Customer Reviews

Punch! Interior Design Suite [Old Version]

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

 

 

This proved to be a very powerful program, but heed the warnings about how difficult it is to use. I use parts of MS office that no one has seen before and have a background in computer programming, and this suite still drove me very close to tears.

I used this just for an apartment floor plan to think through moving walls around, not for complete house construction or modeling.

Here are some tips that might make things smoother for you:

- For some reason, the default flooring thickness is 12", so my doors were getting lopped off at knee-level. Once I reset all the flooring thickness to 1", I could see the bottoms of my doors again.

- If you have a wide screen and it's set to 120 DPI, the display chops of some of the customization controls on the right side of the screen.

- The distinction between exterior and interior walls matters, and is often at the root of flooring and ceiling problems. (E.g., grass in the living room or tiled front lawn.) The wall types sometimes morph into each other by rules I never figured out. If I had to do this again, I'd do all the exterior walls first, lock them against changes, and then add interior ones.

- My performance with the undirected fly-through is exactly what you'd expect from watching me play speedracer. Better way: Click on the binoculars on the left and you get cursor you can position for a "controlled walkthrough." You can look around using the 3-d display, but no more accidentally falling through the floor.

I have purchased both the Home & Gardens interior and the Punch interior software. Home & Gardens is much easier to use. You can really start without reading much of the manual. Punch demands that you read the manual (342 pages). It is not intuative. But Punch can do so much more and has so much more creativity. IE: Punch has a library of trees, shrubs and flowers for your yard. Home & Gardens only have potted plants, nothing you can use to landscape. Punch also allows you to make custom doors or windows to your exact specifications. H&G doesn't. You have to choose a set style of door or window and change options.I also could place digital photos of my backyard behind my "house" on Punch to make it more realisitic. I like both software programs, but Punch has more options, but you have to do your homework first.

I recently purchased this software to redesign my bathroom and bedroom. Compared to other products that I have evaluated, Punch! Interior Design Suite wins hands-down in the areas of versatility, stability, and 3D. It includes many precision, dimension, and viewing options that allow you to make both simple and complex designs. Using the split 2D/3D mode also helps with placing components such as windows and doors. After I completed the drawings I showed them to my builder and he was able to remodel the rooms exactly as I had envisioned them. Like most software I have used, this package does contains a learning curve. I by no means consider myself a computer guru and I had to put in a little practice time. You will find, however, a plethora of resources available both on-line and within the manual/tutorials to assist you with your project.

I was very anxious to receive the Punch software and thought I would be able to figure it out quickly (despite the warnings of previous reviewers). Unfortunately after 4 hours, a pinky cramp, and much frustration I found the other reviews to be very accurate. . . the software is not intuitive and you spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what you did wrong/what to do next. It would have been helpful to me if the user manual had a quick 1-2-3 guide, tipsheet, or easy button for those of us who just want to create and decorate a room---not build an entire house (or maybe that's in there somewhere and I missed it).

I also found the paint choices to be limited. Long and short of it, I put it down and have not gone back to it. My decorating project is now complete without help from Punch. Maybe I'll try tackling Punch again one day, but as of now I consider it a waste of money.

Looked at them all and then bought this software... it can do a lot of things so, yes, it might take a bit to learn and get fast with.

There is a reason it has been voted best for several years now. It does a good job if you remember the very old computer saying,
"Garbage IN...Garbage OUT" 8-)

My wife loves the video tutorials that she can pop-up anytime she needs to without stopping the software and what she's working on.

Anything this complete, is worth the learning curve.

This program is awkward to use, counter-intuitive, and poorly-designed. It's unfortunate that this program requires many hours of reading through a manual of equally-poor quality just to get started. Good software allows anyone to pick it up and do something with it, with extra features and power for those users who wish to spend a little time learning advanced techniques. With this software, you'll spend a couple hours just trying to figure out how to put up four walls and some cabinets in your kitchen. Sure, it does some good stuff once you get going, but that just highlights the major design flaws of this software:

1. The UI is all over the place. Menus at the top, buttons on the left, buttons at the bottom, tabs at the top (each containing more buttons), tabs on the right (each containing menus and more buttons). I tend to immerse myself in new software by looking in all the menus and learning where things are. Good luck doing that with this product! You'll be lucky if you can find the same button twice without the manual.

2. In addition to the sins of the UI, this program also fails to handle a scenario that is increasingly common: Windows users who have increased their font sizes. Higher-resolution screens often necessitate pumping up the font size from 100% to 150% or more, and to say that this product handles it "ungracefully" would be too kind. This program assumes that you will always be using the default Windows font size, which is one thing no commercial Windows program can ever be allowed to assume. Should you be one of the many users out there who need to increase your font scaling due to poor vision, you will discover you can't use about half this program's features at all.

This program may be the best out there, but that's not saying much. This software genre desperately needs its Photoshop.

I recently had a water problem that leaked on to my dining room ceiling. Knowing I would have to replace the ceiling, I took the opportunity to do some remodeling. I purchased the Punch Interior product. At first it was a little overwhelming, but after thumbing through the manual and reading some information on the Punch website I was able to quickly layout the the area of my room with the room designer. I was able to use the designers pallet to select the colors that I wanted to use and place on the walls. Even cooler than that I was able to select Sherwin-Williams paint. I walked right into the local store and matched the paint. It couldn't get much easier than that. There are also tutorials that you click on from the help menu that guide you in placing the materials. I was able to add some digital photos of some artwork as well on the wall. This has opened eyes to many other projects in my home. With a little effort the program is easily manueverable, but if you get stuck there are many ways to get through to the finished product.

I expected to design new details in my existing interior but this program is useless in this respect. The program basically does visualization of the floor plan of given layout if one wants such a function. The photo editor could be very use full but the design of the editing interface is annoying and not workable. The available details are not to attractive and the learning curve is steep indeed compare with effect desired.No files of examples of interior design submited in the software (although used extensively in the product advertising's.

Software has a lot of features but is fairly cumbersome to use. The library of objects is limiting. Changing the color scheme is difficult when trying to match an existing color. I thought it a lot of money for the functionality. It may be more appropriate to someone constructing from scratch than for a redesign. Examples of things I found challenging include a step up kitchen, a custom wall unit, and a custom staircase to a second floor loft. Punch realized this difficulty with their product and sent out a training course for another chunk of $$. I didn't purchase the course because I thought I had already invested enough $$ and perhaps it would have helped. If I were Punch I would have sent the course out for free to encourage greater use of the product.

I do interior design work as a part time business. I have tried several software programs but most are very limited. This is better, but I am usually fustrated with trying to design something that I can't get the system to let me do. For example, I wanted to use tin that you would normally put on a roof on an interior wall. It could not understand and would not allow me to do it. I did complete a room and wanted to present the animated verson of it to a customer however I could not find a way to open it on anyother computer. I emailed customer support and to this day, I am still waiting on an answer. I wonder if real people work there? as there is no tel # to call!