Punch Super Home Suite 3.0

by Punch Software

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002S5IG
• Item model number: 17100
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,703 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Super Home Suite combines seven programs for interior and exterior home and landscape design in one package. Super Home Suite includes 3D Home Design, 3D Landscaping, Estimating, AutoFraming, FloorPlan Trace, 3D Furniture Design, and RealModel.

Use 3D Home Exterior & Interior Design to view your home in thousands of subtle paint color choices, or design walk-out basements and split-level designs with the slope tool. When you're ready to landscape your home design, just add your plantings to your existing file. The software lets you landscape without redrawing your house plan. Your results are rendered in high-resolution 3-D, complete with shadows just like a photograph.

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. And create objects from scratch or modify furniture from the included library. Change colors, fabrics, patterns, textures, and more, then use your creations to furnish your home plan. And get an idea of what your finished home will look like with the AutoFraming and RealModel software.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars easy to use, and competent too, December 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Punch Super Home Suite 3.0 (CD-ROM)

First off...this is a design program like Sierra, Floorplan, etc. and works well with the average person who wishes to create an "idealized home design" both inside and out. It is NOT a full CAD program to do every space and angle. None of the under $ programs will produce a "plan" to give to a contractor to take-off and build a home, no matter what they promise. That is left to the $++ professional architectural programs! That said, this is a super "design" program that has a simple, accurate instruction manual, and lots of Web downloadable features like "dormers" and tons of "objects" like dishwashers,chairs,etc etc. The mini-CAD feature called "3Dfurniture workshop" lets you create custom arched walls, tables, rugs all with neat textures.The great feature of this product is the ability to create a "cut out" MODEL of your finished home {to various scales! } that you print and assemble complete with colors and textures(like bricks and slate roofing). All the design programs I have tried{Sierra, Floorplan, Punch) are far from perfect and often require a TRICK to get it to do something that you feel should happen with a single menu icon; but Punch is a little better then the rest with fewer work-arounds than usual. BUT they are still present, and almost all programs have a tough time with todays complex roof and ceiling designs! No "design" program is as simple and complete as the sales hype promises, but the Punch program was the least so far to get me angry.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your time and Money, October 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Punch Super Home Suite 3.0 (CD-ROM)

This program is absoulutely worthless unless you consider your "Dream House" a rectangal or square. I decided that after using using Broderbund 3D Home Architect Deluxe 2.1 for a couple of years that it was time to move, so I thought. into a program that appeared to have more function and features. Boy was I wrong! Try to design a Country Home with a Wrap around Porch with this program. It can't be done because of the inability to create shed roofs and walls that only have posts and railings. Last year I used the Broderbund 3d 2.1 to design a home remodling project. I'm not saying that Broderbund doesn't have a few quirks but I was able to create multiple roof lines with various pitches and shed roofs, open walls depicting posts, railing and balusters for the porch and tie them all together to get a very realistic portrayal of what the finish project would look like. I couldn't even get close with the Punch Super Home Suite. I thought wow!, Punch provides the Realmodel with all of the wonderful Roof and exterier texture options, the Autoframing, Landscaping etc....... Unfortunently they don't mean a thing when you can't even create,design a relistic protryal of the center piece of the project, THE HOUSE. Lastly, the package comes with what are so called professionly design plans by Wolfgang Trost Architects. It has to be a fictious company. If not they would be the but end of many jokes at their local building and zoning offices. None of the plans they provided in the package would get past design stage if summitted to any competent local building/zoning commitee for review. The flyby function showed rooflines that would be a structural disater if allowed to be built. The packaging of the product by Punch was wonderful with all of the pretty pictures etc...The application was anything but! If you want a resonably price application buy Broderbund 3D Home Deluxe. It may not be as pretty but it is FUNCTIONALLY SUPERIOUR.....

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ceveat Emptor - don't expect the sky, March 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Punch Super Home Suite 3.0 (CD-ROM)

Kudos to the marketing and packaging gurus for Punch! products. As a veteran 3D modeler and animator, I purchased the product to help me do certain home design tasks more quickly. The pictures on the package made it look easy and fun. The reality was a little disappointing. First, the strengths. Laying out floor plans with quick drag and drop windows and doors was a pleasure. The landscape, deck, and furniture workshop features were useful (although the workshop had limitations, of course). Setting up my basic dimensions and floor plans were a treat. I was beginning to marvel at the simplicty of creating a home plan. BUT, only if you are designing a house with no crawl space! In light of the expenses of fixing bad plumbing in slab houses, I believe a crawl space is most sensible way to design any house, so I was a little put off when I realized Punch!'s software doesn't do that. Look at the pictures on the packaging, you won't see a crawl space. You may see a house that looks like it has one, but in fact it is a two-story house with a basement and landscaping. That's the key to "faking it out". Nor does the software allow simple placement of windows in a roof end-cap. The way to get around the crawl space limitation in RealModel would be to print an additional strip of brick (or whatever material) to paste on your foam board model, but you would have to do measuring on your own to figure out how to allow for the extra height of the ground floor wall. A simple remedy would be for Punch! software to allow wall heights to be customizable, just as the door and window sizes are. Then, of course, having a door height selection just like the window height ones would allow realistic placement. To get around the window placement limitations, try creating the desired feature in Furniture Workshop. The .dxf export function will allow me to send the floor plan out to my 3D modeling software, which is helpful to those of us who own them. The lack of .dxf import was somewhat irritating. Am I going to return it? No, because at the cost it is just barely useful enough to outweigh the trouble of returning it. Would I recommend it? I probably would only recommend a more basic Punch! product such as Home Design with none of the other modules, to create floor layout work only.