Domain Name Com's Software Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 4000 v10

Software Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 4000 v10

Domain Name Com's - Software : Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 4000 v10

- Home design software
This product is great if you are only interested in 3-D modeling. It is NOT recommended by me for serious home design. There is no provision for setting exact dimensions in the planning mode and they resist being set with a mouse. Without a provision for entering precise measurments even the length of a wall cannot be set with any degree of accuracy. Without accuracy the software is just a large, memory grabbing, disk hogging, toy. All the fancy product and finish tie-ins in the world cannot overcome this deficiency. I am profifient with a CAD program and this software can't touch it for producing buildable plans.

Rating:

- They still have work to do
I found this product did not meet my expectations. Most of the problem was in defining slab flooring and short cement foundation walls . I submitted many problems via email to the tech group however they were sluggish most of the time with a reply back. On the more difficult questions they just did not reply at all. Maybe there strength was in landscaping, but that was not why I bought the software. Having said that, it was fairly easy to learn and did about 90% of what I wanted it to do with a little work on my part. However, there is not much out there for the low cost of this software. Guess it's better than nothing. I also had troubles getting a printer like Staples or Kinko to handle the output print files so I could print to 1/4" scale to obtain a building permit. There were no allowances for trusses instead of stick building roof support in the materials list. Also several other little problems that they have work arounds for but added to the difficulty.

Rating:

- Good package but hard to use...
This is a good package if you want to do an initial design before contracting with a professional but it is hard to use unless you have used earlier, less complicated PUNCH products before (which I have.) There are a lot of somewhat powerfull features but the documentation on how to use them is pretty poor. If you are clever, can figure things out on you own, and have the time to learn what isn't explained to you then this could be a good one to use. But if you don't fall into that catagory, forget it.

It is also cool that you can constuct a model of what you design as the software generates templates that you can cut out and glue to foamcore. But only the walls/floors/roofs are printed out and the texture for these items does not include the windows or trim. So unless you are happy with a model with holes where the windows should be, you will have to use a drawing program to add these items to the textures before printing them out and gluing them to the model. PUNCH should really include these in the output engine.

Rating:

- The program is great but ...
It is limited in colours, cupboards, accessories etc. It has lots of stuff aimed at the US market. Our Oz homes are different. Pity we can't copy and paste our cupboards, walk in robes etc.
The Roof Wizard is good if you have a straightforward house. It's hard to complete a roof without the wizard. Getting the roof as one complete unit seems impossible.
I tried to put ceiling fans in, they were waist height, no tweaking could get them up on the ceiling, that's the sort of things you encounter. It takes many days to figure it out. I had problems putting the block on paper. Mine has a curved front and it was bigger than the page.
The forum is pretty good.
It's good as far as letting you see if things work. The live view can get slow the more you add. When you start out with a few things it's fairly fast but gets tedious when you add a few rooms.
It's worth the money though.

Rating:

- OK, but only "cookie cutter" homebuilding options.
I've used several "home architect" programs over the years and have seen a vast improvement in the field since they first started to appear. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they still have a long way to go. The package offered by Punch! by far has some of the greatest variety of tools available to the user compared to the other packages out there. Yet there are issues...

The tools all appear to be separate programs that are "tacked on" to the basic software. All run separately and the data entered must be saved to the main application's plan, sometimes as a separate file. I've also run into difficulty separating living space from spaces such as garages, resulting in an extra amount of square footage that results in inaccurate cost/sq.ft. ratios. Using the topography tools to create an uneven lot and then excavating the lot still results in terrain poking through your walls. Creating a split level house or 2-story and then cutting the floor for stairwells or "open to below" areas results in odd effects in the 3-d view (moving around in that view still appears you are flying through floor joists where there is no floor.) Foundations do not like to be odd shapes or edited, resulting in square footage outputs that equal the entire lot (255,000 sq. ft. house, anyone?) and no discernible way to find out where your foundation plan may be in error.

As far as the available tools for things such as roofing, textures, and appliances, I personally have found them to come up a little short as well. If you want a standard roof - no problem. If you want anything remotely non-standard such as a jerkin-head, round, or semi-circular, you are out of luck. The program does not do those, and you'll have to manually create each segment of triangular roof (pie slice) to fit a rounded roof. Vaulted ceilings are merely the underside of the roof, no control of that feature. The textures available are minimal. Appliances are very basic, and the cabinet types and wizard I've given completely up on, very difficult to place and always requiring editing for even minor deviations from standard sizes. The same goes for windows and doors. Though it does offer you the ability to create windows and doors, the options are limited as far as functionality that your creation will have. For example a door that has panes of glass in the casing results in the glass being part of the door that opens.

Perhaps part of the reason that this program doesn't work for me is that I have chosen to design a non-standard, non-"cookie-cutter" style home, and this program simply does not take into account or provide tools for users wanting to deviate from the popular norm currently being produced. Aside from the various interface issues that are irritations, I cannot recommend this program for anyone who wishes to design a home that deviates substantially from the norm. If you wish to design a home that fits within current suburban trends, this program will work just fine for you.

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