Punch! Master Landscape & Home Design

by Punch Software

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005AYCG
• Item model number: 26100
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 11, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,474 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #55 in Software > Home & Hobbies > Gardening & Landscape
  • #74 in Software > Outlet
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Master Landscape & Home Design offers nine programs on one easy-to-use interface to help you design home exterior and landscape projects. The suite includes an extensive, sortable plantings library organized by nursery-standard zones. Deck, home exterior, topography, and other options add realism. New technology allows you to integrate your own photos of your home, allowing you to walk or fly through your creation in 3-D.

Use the 3-D Exterior Home Design program to view your home with thousands of subtle paint color choices, or design walk-out basements and split-level designs with the slope tool. The ClearView tool renders your design with a glass-house effect, giving you a wire-frame perspective of your topography without your landscape plantings. A user-definable database helps you find the right plantings for your planting zone based on your search criteria. More than 2,000 selections of flowers, shrubs, trees, ornamental grasses, ground cover, and more are featured. As you design, the Landscape Estimator compiles planting information, producing a report in an editable, printable, exportable spreadsheet format.

Design the perfect deck for your home plan with Ultimate Deck. Multilevel or multistory decks with 3-D photorealistic textures, stairs, railings, object placement, and color capabilities give you the ability to design exactly the deck you want. Deck Wizards walk you through railings, baluster options, and more. Users can also create objects from scratch or modify existing selections from a library. Change colors, fabrics, patterns, textures, and more, then use your creations to furnish your home plan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

172 of 176 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Easy, But Powerful, June 29, 2002

By 

TOL (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Punch! Master Landscape & Home Design (CD-ROM)

I have read the other reviews on this product and have been wondering why this product received such bad ratings. The only constant is that none of the reviewers seem to be happy with any home design programs. That's probably because these programs require lots of hard work and tedious hours to get the results you are looking for. I too have used many other home design programs. And if you are looking for one that is simple, you will certainly not get the results you are looking for.

With that said, let me state that this program is the ONLY home design program that allowed me to build my existing house to almost perfect specification. The rendering is excellent and the features are undeniably some of the best on the market. It comes with many pre-defined objects, but those that are not included can be custom-built using the included 3D workshop tool. Again, this is not easy to use, but it is very powerful. It took me many hours to recreate my home, some of them frustrating. But, in the end, I was able to recreate my house perfectly, and landscape around it with ease. No other program (Broderbund, Sierra, etc.) has yet allowed me to do that.

For those of you who do decide to buy this package, you may find the following tips useful:

-This package does not do interior design. Check out the Punch! website for information on exactly what this and their other packages include.
-To my surprise, chainlink fences are not included. This is a drawback.
-Snap features are not great if you are drawing your house on an angle. It is best to draw your home vertically or horizontally and rotate the entire design once it is complete.
-Download the latest update from the Punch! website. It adds a plant finder by name, a wall break tool, and a few other nifty add-ons.
-Plants are difficult to find. Keep a nature guide handy so you can better identify your landscape objects.
-Be sure your monitor is set to 24-bit color or higher. Rendering problems will occur at lower color depths (this probably explains some of the negative reviews).
-Objects are difficult to select if they are stacked on top of one another. Try moving objects (temporarily) to other plans (roofing, landscape, etc.) and then moving them back once you have selected the item below it.
-Designing the exterior of your home is the hardest part of the process. Be patient and take your time with this step. Once it is complete, the landscaping is a breeze.
-Above all, HAVE FUN!

77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Remedial design program, February 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Punch! Master Landscape & Home Design (CD-ROM)

This program looks like it does alot but once you start drawing with it you quickly see limitations. I am a Photoshop, powerpoint, excel user and am comfortable with toolbars and functions. This program will not group and move an object. Each line drawn must be adjusted individually. I gave up after 2 hours of trying to draw an odd shaped house angled on an odd shaped lot. For straight lots it will probably work fine. Also, the arial views were extremely difficult to control. I was flying all over the place but couldn't get around the corner of the house.

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It does everything I wanted of it and more, November 23, 2002

By 

R. Whitehorn (Cumming, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Punch! Master Landscape & Home Design (CD-ROM)

I read the reviews and saw that while most reviews were negative, a few loved it. How could that be? So I bought it thinking it might just take some effort and should be ok. My gamble paid off, it really is very nice!

Be sure to go to the product website at ..... and pick up the latest patch, it fixes problems and adds features. Some complained about not being able to search for a plant by name, the patch includes "search by plant name" to address it. That website also contains an online user forum with plenty of good information. Next check out the Punch! Alternatives website. It contains great user objects, resources and information to make the most of the product.

I've been using a floorplan trace and have reproduced my home exactly. The walk around is beautiful. There's a Photoview feature that some may find useful. I thought I'd use it before I bought it, but it proved unecessary because the regular design looked good enough.

If you expect to load it on your computer and have a design in an hour or two, you'll be disapointed. If you go in willing to invest some time, you'll love it.