Don't think for a minute that you are going to sit down, open up ANY of these programs, and immediately design a house. For me, the learning curve for FP3D, before I could do anything remotely useful, was probably 50 hours.
Oh, I know. I didn't expect this either. I knew there was going to be a learning curve, but I didn't think it would be such a steep one...
The version of FP3d I'm using is v10; v11 added a few capabilities and got rid of a few bugs. But the current version now for sale is called "Turbo Floor Plan" and the interface is enough different that I bailed on it after half an hour. No doubt it is every bit as good as the previous versions, but since my v10 does what I need, I felt I didn't need to go through another learning curve. Turbo FloorPlan is available as a fully functional free trial download, good for 30 days. Go
here to download it. FP3D also has a very good bbs chat site, similar to this bbs, with very helpful people on it. You'll find it
here.
Thanks for those links, I'll give it a try. It can only be easier than that software I've got here...
From what I have read, Punch Software's software is considered to be the best of this genre. I purchased it for $170, and after fighting with it for about 10 hours, gave up on it and went back to FP3D. I felt it to be exceptionally complex and unintuitive, but that may well be because I was used to FP3D and expected Punch to do things in a similar fashion, so when my hard-earned tricks and techniques from FP3D didn't work I became disgruntled and blamed the software when the fault may have been mine.
The software I've got is also Punch! software. I'm happy to read I'm not the only one fighting with it. It indeed looks like very powerful software, but I guess it works best when you can take some lessons to learn how to use it. There are *so* many options, it seems impossible to figure them all out by ones' self.
You will not be able to create blueprints suitable for actual construction with this type of program. You WILL be able to work out the design, both interior and exterior, enough to give an architect exactly the idea(s) you have in mind.
... which is exactly what I want to use the software for. I am no architect, nor am I aspiring to be one. I just want to make our designing ideas as clear as possible to him before he starts drawing the final blueprints. Because us making him redo all his drawings over and over until it's *just* right will only end up costing us extra money, something I want to avoid. Building a house is incredibly expensive as most of you will probably agree, and so I'd like to save some cash everywhere I can.
Edit: I'm attaching a couple of pictures created with FP3D to give you an idea of what the program does.
Impressive! Really! Is that your own house?
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