I really do not know if SoftPlan has the same issue, but with Chief if you want to alter an existing plan (say "House1") then save it as "House 2" for a different client, or just an alternative design for the same client, you must save House 1 forever, you cannot archive it, you cannot save it on a separate hard drive, it must remain active in your system for as long as you want to use House 2. While I do find it (Chief) fairly easy to use, it has, in my opinion, about the worst file management system ever invented by man. Like any program it has its good and not so good points. I am just getting started with SoftPlan and have used Chief for many, many, many years. I've even used it for a variety of engineering and tool and die design projects, steel detailing and so many things, building race cars as part of my number of business ventures, it even works for me in designing and making various parts. I have also taught more than a dozen others over the years, guys/gals that worked with and for me, how to use SP, and once they learned it, they too question why anyone would want to use other programs. I've spent hours and hours watching videos, I am that committed. I also have Illustrator and Photoshop, but rarely use them either, SP has such fantastic 3-D capabilities, even I am still learning them and getting better and better. I have the full 2016 AutoCAD Architecture suite, BIM and all, but I normally use it to convert files and once in a great while, if I can't find what I want in a online 3-D site, I might make something. I know that these other programs likely have their place, but with all you can currently do with SP, they just take up hard drive space for me. I did try Chief, Sketch up and various others, but after a day or so of attempting to even begin to learn it as fast as I did SP, I knew I had the right stuff.
Having self taught me, around about a version 4 of SoftPlan, once I started using it, finally went to a class, and continued with updates, I never looked back. It was fun to learn and with a lot of time and effort, you could produce a decent set of prints, but a LOT OF TIME, and you (yourself personally) had to be very accurate, or you had just another average drafted plan set. I started with AutoCAD back in the 80's, version 1.4. (no dimensions, only names and size notes) It did look kinda cool, a little sketched looking with line intersects extending slightly past the corners as in the old fashioned drafting way.
I know many Architects that seem to use a mix of several design programs, to this day, I've no clue why, except one did seem to like the plan presentation in a simple version. I have to say, I am with Sam on this one.
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