Chief Architect Premier Trial: Residential Design Software

Chief Architect is aimed at home builders, remodelers, kitchen and bath designers and interior designers. You draw walls and the program builds the 3D model, framing, roof and construction drawings automatically.

What Chief Architect Premier does

• Automatic building tools: Walls, roofs, stairs and framing generated from your floor plan.
• Kitchen, bath and interiors: Cabinets, fixtures and materials from large catalogues.
• Construction documents: Plans, elevations, sections and details from the same model.
• 3D views and virtual tours: Show clients realistic renderings of the finished home.

About the trial

1. The Download button opens Chief Architect’s trial page.
2. Download the Premier trial for Windows or Mac.
3. Install it and work through the training videos linked from the site.

The trial includes the program’s design tools, but saving, printing, exporting and virtual tours are removed, so it is for evaluating the software rather than finishing a project.

Pricing

At the time of writing, Chief Architect Premier costs US$1,995 per year (annual subscription) or US$229 per month (monthly subscription). The annual subscription has a two-week money-back guarantee. Chief Architect also offers academic options for schools and runs free introductory training online.

For homeowners and DIY projects, the company sells a separate, lower-cost Home Designer range. If you only want to plan a layout for free, Sweet Home 3D is open source; for general 3D modelling, see SketchUp.