- Platform: Windows NT / 98 / 2000 / Me / 95, Mac, Linux, Unix
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
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Product Description
Amazon.com Review
Punch Professional Home Design Suite does something very few home planning applications achieve: it brings together designing both the interior and the exterior--including the garden--of your home on one CD-ROM. While the software is perhaps a bit complex to learn at first, the huge range of features offered make this forgivable. You can start with a blank screen, work with a pre-drawn plan from the software's library, or import scans of the existing floor plans of your home. Whichever option you choose, simply clicking the onscreen tabs allows you to switch between working on the floor plans, electrical plans, the plumbing system, roofing arrangements, heating and air conditioning, external decking, or landscaping.
Getting objects such as furniture into position on a plan is mostly a matter of drag and drop, while you can also use a Computer Aided Design feature to draw curves, arcs, and other standard shapes. It is useful to be able to see a flat plan and a 3-D view side by side, and to walk through the 3-D view or do a flyover. You can even change the light direction, intensity, and brightness on the 3-D views to get as close to the real world as possible.
With several useful tools above and beyond the designer, Punch Professional Home Design Suite is a rounded application. The 3-D Furniture Workshop lets you edit the library of furniture objects or design your own from scratch. RealModel lets you turn a home plan into a template for making a scale model--you can even print textures onto paper for pasting to the building materials. HomeEstimator works out how much it will cost to build your project life-size and how much of each type of material you need. --Sandra Vogel
Product Description
Professional Home Design Suite is a full suite of 14 home design & improvement -- it's a total package for the creation of your dream home!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't buy this to design a new home from scratch,
By
This review is from: Punch! Professional Home Design (CD-ROM)
I was using Broderbund's Total 3D Home to design a new home and wanted to try something more powerful. I purchased the Punch! product and am very disappointed. This product may be okay for drawing an existing home or for finalizing a plan you've already developed. But it is very difficult to use if you are in the early stages and want to move rooms around, re-size rooms, change exterior wall shapes etc.Now that I've tried Punch, I'm going back to Broderbund. It is a far easier package to use.
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
No! Stop! There's a better way!,
By JASON D MCQUEEN (Hillsboro, OR United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Punch! Professional Home Design (CD-ROM)
As a hobby, I design a lot of houses. I have been using 3D Home Architect 3.0 and wanted to try Professional Home design to step up. I'm not impressed.What the program offers: 1)complete integration and compatibility of program functions, 2) 3D rendered walkthroughs, 3) the ability to build custom furniture models, 4) the ability to build a physical scale model of the design Those are really neat sounding features, but they do not make up for the software's faults. For one, the floor plan design tools are somewhat counter-intuitive. I found that I couldn't break a wall in two, and the auto dimensions were not helpful in determining the locations of any interior walls. It is impossible to copy and paste doors and windows. Unlike 3D Home Architect, most objects do not recognize when they are against a wall. Particularly annoying was kitchen design. This thing behaves more like modified rendering software than a home designer. When you start placing cabinets, the selection looks neat already rendered, but I could not tell if they had doors or drawers! The selection of cabinets that I could identify was woefully inadequate, and when placed the sizes were a little off. After trying to design a kitchen I didn't even try the other features. If home design software can't get a kitchen right it's otherwise useless! So I say if you want to build a model of your house, get the cheaper 3D Home Architect 3.0, print out a floorplan, and get a modeling kit. Believe me, you'll still save time over using Professional Home Design.
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky at best,
By
This review is from: Punch! Professional Home Design (CD-ROM)
I realized that this was not the best tool for designing a house after 5 minutes of use. I originally hoped that once the general design (using Visio) was done I could use this software's advanced features (framing, 3D walkthroughs, modeling, etc.) to check it out. No luck. I guess it would work for simple plans but I found it very difficult (if not impossible) to use for complex multi-level plans. The 3D walkthrough is jerky and hard to use (even on a 500 Mhz P III).While the software shows some promise, it is not there yet. Last but not least, it GPFed (Windows 98) during a 3D walkthrough causing me to lose an hour's work (I know, I should save my work more often).
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