with Chief Architect X17 because newer drivers no longer support the old architecture. It’s not about Chief “forcing” you to upgrade — it’s the cost of frozen software running on evolving hardware. About HD Pro 2026 specifically: The catalog downloads alone justify a big chunk of the cost. You now have access to tens of thousands of optimized, ray-trace-ready 3D assets — a huge advantage, especially considering the 3D Warehouse now limits users to three downloads per day. What used to be “free and easy” is no longer as accessible, and Chief’s curated, optimized library now carries even more value. The new Project Management feature should also significantly streamline workflows that previously required juggling multiple plan files, layer sets, and clunky workarounds. And don’t overlook ray tracing: with DLSS support on compatible NVIDIA cards, you can design in real-time ray-traced 3D — something that used to require multiple machines or heavy offline rendering. Hopefully this perspective helps. HD Pro 2026 genuinely looks like a solid upgrade, and the industry-wide shift to subscriptions has real reasons behind it — not just profit, but sustainability and continued development.

Chief always will select last action used regardless of using the tool palette or the drop down menu. There is no option to change the behavior of last object used. Was it just that you wanted the drop down menu?

It looks like you have a roof under your deck whcih is going to cause a bunch of problems in this scenario. try and pull your roof planes back so that they do not pass under your deck rails.

Place the staircase on the bottom floor and then create make stairwell. As long as there is a room that is defined directly above your staircase then it will create the stairwell. This cannot be on an attic level, it needs to be a floor above a floor with the staircase on the lower floor

Click and drag in the viewport

You're going to want to draw those ceiling planes more accurately and also specify whether or not your gable end walls are balloon framed or not in order to auto build an end truss.

Consider posting your plan file. Too difficult to try and recreate

Poche fill is not available in your software version. With a 3dconnexion mouse you can more around the house with camera bumps into walls checked as an option. This is also an option for right mouse only movements but you would need to know how to move your mouse for this effect to happen. So short answer is no, you can not have solid wall fill through a camera section cut

Would be helpful to bubble or notate the area you are referring to on the plans or put a more detailed description or a saved camera. In this case it would be nice if you provided a detail. What are you referring to when you say "Floor Rafters"? Are you talking about roof rafters and their seat cut?

you might try posting your plan file. you posted a material file

break your wall at the intersection of the staircase. what else are you trying to correct? consider posting your .plan file

What software version are you using? They have different capabilities with roofs

Would encourage you to not think of a room as an actual room but rather as a tool to generate a mesh that looks like you need it to. A room couldve automatically generated a lot of the features you have shown here automatically. Your roof rafters are inside of your roof plane in the structure of the roof plane. You would need to implement one of the available methods for turning off the soffits to expose the rafters inside of that structure

Twinmotion is currently Free

240719 (2).mp4

240719.mp4

You have to close the plan file before attaching it here or it would have no data

you have to close the plan file before attaching it here or it will have no data

You may want to post your plan file so we can take a look. It works on my end

what do you mean tricky? maybe i can help you out. Typically exterior walls will be a thicker assembly than interior walls

Existing trusses only reach to line B on my post if that's what you are showing.Could pick it up with a flush beam and do your clerestory on the back 8' Unless I am misinterpreting the photos

Have you checked sat view to see what neighbors have done a remodel on the same model home. I am from california and typically we can find multiple homes within the area with the same house plan. A heck of a lot cheaper just knocking on their door, being friendly, asking them about their lovely home and grabbing their floor plan. So this is the truss roof for the hall and kitchen and bath, and the bottom chord is bearing on line A and E from this image: which means the gable trusses are overframed on the sheathing of your truss system. Also means your truss probably has a standing heel heigh at line B to create the eave overhang So if you wanted a cost effective design you would not disturb this truss system which means you could modify this portion of the roof system without incurring cost on re-engineering the truss system: OR get it re-engineered and cut your trusses at line C and if there isn't one already, support the wall at line C under floor. There likely is already support at line C as you have a ~25' span. You're in California so an engineer might make you sheer wall line C. that means your, patching your trusses: and then braced wall up: If you were my client I'd be asking you a ton of questions such as how long do you plan on living here...projected return on investment over time, comps, are you pulling equity from the home etc. Depending on your answers I might try and convince you to add additional sq ft or another bedroom or bath depending on comps