Customer Reviews

Punch! Home Design Studio (Mac) [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

If you are looking for a program to do a 3d view of your dream home without any substance, this program is for you. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a program to help you design real projects for a do-it-yourselfer you are going to be sorely out of luck.

Punch Home design Studio is just a toy with little substance. You can put up a wall and throw down a sink but you cant run piping to that sink or electric to the bathroom lights. Its like a great big content editing program for a 3d video game with as much use as that. A toy to be experimented with but not appropriate for much more. When I querried about how to put in piping for my radiant floor I was told that you dont do that because the plumber does that. Now what if I am going to be the plumber, Im supposed to just shoot from the hip? Ditto for the rest of the details.

When it comes to the landscape editor, the joke gets worse. Of 32 plants I had planned to put in my renovated garden, PHDSP had 2. Yest, only two plants of 32 were found in the library and the interface to that library stinks.

While we are on the subject of the interface, the Mac interface is very bad. Clearly this is a bad hack port of a windows program. The user interface is not like a mac program but more like Office for Mac -- clearly a low quality hack. If that wasnt enough, when running it on leopard, it tends to crash and erase everything you did since the last save, so if you do intend to play with this thing, save often.

So why am I making this post? Well because I tried to return the software and was unable to return it even just the next day. I was told that the $149 I plopped down for a lemon with overinflated advertising was lost. Maybe I can eek out some cash on eBay for it. Yes I am upset.

In summary, I was looking for a program that was useful for helping me design my home do-it-yourself projects from installign radiant heating to planning my sprinkler system and what I got was a poorly implemented toy to assemble pre-fabricated 3d objects into a pretty picture. Advertising scores a 10 of 10 for promising much but the program will only be minimally useful.

Being the only home design software for the Mac I could find at an affordable (but not inexpensive) price, I bought a copy of Punch! Home Design Studio to use in designing a remodel of our kitchen. I had used another vendor's software to do a bath redesign a few years ago, so this ought to be a quick learning curve. Wrong. This is the only time I have regretted gettng the Mac.
Punch! Home Design Studio is not in the least intuitive, and seems to have a mind of its own, which it cannot make up. So if you like surprises, you'll love Punch! Home Design Studio.
The process seems to want to start with the foundation. A good idea for your building contractor, but not for the designer.
The package does include a paper manual, which should make an old guy like me happy, but it is pretty pathetic. And of course the help screens just parrot the stuff in the manual.
So, to plan my remodel I had to get out the old t-square and pencil, and wish I had started there in the first place. Anybody need to design their foundation?

I've been working with this software five days a week, 7-plus hours a day. I've read many reviews about it. And I confess to being completely baffled by this puzzling mystery: Why don't the Punch software people invest in some good interface design for a major new Punch release? This software has such obvious potential.

The review consensus, here and at other sites, seems to boil down to this: it is hands-down, the best home-design out there. AND this is faint praise because it has few competitors that can touch it in power and flexibility, short of a professional CAD program. This is a mass-market product; there are lots of small businesses trying to use it as well as plenty of homeowners. Judging by these reviews, the program's actual use seems simultaneously to be a most frustrating experience for many reviewers, with clumsy navigation, less-than-optimal implementations of half-thought-out features, barely adequate libraries, and just plain missing features, along with the best graphics engine in its niche.

After using it myself, I have some suggestions to make. In fact, I'll lead the redesign team myself, if they want me to, because for me, it was hours of fun. Really. with so much missed revenue-generating potential, I'd work for stock options. The property has SUCH potential that I don't know why it's been overlooked by its publishers.

First, I think the rendering engine on this program is really impressive. It has reasonable rendering rates on reasonably affordable platforms such as the Intel-backed iMacs. It seems quite stable and responsive, even on older Macs, though the speed differences can vary widely with different OS/hardware combinations (I did not test it on the PC).

That said, the critics are only partly right about the usability problems. I am an experienced user of 3D programs, and after an hour or so, I had the navigation down pretty well in the Live View window. It is reasonably usable, meaning my sense is, if the features justified the investment, most people who could benefit from using this software would be able to learn it.

Usability could be improved, and brought closer to standards established by other graphical design and visualization software, especially for navigation and window control in the 2D tools. But most of the core features are in place.

The real missed opportunity here lies in features. Many of the features most useful to users are also target-marketing opportunities to die for. For instance, the program has Content Libraries, and advertises their availability as a feature. The libraries include content from home design product vendors, such as tile, paint, and wallpaper vendors. I was pleased to see they had a Partner program that included Sherwin-Williams, since there was a store near the design site. I'd looked forward to picking up paint chips and trying out various colors. The problem was, there was no way to match the color samples at Sherwin-Williams to the representations of color in the program. After three weeks, I hadn't discovered any way to know what color to buy once I'd chosen something from the S-W paint library, nor had I found a way to input a color by number, update new samples from the Sherwin-Williams web site, or mix a color from a palette and find the closest match to paint that met my criteria, such as interior vs. exterior, or finish availability.

You see what I mean? This is an obvious win-win if Punch can work a bit on that partner program and the business model supporting it. Sherwin-Williams would sell more paint (and get an edge on Behr's until THEY sign a partner agreement with Punch), and the consumer is delighted to buy the software when they find out they can actually preview their actual paint color. Doh! What am I missing here? Can it be this easy?

Punch's concept is right, but the libraries are so disappointingly limited that its utility as a design tool is likewise limited. Design features we wanted to add, such as a greenhouse window, were missing. Simple window features, such as recessed frames, are missing. These are missed opportunities for manufacturers of windows. Well, you can't have everything before you ship, right?

No, but you can provide ways of updating content, and importing and exporting content so users who have unique architectural features can create them. Perhaps they could share objects with others. Users creating and sharing (free) content creates user communities. User communities create more marketing opportunities. More content attracts more users.

Punch's decision to use a proprietary graphics format just doesn't seem to make economic sense. I could find only one "power user"" advertising her work on the user forums, a clear sign that the format is a forbidding hurdle even for users with considerable 3D modeling experience. This is an old business model, and Google's SketchUp, with it's open formats, may eventually catch up with it.

All of this is a shame, because the software is lots of fun, despite these gripes. We've found it useful. So on the whole, I'd buy it again. But what a shame.

I bought this because I'm trying to go "all Mac", and I had enjoyed it's PC-based predecessor. But this version, for the Mac... I get errors when I try to print a model to assemble. There's no framing editor, and no lumber estimator! Worst of all, when my architect friend asked me to export into DXF or DWG format - these are industry-standard formats - that is when I found out 1) Punch! does not export to either, and 2) no other commercial app reads "Punch" format. So frustrating!

This is absolutely the worst home design program I have ever used. In the past I've used 3D Home Architect and Better Homes and Gardens, but I recently bought a Mac so I could no longer use my old programs. I bought this one because the Punch website had tons of beautifully rendered graphics and they supposedly won several awards. Here's the truth-the graphics are the worst I've seen on a home design program since the early 90's. Far from being realistic, they remind me of that old Dire Straits video "Money for Nothing". The objects lack basic details like door knobs and trim with beveled edges. Also, there are very few objects to choose from, for instance there's only one shower and it's a corner shower. So if you would like anything other than a corner shower in your bathroom, that's just too bad. They also only have one style of kitchen sink-a double bowl. So again, if you would like a single or a triple sink, I guess you'll just have to use your imagination. The program is also supposed to draw curved walls. Well, that's a lie. The truth is it draws a "curve" by using a group of straight and diagonal walls. So if you want to draw a circle, it will come out an octagon. The other major problem I have with this program is how hard it is to use. All of the other home design programs I've had in the past were so easy, I could immediately start using them without having to study the manual. But this one is so complicated, I had to read half the manual just to figure out how to zoom in and out of the screen. I've now read the entire manual with the hope that once I've learned everything, I'll be able to enjoy it. But every time I use it, I just want to cry because it's such a terrible program. Bottom line, don't let Punch's fancy ads and awards fool you. This program just sucks!

I've used Punch! Super Home Suite for years (on a PC) so I figured the learning curve wouldn't be such a big deal for Home Design Studio. I was so wrong. Apparently by "intuitive interface" they mean you have to be a psychic intuitive in order to figure out how things work. There were some improvements made from earlier editions and definitely more features - still limited to only 3 floors though - and some things that should have been simple - intuitive even, were unnecessarily complex multi-step procedures (like the second floor automatically sitting on top of the first floor.)

The short and simple of it: I was disappointed.

As the other reviews have pointed out, this Mac version has turned out to be a big disappointment. After spending the money and a fair amount of time trying to figure out the unintuitive software, I learned there were virtually no construction-related tools (framing designer, etc etc). I'd consider this more a sophisticated toy than a serious house-design software. It's too bad Punch is not more honest and up-front about the limitations of this software.

Stay away from this software. It may be a great product in the PC world but for Mac it is terrible. Little in the way of support, lacks most tools found in PC version. Common things like wrought iron fences or a tapered round or square columns aren't to be found. I don't know what else is out there but this is NOT a good choice for sure.

This software needs a major upgrade right now and they should give anyone who spent good money on this version a free upgrade.

Oh yeah, the support person they have monitoring the forum for this Mac Only version doesn't even use a Mac!

This is a must-have if you own an Apple and like the PC version of the software. It's great for renovating your home or creating a new design. The program makes it quite easy to create complex topography, roof designs, etc. It does not have all of the tools the high-end PC version comes with, but the flexibility and enhancements more than make up for it. It does limit you to three floor layers, but with a little creativity you can overcome that.

Although I was somewhat apprehensive about purchasing this product because of the negative reviews, I spent the dough and waited anxiously for the UPS man to show up.
A couple of days later my package arrived via the turd-brown truck and was deposited into my eager clutches.
I sprinted up the rickety staircase of our 1896 Victorian, only pausing long enough to request a large rum and coke from my wife, then gleefully tore into my new software.
After the simple one-step download, I started up the program and was presented with the daunting task of doing something with the blank page staring back at me.
Not being the type to read all the manuals and necessary information before diving into a project, I glanced at the quick-start information and immediately went to work.
The controls were extremely intuitive and I easily created the foundation. Upon this I laid the second floor and roof in minutes.
Because of my home's unique Victorian porches, rails, and stacked bay windows, I did have to find specific information in the manual to address those details. All answers were simple to find thanks to the software's search menu. Simply type your topic and answers are sorted by relevance.
The paper manual is also a great reference and has an index to find specific answers. I believe the entire manual is contained in the "help" search, but I don't actually know. I do know that every difficulty I encountered was easily solved by using the search bar.

My original plan was to build a practice model to get comfortable with the software, then create another file with specific dimensions. This became unnecessary as the day progressed because it is so simple to input dimensions and insert walls, windows, doors, etc.
Once the shell of my house was made, I grabbed my tape measure, went outside, and measured the dimensions of the foundation, doors, windows, etc.
Back inside on Punch I simply lengthened walls, raised ceilings, stretched windows, and entered exact dimensions. With that, my Punch house was an exact duplicate of my home.

The process continued with measuring interior spaces and dropping walls into place.

The 2 story house with exact interior and exterior dimensions took about 5 hours to complete. This includes learning how to use the software on a basic level, manually measuring every surface in the house, consuming multiple and increasingly potent rum beverages and repeatedly complaining to my wife that my stomach was empty and needed solid nourishment. Had I been sober at the time the process may have been more expedient. There was quite a bit of unnecessary stalling because I simply was in no condition to go outside and measure.

Once the exact shell was created, the program really came to life.
There are huge menus of colors, textures, materials, fixtures, appliances, etc, that are infinitely customizable.
In fact, once the shell was made, my wife shambled over with a large glass of wine, muttered something incoherent, and bumped me out of my chair. With a few simple instructions:
A) "these are your materials and color menus"
B) "drag and drop what you want where you want it"
she quickly and expertly painted the rooms using Sherman Williams actual paint library. The colors are identified by name and product number so you can go to the Sherman Williams and request "UPS turd-brown 60097" *not an actual SW color* and be in and out of the store in minutes, not weeks. It makes the agonizing chore of choosing colors simple and relatively painless.
Not only that, it's great fun to see all the possibilities without all the back-breaking, mind-numbing manual labor involved in actually painting a room only to hate it and repaint it.
Other features such as the landscape design are worth the cost of the program on their own. I completely changed my landscape plans and gardenhouse placement once I saw them in 3-D. That alone saved me thousands of dollars.

I highly recommend this product if you are planning a remodel. The materials choices are phenomenal, the ability to instantly change, tweak, and customize designs is simple and extremely useful in the planning process.

Buy it. Ignore the bad reviews. If I can learn this program while drunk, you can surely do it.