Customer Reviews

Professional Home Design Suite Platinum

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Punch Pro. Home Design Suite Platinum V12, is not hard to use, especially if you have used any type of Autocad, or Home design software in the past.

I laid out my entire basement and second floor addition in about half an hour.... This program is addicting because you want to measure every space you have to make it accurate.

It prints blueprints, and has electrical and plumbing blueprints as well. AWSOME. It has 3D walk and fly over modes that are right on the money.

I took a chance on buying this cause there were many negative reviews on this software. All I can say, if you are willing to spend the time and you feel strongly about your project or addition, this will be well worth it.

This is an advanced piece of software, so if you have any graphics experience or you are technical, this is the one to get.

I've used other CAD programs, but this one has so many un-intuitive rules that it is nearly impossible to use. While drawing lines, for no apparent reason, the screen will go blank. Trying to keep reference perspectives as new lines are drawn is very frustrating when the screen changes color and drops all previous lines. The shifting from power tools to the drawing screen is likewise completely a puzzle. If you draw a line that extends off the screen (trying to draw a radius for example). The screen will start scrolling uncontrollably.... you cannot maintain perspective. This is a very very difficult program to get started with.

The tutorials jump right into a small project, but if you cannot get a landscape established, none of the tutorial information is useful. If you want to start with a foundation, and build a house, the tutorials are useless. A logically written manual on how to get started should be made available.

Don't waste your money on this unless you know somwone who can give you lessons on how to use the software.

Punch Professional Home Design Platinum V12 is simply too complicated for the average user. I consider myself a pretty advanced user of software, and can almost always figure out any software just from using it, but this software is completely unintuitive. My guess is that if you are already well-versed in CAD/CAM programs, you will get along fine with Home Design Platinum. If not, don't waste your time. You will only be frustrated. Go for a more general consumer-oriented design program.

This program just sucks! It's exceedingly slow (and I have a fast system), it has numerous bugs and it's a pain to use once you get past the basics. I could never get the material/color selection to work with my Nvidia graphics card and after swapping to an ATI card which it was supposed to work with it still didn't work properly. After suffering with Punch! for a week I wanted to punch the developers! I then went out and bought Home Designer Pro 7.0 which cost over 4X the price. Guess what? It was worth every penny. It is far more accurate (for instance incorporates sheetrock and siding into walls and lets you change these as desired), has more features, is easier to use and doesn't have laundry list of bugs. Trust me; don't buy this software if you intend to use it to design a house that will actually be built. Spend the extra money it will save you a lot of heartache.

I purchased Punch Home Design Platium and have found it to be difficult to use and has very limited basic objects. I previously used 3d Home Architect and it was wonderful but not compatable with Microsoft Vista. Punch Platium is compatable but I would not recomend it. You would be better off using pencil and paper.

Takes a long time to load software. Very difficult to learn & use & looks like a steep learning curve ahead. Perhaps easier for those familar with earlier versions or similar product. Just not intuitive. Tutorials not really useful & software lacks a working example. Must pay extra for training and demo of training isn't for this software.
If you don't have a basic design in mind, you will have problems. Making adjustments (wall resizing, movement of doors or windows, etc.) very "touchy" & difficult to implement.
Better Homes & Garden Home design much easier.

If you're looking to spend a few hours designing a home with a few click and drags and plopping windows, cabinets, and furniture into place, this software is NOT for you. The word "Professional", should imply professional-grade software, not "you need to be a professional user of our quirky software to make use of this correctly". Alas, it means the latter.

You see the sample 3D images in the sample area? How long do you think it should take you to do that? You're probably hoping about an hour or two, right? Wrong. Unless you're a seasoned expert at this software, it will surely take you DAYS.

My overall impression is that you're not going to find an "EASY" button on this software. I would almost believe that the programmers were determined to make my life difficult.

The interface looks like it's from somewhere between Windows 3.1 and 95, and usability floats around that area as well. In general, many tasks seem undoable, quite often illogical, unforgiving of mistakes, and just plain difficult. Perhaps if you're an expert CAD user, this might be usable, but this will surely prove to be a challenge even for a seasoned computer user.

Bugs:

First, and foremost the buggy software. If I try to move a wall, half the time, it'll go crazy and connect it to another wall segment, or make the current wall twisted. When applying colors to portions of a wall, it will often color something else not even remotely close. What's worse, because you can't keep a handy tool with your favorite colors, once you find that you painted your floor, in order to undo it, you have to go dig for the correct color again. When attempting to insert 3D models, even when viewing in wireframe mode, the program will hang for 30+ seconds on a modern-day, 8CPU, 4GB RAM, 1GB video system.

Wizards:

The program relies on various wizards to make the workflow easier. Unfortunately, all of these wizards are external processes that you cannot go back to to make minor modifications. Instead of it being interactive, it's a one-way road to major commitment. For example, if you make a floorplan in the floorplan wizard and import it, but realize that you accidentally set the wall height to 8 feet instead of 9, you cannot quickly "change all walls to 9 feet". You can either click on every single wall segment and change it to 9 feet, or go back to the wizard, set the default wall height to 9 feet, and do it all over again. Personally, I expected to be able to select all walls by a click and drag and make a bulk modification, but I was not able to.

UI:

The UI is just plain frustrating at times. When entering window height, width, installed height, etc, you are given a form to fill out. I would have expected to be able to quickly type, tab, repeat, and hit enter to produce a window. Unfortunately, when I hit tab, it creates a visible tab between the feet and inches, which is completely useless. So, instead, I am forced to enter text, move the mouse and click on the next window down, and repeat. This isn't a dealbreaker, but just goes to show that everything requires more effort than it should.

I hope that this review helps someone avoid the pain of buying, spending a week on trying to get it to work, and getting frustrated and writing a review.

Update:

It should also be noted that the money-back guarantee is through the manufacturer, and not Amazon. I shipped my software back in like-new condition (the only thing to open was the CD sleeve, after all), and after 6 months, no refund yet.

I've had nothing but problems with Punch Software from the beginning, even purchasing it was a problem. I won't go into the many examples and gory details, but it's enough to know that I couldn't even get the software installed on my Vista machine: the Support site lets you know that you have to turn off the user authentication control and start in Safe Mode to install it, and even that didn't work for me. From my own experience I would recommend staying away from this software.

I give up. I don't know if it is me, or the program, but I have had it. Clunky user interface, features that simply don't work (try adjusting the viewer elevation with mouse clicks--as described--doesn't work). I cannot figure out how to group objects. You can group them, and cut and paste, but a reasonable approach would be to group and move. Help says you can, but I cannot make it work. Etc.

Last straw--I finally got a decent layout. Saved it; exited the progam. Program asks you if you want to save, even if you just did. I didn't (mistake?). Reopen--half my work is gone.

If you are like I was--ignorant of this class of program and don't know which to buy--try one of the others.

I don't know if the alternatives are better, but this program is a mess.

I've been using 3D Home Architect, which is easy, but not very robust. I wanted something with more features. I bought the Punch Home Design Platinum. It does have lots of features and is very customizable, but in the end, I found it too difficult to use and ended up buying Plan3D, which works very well. With Plan3D, I was able to complete two bathrooms in an hour. Whereas I've tinkered with Punch for days and finally gave up.

Aside from being a bear to use, the Punch software's rendering engine did not work at all on my Vista computer. I had to hold the mouse down, otherwise the 3D scene was black.

I've used AutoCad for many years, and I'm not a novice when it comes to software. It takes a long time to learn how to properly use Punch. If your looking for a serious CAD package and are willing to put the time in for training, then Punch is a good choice. If you want something less robust, but quick and easy, then I would not recommend Punch.