Customer Reviews

Punch! Professional Home Design Platinum 8.0

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First off, I'll start by saying I have been researching the home designer software titles for months. After exhaustively comparing specs, professional and consumer reviews, I finally landed with Punch!'s new Home Design Platinum 8.0. Platinum 8.0 is newly released, this version only has one upgrade - that's the highest end Punch! product, AS4000. See, the NEW Punch! Professional Home Design Platinum 8.0 is built on the same platform as AS4000 - very impressive to say the least.

Make no mistake, Punch! Platinum 8.0 is very high-end and makes a complete joke out of Better Homes and Gardens home design software...well, the affordable version anyway. If you compare the specs on Better Homes and Gardens 6.0 vs. Punch! Platinum 8.0 you will scratch your head in disbelief at the higher price point on Better Homes and Gardens 6.0! [...]
There is little you cannot do with Punch! Platinum 8.0. The item library is limited, but there are Punch! sites where you can download free user-made 3D objects (very well done I might add). Or, use the built-in CAD creation tool and create them yourself! Or, import a photo of an item. Something I found exceptionally useful. Most if not all the name-brand appliance and home furnishing outlets are online. Well, they normally have pictures of their products. With Punch! Platinum 8.0, you can copy the product picture and import it into your floor plan. How is this useful? Think about this...you design a door, but it doesn't look exactly like the manufacturer's door. Create the door using Punch! Platinum 8.0, then import the picture of the REAL door into the floor plan and place it over your created door!!! Now your looking at a door that looks REAL and will give you a better idea how the door will look with your house! Do the same for cabinets, appliances, and other furnishings!

The design tools are relatively easy to use, and the video tutorials help get your through many functions. Just don't expect to be a pro overnight. I suggest spending only a few hours on it initially, otherwise you can become overwhelmed with frustration. Try building a small house initially with just the foundation, exterior and interior walls. Get an idea of how it works. Then get into designing your house or home addition. When you run into problems, there is a whole network of experts on the Punch! Forums.

One major complaint...and I'm not alone on this one. LiveView isn't all that great. It will take you hours to get used to it's controls. Worse yet, you cannot change the viewing angle when using walk-through mode. That's absurd! In other words, if you wanted to look down a staircase, look up at your wonderful cathedral ceiling, you can't. Hopefully, Punch! will release an update to fix this...it's a common complaint.

Well, this is already to long for anyone to read, but I'll end by saying that Punch! Platinum 8.0 is definitely worth every penny! Better yet, they give you a FREE 90-Day Satisfaction Return Guarantee!

Unfortunately, a frustrating waste of time. The bugs are numerous: wall dimensions change unexpectedly, it is difficult to place and move walls, floorspace is calculated in unexplainable ways, typing in dimensions often do not "take" or do take but incorrectly (20.00" becomes 2000.00 inches, etc.), changing a texture on a floor gets applied to a door, the 3D view is very limited in that you cannot tilt the camera POV (you can only move around at a predetermined height). You cannont generate elevation views of rooms (much less modify your plans from an elevation view). The list goes on and I'm sure I've only scratched the surface in the few days I've worked with this dog. I have managed to generate a thumbnail quality plan that communicates more or less what I have in mind, but it is hardly of the quality that you would want to really pre-visualize a $250K construction project. Of course, even that doesn't print well.

I'm hoping I can return this thing and find something that really works.

I purchased punch platinum 8, at a local computer store. I worked with the program for 4-6 hours a day for a week. It is not very user friendly; I thought that I would up grade my current program 3D Home Design Suite V. 1 to the punch platinum, that was a mistake. The user guide has functions that the program does not have, the 3D view spins so fast it is hard to control, it takes a long time to draw kitchen cabinets, than when you place the cabinet, it places it at 8' elevation, so than you have to move it to the floor elevation, the deck wizard places exterior decks inside the house. After a week of frustration I called the store to see if I could return the program, because it has a money back guarantee. The store said no, that I would have to contact Punch. I emailed them with my complaint multiple times and got the run a round. The last email I was ready to contact the Better Business office, with that they gave me a return address, but I don't believe they will refund the state tax or the cost of shipping. Before you purchase from Punch look at the complaints on there web site. I would recommend not buying any Punch programs

Over all this is a good product BUT be prepared for a high learning curve and instructions that need to be updated for the layman. You can not just purchase this software, and POOF design a house. Although the software comes with a basic book, it is not very helpful when you are having an issue with something and can't figure out what you are doing wrong. The manufactures also need to have a full tutorial included with the software, like what is included with any computer game or wordprocessing program. Although the program has help buttons that you can click on for certain things, I find them to be lacking and not on nearly enough topics. There are however websites that are like "support" groups that offer help in bulletin board or email style (for free!) but once again, until you are familiar with the program and what and how to work with it, it can be frustrating. Personally I purchased this with a specific plan in mind, and I still have not been able to complete it as I am learning and stumbling through it.

I am a CAD designer with 15 years experience on several platforms, 2d and 3d. I bought this package several months ago. I thought that with my experience I'd pick it up easily. After many hours I gave up on it. The manual is nothing more than a description on picks and clicks with lots of illustrations. As far as I can determine, no tutorial, either by Punch! or another third party exists and Punch! is unresonsive to my queries.

Specifically I have these problems with this software:
1. Very very slow to "undo" last edit.
2. Very difficult to select an item for edit in an area with multiple objects.
3. Poor "memory" for previous customized object when adding multiple.
4. Bugginess when editing materials. Programmers attempted to build software that takes some of the decisions out of an edit, but poorly implemented them so that interior surfaces of walls get siding and cannot be edited without deleting entire wall including outlets, tubs, windows, etc. This is an example of the bugs that PERMEATE this software.

This is NOT a good package for anyone wanting to design a house to the blueprint level of detail. It has good visual features allowing one to "visualize" the design aspect of remodeling, but the structural power tools are weak and missing vital edit abilities. I can't figure out how to add a simple stairwell opening and get the lumber to work out right. I had to hand generate a bill of materials because I didn't trust the software and found many calculations were based on square footage rather than specific needs of load, headers, etc.

Doing a drawing by hand is easier than using this software, especially with joists and roofs. FYI I have 15 years of software development experience and have used many different software packages, and this falls below the 50% mark of all software I have ever used. I don't have experience with other "architect" software, so take my review at whatever value you wish based on my experience(s). I would NEVER call this architect software, but rather more of an "interior design" software package.

While the box says novice it still takes a bit to get used to. I had some problems figuring stuff out in the beginning but after "toying around" with it i soon figured out what I was doing.
You should definately have some experience with CAD software before using this. If not you should have some free time to waste getting used to how this works otherwise it can be a real pain. All in all though not a bad program. I just wish you could change the veiwing angle like mentioned before. but its something i can deal with.
The moral of the story... well dont expect to plan out your dream house in just a few hours. And definately play around with it first before expecting to much. You wouldnt try to put your dream car togther without working on some other cars first right?

I like the "Walk Through on a predetermined path" feature that you can save as a movie file but what I could then create to make a movie of was at best cartoonish and not what I needed for my purpose. No ability to share my files with AutoCAD software was a disappointment as well. You spend your money and take your chances.

The documentation is sparse and more similar to a dictionary than a user's guide. There are video tutorials (screen recordings) but their simplicity limits their usefulness to the most basic of functions. The interface is typical of a quickly developed spec. If you know your way around a computer, you'll be frustrated within minutes. There are no keyboard shortcuts and the concept of objects and properties is primative at best. For example, when you go to drag a tree onto a landscape, nothing tells you what kind of tree it is. When you roll the mouse pointer over the tree, the ballon help says "Drag" instead of something more helpful like the plant name. Talk about some lazy programming. Little issues like that are so plentiful that you'll be cursing the program in no time. I also made the mistake of purchasing one of their add-on "power tools" called site planner and boy was that a mistake. It crashed whenever I edited or inserted a line. I sent an email to tech support and they replied with a canned email response blaming the video driver. I quickly sent back a response with all the useless details they asked for and I never heard back from them again. Take it from me, they use the term "Power Tool" strictly as a marketing ploy. Their power tools are more like amateur freeware utilities.

A couple of years ago I bought a similar product from Punch software and gave up on it after a few days of trying to figure out how to use it. (And I'm very technical and generally good with new software). i would not recommend this software unless you have the time and patience to learn to use it properly.

Google recently released a FREE home design software. Much like other Google products, this one is very easy to use - although not as powerful as one you might purchase. Before buying, I strongly recommend you check out Google's offering. Visit sketchup.google.com to take a look.