Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't bother if you're in the UK, 15 Jan 2003
As far as usage goes, my comments echo that of other reviews. Can be awkward, slow and clunky. It's also very American, and you have to translate building termsMy gripe is with functionality. Go to the Punch website, and you'll see this program offers the integration of several programs. 3D Home Exterior & Interior Design,Ultimate Deck, 3D Landscape,3D Furniture Workshop,FloorPlan Trace, Home Estimator,AutoFraming, 3D RealModel. The 3D RealModel allows you to print off a 'cardboard cutout view' stick it onto some card backing and glue it up into a 3D model. Just the thing to show neighbours to allay their planning fears. The Estimator and Autoframing look really useful as well. Thing is - they don't exist in the UK version. This version - even the latest 3.5.1 version has been 'localised' by the UK distributor and all you get is the basic 3D Home Exterior & Interior Design and Furniture Workshop bits. You decide, but for UK usage I find it lacking it's promise
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Follow up on initial review, 5 Jul 2002
Well, I've played with the software a lot more since I wrote the last review.I still think it does pretty much what it says, although the few deficiencies there are have almost stopped me using it. I find that I can't fully design any of the home layouts I want with it because of the double door issue - I have to leave gaps where the doors should be. Also, it is very difficult to design a home which is not evenly levelled - split level floors are a no-no. I have used the furniture design workshop now, and I can tell you exactly why the 3rd party objects you find on the web look so poor - it's because the furniture editor is more or less useless. You can design boxy stuff, but nothing better than that. Also, it can't cope very well with furniture drawn to scale - which should be really important. When you do produce some of your own content, including textures or objects in the main design program is not as easy as it should be. The biggest issue for me is the wall layout behaviour. The program will occasionally join two walls together for you. You cannot unjoin them - you have to delete the entire section and redraw it. The program also has a notion of exterior and interior walls. The exterior walls *must* make a closed perimeter. You cannot break an exterior wall to move it or add a dogleg. The only way to do this is to do it while drawing the wall. You can move points around, but you can't add new ones. The program is VERY SLOW on my PIII500 laptop with 256Mb ram - I think it's quite gdi dependent, as I have no trouble on a Duron800 with the same ram and a GF3. In fact, the 3d preview goes far too fast and you have to be very good with the mouse to control it. I would still recommend this software as its fairly cheap, but I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to produce professional looking results. It helps very much if you already have a layout drawn on paper before you start, which seems to defeat the point a little.
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not so Super Home Design, 8 April 2002
I bought this at PC World last week, but it's half the price on here! Definitely worth it.., but don't expect to accomplish anything more complicated than basic 3-storeys and a roof type designs without a struggle. It's possible, just not as easy as you might like.Insetting rooms into roof cavities is painful. Some basic things you might want to do with exterior walls are missing completely - I was messing about with a bungalow design, and ended up having to alter the layout to work around the program's idiosyncracies. The manual is crap - a printout of the (also useless) help system. Bad points:
(-) You really need a very good idea what the layout is like before you start.
(-) Auto Measurements never seem to be where you want them
(-) Wall snapping is variable. Not working when you want it to, and working when you don't.
(-) Supplied examples look nice, but don't really work well in 3d.
(-) You can get a good 3d image or a good 2d image. Getting both is very difficult.
(-) Double doors? Not in this program.
(-) Measurement precision seems to depend on the pixel resolution, even in so-called nudge mode. Not great. Plus Points:
(+) The 3d display is real time, uses openGL and is hardware accelerated with my GeForce3. I've tried many many home design programs, and this is the first one which has been too fast.
(+) If you are prepared to put the effort in, you can generate more intricate designs than the IMSI suite or the Sierra suite allows. I've tried them both, and the Punch software is more flexible if a little more unpredictable.
(+) Gable Ends are easy, as long as the wall section fits into one of the 12 or so supported shapes.
(+) Freehand roofing tool. A godsend if you want something a little different. Define one slope at a time, then set the pitch and slope direction afterwards. Simplicity itself.
(+) Flooring thickness control. No more paper thin gaps at stair cutouts
(+) Manual flooring cutouts. You can make galleries indoors. Conclusion:
This program won't set your world on fire, but there is a way to do most things if you look for it. It also comes with the integrated furniture editor, although I've not needed to use it yet...
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