Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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48 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Amazing , February 2, 2005
My husband and I talked about putting up a barn next to our house for years, but the commitment of hiring a professional architect seemed intimidating - as well as expensive.
CADPro is not just a listing of standard house plans that maybe you will like (or maybe not), it's a real blueprint design program. Yes, it does have some ready made plans, including a pretty cool tree house and outdoor kitchen - but this was not what I wanted. I started by installing the program - with so many buttons and features (over 8,000) I was not sure where to begin. Luckily, CADPro includes a separate training CD (with sound and video) in the box. I watched the individual video lessons while I had the CADPro program open on my computer so I could go back and forth to practice. This is not a program you will fully master overnight.
I still have not used all the features, but I was able to quickly access the tools I needed to design my barn in detail. One of my favorite features is the pop-up photo. By dragging and dropping the camera icon from the toolbar onto the floor plan the program automatically opens My Pictures. Since I wanted a post and beam look on the inside I took a digital photo (taken while eating at my favorite restaurant) and saved it in My Pictures. I also scanned in some photos from a post & beam brochure and popped these in too - there is no limit to the number of photos you can include. The photos show up on the floor plan as little camera icons - by clicking once on the tiny camera the photos open.
Although my intent was to just design my barn using CADPro, I found I could redesign my great room (or other rooms) by using the existing dimensions of my house and creating images of the furniture I already have (with their size to scale). I can now rearrange my furniture to see if it will fit - before I move my sofa 10 times.
I am still waiting to see if the town will approve the building permit for my barn, but I feel better knowing I only invested 70 dollars, and I know exactly how it will look, and what the materials and estimated labor will cost, before they pour the foundation. I would highly recommended this program for anyone who wants to design their own renovation (or house) exactly the way they want, with blueprint results that a contractor can work from.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Got the Job Done, December 8, 2005
I first bought a box of Punch software to design my new home office. Some cool 3D features, but for practical purposes, contractors couldn't work from the design I created. That was why I bought CADPRO: I needed a design contractors could use to build from. I never called their tech support, but I did play the training video CD to get a basic idea of where to start and figured out the rest for myself. Installed without a hitch and worked just fine on my Dell PC using Windows XP home.
I started with the exterior walls - dragged them out to 18' x 22', then dropped in the exact size windows and doors I wanted. The software recalculated all my wall measurements automatically. By playing around with the toolbars, I noticed I could plug in electric outlets (never enough), light switches and ceiling lights. I never used the pop up feature or the other floor plans they include. The one feature that made the purchase a done-deal for me was the viewer. I emailed my final design out to 6 local building contractors with a link to the download viewer so they could open the file - without buying the software. Four responded back - I am still deciding on which one I will hire.
You need to watch the video and play around with it to get an idea of how it works. But if your intention is to design a custom plan your contractor can build from - this is it.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great potential, unusable product, August 24, 2005
We bought this product as a tool with which to do space planning and facilities management. We've used other CAD programs - CadVance, AutoCAD LT 97, AutoSketch v. 5-8, but were looking for something more intuitive that our maintenance guys could actually use. After some research, CadPro4 seemed like a reasonable choice.
We were impressed by the glitzy and professional packaging, and the promise of an online user forum and good technical support. Sold!
Sadly, the reality is that there is NO user forum online, technical support is by e-mail and never have we gotten a return e-mail, and the program is unable to rotate doors and windows - a critical FAIL bug that precludes even using it. We tried loading it on another machine to see if it was some hardware interaction, but it did the same thing on both machines.
Steer clear, folks - until the bugs are fixed, the program is not usable. We could forgive the lack of technical support if the program actually worked, but it doesn't even do that. It just rubs salt into the wound that you can't even talk to them about it.
Tom Curley
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