Good home design programs?

[Entity]

What's the best program out there for home design? Planning layout, etc...landscaping, whatever else. I've seen some $10 specials at Fred Meyer, but those look like I'd be wasting my money.

Rob

 

[freebee]

I was just setting up an endcap today of some home design stuff by punch! (i think). Most of its in the 80-90 dollar range but it looks really cool. I've not had a chance to use any of these however. You can look up this stuff at staples.com, i think i have all of those that are on the website.

 

[JC]

Too wierd! I was thinking about this about 2 hours ago....but I figured these neffers wouldn't know, so I didn't post it
Did a search at Download.com, tried LCE-CAD...only tried it briefly, but I don't think it's gonna work out. There were other landscape, etc. proggies listed there too.

G/L

JC

 

[kgraeme]

It's that time of year, and I'm looking too.

 

[RossMAN]

It seems that Punch! makes a lot of home design software, reviews.

 

[RossMAN]

Yikes I guess home design is more popular than I had thought, there are a few thousand threads in the UseNet NewsGroups

alt.home.repair
alt.architecture.* (2 groups)
sci.electronics.design
misc.consumers.house.*

 

[RossMAN]

Did you ever find a program?

If so, which one and why?

 

[ultimatebob]

Believe it or not, you can build a pretty decent home or apartment model with The Sims. No, seriously! Not everything will be exactly to scale, but it's definately good enough to get an idea as to what an expansion or some redecorating would look like.

Sure, it's not "HomeCAD", but it's still better than those $10 things at Staples.

 

[RossMAN]

Hmmn maybe I should break out my Sims game then.

 

[djheater]

I'm actually in the middle of putting in my Mo-In-Law's house in Home Architect 4.0 by Broderbund.... I did some hunting a few months ago and this seemed to have a bunch of good reviews. I showed the working model to my wife and she was amazed by it.

It can be annoying to work with but seems to have an awful lot of options... it's around $50.

 

[RossMAN]

Rob,

Mrs. Ferengi and I were at CostCo B&M yesterday browsing through software and I ran across Professional Home Design Suite for $64.99 after $10 MIR, CostCo SKU 453448.

So have you found any software yet? If so, which one, how much was it, how is it?

 

[Entity]

RossMAN,

I've found several programs, but none which were suited to my likings. What I was looking for was more of a "take these existing home specs, and view what it would look like in different configurations" - as opposed to the "design a new house for your liking!" I still haven't found anything that really fit the bill.

thanks for keeping an eye out, though.

Rob

 

[RossMAN]

Ah ok, cool. I'll keep my eye out for such a program but I doubt it exists or is very hard to find.