Customer Reviews

Punch! Professional Home Design Platinum v10

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

 

 

This is a really fun program - if you're just playing with imaginary floorplans. However, if you're trying to work on an actual house, forget it! I've tried various amateur CAD programs over the last two decades for landscaping and renovation plans. The underlying Punch! program is decent, but this version is very buggy.

Pros
- "trace" option is nice, if you can get your compy's video card to work with the program, and if you've got the patience to do repeated iterations of the zoom feature to match the program grid to your image.
- lots of options for sizes, etc.
- no wait time for tech support
- fairly generic format; easy to learn for anyone used to CAD programs except when bizarre hiccups occur (i.e., see note below about staircase)

Cons
- it takes over 1/2 hour to load this program as there are tons of graphics of brand name items; would have preferred to have downloadable packets for items that are actually needed.
- objects don't move, even though they should be repositionable; this occurs sporadically and very unpredictably
- your entire plan disappears from the file, no clue as to why this happens, but it's gone and isn't recoverable
- third party applications (PowerTool PlugIns) aren't all compatible yet
- using the 3D feature will often crash the program
- no way to preview the print output; sometimes it prints what you want, sometimes, it doesn't
- absolutely not for newbies - steep learning curve for the uninitiated and the tutorials don't explain everything (like why your staircase, drawn as per directions, looks like an Esher nightmare)

I'm running this program on a brand new VAIO with maximum memory, graphics card memory, etc. I can't imagine what a horror this would be on an older, slower computer.

This program goes back tomorrow. I'll give it another try in 9-12 months, AFTER they've debugged.

Congratulations to the designers of this product. They have officially created the worst program, in every category, that I have EVER used. Not only can you not delete a wall you don't want, you cannot set any relationships while drafting the layout, changing thickness of one selected wall randomly propagates through half of the connected walls, and changing the size of a wall resizes the entire chain of walls connected to it rather than MOVING THEM.

This program is designed for the "computer savvy"; those who do not know what Ctrl-X does. If you have any experience with any real CAD, 3D modeling, or solid modeling software, you will tear your hair out trying to get this program to draw an outline of a house with more than four walls. This programs assumes the user is not smart enough to set inside walls as inside, outside walls as outside, all while only HALF of the floor plan has been drawn. News to the developers: we draw one room at a time, not the entire house outline. And if you through angles in there, you will never get them exact. Punch! decides that, if a wall is angled, that it can change the angle to accommodate the dimension change of another wall. Wow... brilliant!

As to the 3D rendering view, A-S-D-F and mouse-look is how you control motion in a 3D environment; not turning the mouse into a joystick where you loose your 0-reference and go spinning off into a wall.

IN SUMMARY: Do not buy this program. You will get better results from drawing on a napkin.

I tried to install this software 6 times. Each attempt resulted in an install hang over random files not found. Finally i got it to partially install by installing in safe mode.
Some features work, some don't.
This is the most user hostile install program, i have ever used.
I will never buy from this company again.

Buggy is an understatement. When trying to construct a roof, as soon as you start drawing the roof line the floorplan disappears. Yes, poof goes the roof. Extremely frustrating. The first version of this software was much less buggy. Don't waste your money on this software. CAD may very well be the way to go. I just found out you can return this product within 90 days...thanks for that bit of advice from someone else that wrote a review.

This is without doubt the most unstable platform I've ever been associated with. The software crashes every other save. They certainly need a lot more development here. But besides the platform, getting familiar with the software and its use is fairly easy. The software provides many different pre-built blocks, but if you're design calls for something not provided customizing it is a little difficult and very time consuming. I've not gone to construction from plans with this software and do not know how good/bad the plans can be built on. I am an engineer and a user of AutoCad (Computer Drafting Software). I bought the software to help clients who have difficulty envision what their finished product will look like, and to this point the software does this very well. Because of the software's problems I would not recommend it to anyone in the building/construction industry.

Does the above reviewer work for the software company??? Thank god for the 90 day return policy from Punch! because I am sending it back ASAP. I purchased this program because it supposedly has a feature where you can load a scan of your floor plan. This did not work at all and I tried various file configurations. Out of desperation to start with SOME sort of design plan, I tried to load one of their floor plans (they only have 20 plans to select from by the way-- very dissappointing), the software wouldn't load it because "it could not read image." I can't believe that the software wouldn't even load their own designs. Finally, I tried to draw my own plan from scratch and the whole screen started flashing/flipping out before I could get the lot lines drawn. Too bad. I really wanted this software to work -- I'm going to try Better Homes and Gardens in hope that I may be able to at least get started with my house plan.

I bought the software 3 weeks ago 'couse I was In a hurry to make a design
I did it in 2 days and looks nice. the only problem is all the bugs it has, some times our entire screen desapear, the help is not accurate (when you follow step-by-step instructions you can find the options on the menu).
Pros: Very easy to learn and use, a lot of options
Cons: The tech support never answer you, looks like the where in a hurry to lounch the program to the public and they forgot a lot of things. The let a lot of littler errors and bugs.
Maybe in a year or so (after the updates) it will be an excellent software.

I am a budding interior decorator and wanted a program that would help me create and display designs for my clients. I had purchased a very cheap program several years ago and found it very difficult to use, so I thought I would invest is a higher quality program. After reading several products' reviews, I decided that Punch would probably be the best choice because it offered so many different tools. I was a little worried that it would be hard to learn because of what some of the other reviews said, but I decided I was willing to take the time to learn it if it could do all it said.
Well, it does offer lots of design tools that sound really great, and it wasn't that hard to figure out, but as far as using it to show an interior design plan, it is no better than the $10 program I got years ago! The object library is very limited and even the available materials that you can use to alter the objects don't help much. The selection of window treatments is very minimal and you can't even use the materials library to change their color or pattern. There are virtually no accessories, artwork or indoor plants.
If you are more concerned with the architecture of your design, then this program has a lot to offer, but forget it for interior design.

Anyone buying this product should definetly read my review. I am not by any means an architect or a professional in any of these areas but I heard about Punch! products through a buddy of mine who used them to redo his entire house. It looked great so I thought why not give it a try. It worked great. My favorite feature was being able to figure out exactlly how much material I was going to need before I started. Also the plat database was very extensive and helped us find the correct plants for our area and even allowed us to drag and drop them into place to see how they would look. I felt like a professional by the time my yard and house were completed.

This ranks among the worst software that I have ever used. I have Professional Home Design Suite Platinum version 10. You set the elevation for each floor, the program changes it to something else. Walls appear in the 3-D renderings and can't be erased. The keyboard shortcuts don't work. You apply shingles to the 3-d elevations, and the program renders the windows with shingles. You try to get tech support answers to the above issues and you can't even get past the first tech support screen. Hello...Is anybody home?