Customer Reviews

Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 3000

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Like a fool I purchased this software based on the cool pictures on the box and the long list of features. Unfortunately, the pictures turn out to be not actual screenshots, and the features are, as Bart pointed out, little more than limited templates. A couple cases in point -- there is apparently NO WAY to create dormers, although they're featured prominently on the cover. The palette of textures is nowhere near as extensive or impressive as those shown on the cover. The lighting effects displayed on the box are not possible with the basic software. To me this is deceptive advertising!

The MOST ANNOYING feature is the 3D fly-through. You have two choices: buzz around in dizzying circles like a drunken bee, unable to stop or slow down. Or zoom into the geographic center of your drawing, always ending up one inch off the floor. After hours and hours of tedious construction and experimentation, I never did figure out how to view the second floor interior....

In short what you get is about $15 worth of cartoonish rendering, and a really cool $100 box. My advice would be to AVOID all the Punch products (of which there are about six variants of the same product).

Moving into a new house, I had so many projects to make it my own. This product made it all happen. It was easy to start and I had walls drawn and showing in 3D in a few minutes.

First, I drew the existing structure. The ability to draw the plan easily and see it in 3D every step of the way made it quite easy. And, I've tried all the competitors. The only product that lets you show the 3D view (with shadows from lights and sun) without grueling waiting and finger tapping is Punch.. its blazing fast.

Changing the plan was just as easy! You drag a wall and dimensions display showing you were you are. Move a window or door and you instantly see the results in the 3D view. When I wanted to knock down a dividing wall between the great room and kitchen, it was a couple of mouse clicks and poof, gone. This was huge in determining how open the plan would be and if this part of the remodeling was worth it.

When it comes time to landscape, this was way cool. You can customize your yard and its a blast. With a few mouse clicks you can add hills/berms to your yard, I even used the excavation tool and dug a hole for a swimming pool(now if I could just really have it :) The picket fence I added even conformed to the changed landscape. And.. then I added plants. Tons of plants and I even used their tool to select only plants in my area. Then.. to top it off..with a click of the mouse I could grow the entire landscape to see how it would look when the trees grew.

As for learning.. you'll love it. You can be drawing in minutes.. but if you need some help there are videos that walk you through how to use each tool. Very cool.

I'm really surprised by some of the other reviewer's negative comments regarding this product. I was given the Punch! 5-in-1 program as a Christmas present and then purchased the Punch! 3000 program a couple of years later. When I got the Punch! 5-in-1 I had never used a CAD program before and really had very pretty limited experience with using computers in general. I have not run into any of the difficulties or limitations that the other reviewers complained about so I suspect that they just haven't learned to use the program.

Punch! 3000 is pretty complicated but that's because it has a LOT of tools. I'm actually glad I started with the much less "robust" 5-in-1 program because it didn't overwhelm me and 3000 might have.

I am not an architect but am nevertheless currently in the process of actually building my dream home exactly as I designed it using Punch!3000. It is a 2 story, 3 bedroom, 3 1/2 bath, with wraparound porch, backyard decks, and a complex roomline that includes dormers. I designed every piece of it down to the foundation, plumbing, HVAC, and sidewalks. Yes, I did take my Punch!3000 plans to a professional designer and engineer to prepare working blueprints because I wanted a professional to verify that what I had planned was actually buildable...that the "physics" would work.

But, it turned out that the only changes recommended to my design were slight variations (inches) in the lenths of a couple of room so as to take advantage of stock sizes of building materials and some changes to the electrical wiring scheme so as to balance the anticipated electrical loads better (i.e., get all the big appliances OFF the same circuit.) My designer said he'd seen a lot of stock house plans with a whole lot more problems than my design had.

I did get a bit frustrated with how slowly Punch 3000! prepared live view renditions when my design got complicated but I suspect that the slow rendition was more due to limitations in my computer's memory than anything inherent in the program. And, I didn't actually ever use the Animator tool (played around with it a little but didn't really feel the need to "make a movie" of my house plans.)

All in all, I think Punch!3000 is a great program and, while I'm glad to be finally building my dream home, I'm kind of sorry that I will no longer have any excuse for spending hours-on-end playing with this program and tweaking my design! Then again, I haven't done anything yet with the landscaping tools and I'll have almost 3 acres to landscape when we get moved in ... ;)

This product uses none of the thousands of user friendly improvements now available -- few right-click menus, few keyboard shortcuts. With a 2.4 ghz machine the 3D viewing is uncontrollable! The existence of the totally intuitive useability of the inexpensive 2D program DeltaCad or the expensive Photoshop demonstrates that programs can be much more user-friendly than this ridiculus contraption.

I like the program, but I really wish that it was available for the Mac. As it is, I had to buy Virtual PC just to run it. I really wish that software companies would be more inclusive, instead of moving some of us to the back of the bus.

This software was a constant hassle from start to end. It did have some good ideas and the help files were well done but the software crashed constantly.

Maybe I'll try to see if there is a fix somewhere before I return it to the store. Needs much improvement.

This is my second try with Punch this time buying the 3000 series which at the time was second from the top of the line. It has the same problems as all the rest of their products! It's incredibly slow!!!! My machines (fast ones <quad core>) all bogg down to almost a stop when it loads and every time you try to move something, sometimes I'll just go get coffee while I wait. It crash's constantly on Windows 7 and Vista even on XP Pro. If you're trying to build a house the contractor will have it built before you get the design completed. As for customer service THERE IS NONE! Thats right, when you buy this you'll never get help except from others online with the same problems and there are a lot of them! I've run several kinds of CAD ware and this is the worst. I'm looking for a real one now.
DON'T BUY

Purchasing this program was an unfortunate choice. Frustrated by the limitations of the Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite, the Punch Home Design Architectural Suite 3000 version 12 looked like a good solution.

WRONG!

1. The software is extremely buggy, especially in 3D mode. It is very picky about which graphics adapters and configurations that it will work with, usually forcing you to change your display setup to 16 bit from 32 bit. I have used this program in both XP and Vista implementations on two different systems, and the program routinely crashes while working in 3D mode. I can't print a 3D view at all from the program, but have to resort to screen clipping to another program in order to print out a 3D view.
2. The interface is not at all intuitive, and will drive you bonkers trying to figure it out.
3. As another reviewer has written, there are a number of displayed features on the box that are essentially impossible to replicate when using the program.
4. There is a truly goofy activation process for the program when you have to reinstall to try to get it to work on a different system (although there seems to be little point in trying).

While the Better Homes and Gardens product seems like it has some serious limitations, it at least was easy and bug-free to work with.

While the program has a lot of features, it is in no way possible to create any sort of drawing that could be submitted to a zoning commision or regulating body. The 3-D view is difficult to control, and the perspective inside a structure is abysmal; it is only good for external views. Drawing a terraced home with rooms at different levels was not possible without having part of the home flying out in space or under ground. The landscape grading feature could not correct this problem.

In all very disappointing.

If you want to build a very plain house that is 4 walls and a box then this will do the job. Anything else and it will not handle the job. Don't expect it to handle anything like different size of external walls, or external wall types other than standard 8' walls. Major problems with wall and foundation design.