Punch! Master Landscape Pro and Home Design

by Punch Software

Product Features

• Design a dream landscape with survey, deck, and plant wizards
• New state-of-the-art animation and outdoor lighting
• Create property lines with surveyor tool; customizable plant editor
• Simple, complex, and multi-level deck templates
• PhotoView editor; file import/export options; dynamic user interface

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001ARFHU
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 21, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,771 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #68 in Software > Home & Hobbies > Gardening & Landscape
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Punch! Master Landscape Professional and Home Design offers survey, deck, and plant wizards along with new state-of-the-art animation and outdoor lighting. Surveyor tool can be used to create property lines. Deck designer with templates, customizable plant editor, and outdoor lighting give you the power to design your dream landscape!

Features:

• NEW Surveyor tool: your property coordinates create your lot for your design
• NEW Deck wizard: automatically creates your deck design to your basic specifications
• NEW Deck templates: simple, complex, multi-level--drag-and-drop, editable, predrawn deck designs
• PowerTool enabled: additional plug-in accessories available at our PowerTool Store
• Animator: for creating .avi video walk and fly-throughs of your design
• PhotoView editor: embellish your photos, then add to your design
• Plant editor: add photos of your favorite plants to the program's database, create new categories
• Expanded file import/export options
• Expanded dynamic user interface
• Additional features and options

Product Description

Master Landscape Pro integrates 12 powerful programs for a complete landscaping design suite! Create the perfect home exterior and yards. Choose your own plants, set up a new deck and much more -- it makes designing your own landscape just became fun. Create a gorgeous custom deck that fits your specs -- with options for steps, railings and more Edit in 3D - Modify your design from any elevation view; Rotate, edit and/or add text and dimensions to your elevations Look into the house by hiding a wall in the 3D view -- Edit walls, furniture, show/hide landscaping, textures and lighting for final presentation

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth it even if it were FREE!, March 8, 2004

By 

R. McFall (Diamond Bar, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

Absolutely AWFUL for doing any type of landscaping. It was $70.00 wasted in buying this program. It is NOT intuitive, has VERY limited capabilities other than a few of the basics for landscaping. I wanted to design a brick walkway, a round brick sitting area and a Koi pond with some plants around it. Not too demanding of a project. The results were totally unacceptable, and the touted features virtually worthless. Perhaps if you want to design a basic deck... square with a railing, you can do. Maybe even a bit more than that. But if you want to do anything OTHER than a wooden deck, better get out a pencil and sketch pad -- it'll be a lot easier and look better.

My advise? Don't waste your money or effort with this program.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Get it FREE, or don't get it at all, May 9, 2005

By 

Brian Dowrick (Hawthorne, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

First off, I'm going to say I don't like this software, but it's very hard to find
ANY software that can do what this DOES do. That said, this is the lowdown:
CONS: I'm doing the cons first, because THAT is what is getting me to write this.
-- Nothing is finished. I'm not sure where PRO comes in, but
you can't create anything to a finished piece.
a) The home design has no toilets, bathtubs, sinks, cabinets, beds, fans. etc.
b) The Garden design has no Stepping stones, ponds, rocks, waterfalls, designer walls.

-- You can alter any of the textures to make your own "designer" Textures. This is lame.
Everything is a half-tool in this program. I found a CONCRETE I liked but it was too
dark. I take it into the custom menus. There, there are sliders for RED, Green, Blue.
The Concrete is a middle gray, and all the sliders are set to 255, 255, 255. That's the
MAX brightness, for every slider. I clicked on other textures, and Every texture
is the same. When you bring them into the custom menu, they are all 255,255,255.
SO, that means that you can ONLY make things DARKER. WHY!!!?!??!? Most
of the textures I liked, I just needed them to be a bit LIGHTER. there is NO way of
doing this.

-- I tried to make my stepping stones..... They have a 3D editor to create your own stuff.
A stepping stone is a cylinder. They have that as a basic shape, so this should be easy, right?
Wrong. I create a stone 1' x 1' x 2", when I click enter, it converts to 8.2' x 8.2' x 2.5".
I go into the Object editor, and click SIZE.
Everything in here is a half-tool, remember? So I can enter a number for length, and height,
but guess what, no WIDTH. That's right.

-- Garden design.... I draw out my house outer wall, and then create a property line. You can
add textures to the ground. Now each outline you make is basically a flat piece os geometry.
So if you make a big square, and THINK you are making a little square in it as a cement
landing, you are wrong. Both are still there. You never CUT into the original piece. So
now you have TWO squares fighting over who's textures get displayed. This causes flickers.

-- When making a long rectangle, and deciding to cut it into 2 squares, you will never do
this. It will always recognize it as ONE piece. You have to shrink the original to the shape
you want, then create a new piece next to it.
a) This is the same with INSIDE WALLS. If you have a long wall running down your
house, and two bedrooms share that wall. In one room that wall is white, and in the next,
it's green. Not in THIS program. You paint that green, and every room all the way down
the hall, now has a green wall.

-- In my back yard there is cement, then 6" down, there is a garden. You can't move things
in 6" units. Only 1 foot.

-- Plants. I got this to plant a garden, and found out that all the plants, and there are a LOT,
only come in ONE photo. So the whole AGE YOUR PLANTS to see what stuff will look
like in a few years, is wrong. They just scale it up. So If I plant Bamboo, in my yard, it will
come as a big jumble of shafts, and never spread, only get larger and more pixely.

--Personally, I have seen more flexibility in THE SIMS.

--Oh GOD, yeah, the walk through, is horrible, it's almost impossible to control the camera.
After all of us have played QUAKE, trying to get the hang of this 3D engine, is like making
us ride a bike with only one leg, and one arm.



--I figured out why the company's name is PUNCH. After 10 minutes with this software you'll want to punch someone.

--Whenever you click on a new tool, the icon conveniently turns into the tool you clicked. (ie. Wall, door, window)
This is great, to know what you are doing, but lousy for DOING what you are doing. You have no idea where
you line is going to start. Is it the top corner of the Door Icon, or maybe in the middle, possibly a bit up and to
the right of the icon.

-- anyone touting the Greatness of this software is a SHAM, who works for Punch.

-- The materials window, that allows you to place a material on any surface is WAY to small to hit anything accurately.



PROS:
It's interesting to have a blueprint of your house with all the measurements, even if it has
no bathroom or kitchen. It makes it easier to shop for carpet, sofa, drapes, etc.


-One thing good is the Video Tutorial on each button. When you click a button, you can R/Click to get a Tutorial.
This is great to figure out the uses of the buttons.
BUT, it doesn't cover EVERY button.

** I'd like to see a tutorial on how to make a simple house, and how to make a raised house, or a split level home.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great for homes but landscaping NO WAY, March 4, 2004

By A Customer

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

I have just bought this software and although this is good for homes (not alot of selection like chimneys) this is not the way to go for landscaping. There are not enough plants to be happy with and the plants that are there you can not change the height or how wide they get. The plant editor is lousy as well, the plants all look like pices of cardboard cutouts. I would not recommand this software.