House Design Software

TontoMurphy

Hi all, signing contracts for site tomorrow after 9 months of council bullsh1t. Woohoo... anyhow, looking for some quick advise. Need to start on some ideas with designs, have plenty of ideas and photos. I'm looking for some software on web, easy to use and not too complicated to learn so i can design a few things and pass on to architect. I know he'll be using AutoCad but want to have something to give to him as well. Don't really want to start long thread but if any of you have used anything before, please let me know....

smashey

SketchUp by Google is free and very good. Practice with it for a while. I will leave this thread open for a few days and see if there are any alternatives available.

muffler

I seen something about this in one of the forums recently but just cant think.
Take a look though a couple of the stickys on the Computer and Bargain Alerts forums and you might find something listed in the free/essential software threads.

Google SketchUp is popular and its free.

Smartdraw is a very good programme also - 30 day trial period i think and you can only run off about 3 prints from your drafts - take snapshots instead

muffler

smashey wrote:

I will leave this thread open for a few days and see if there are any alternatives available.

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smashey

muffler wrote:

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Smart A$$.

The OP said he didn't want to create a long thread. Believe me, I know a few alternatives but none that are as user friendly as SketchUp.

Mellor

If your planning on doing 3D drawings then sketch is the best for simple idea type drawings,
but it isnt great for internal layouts.
get a 2D package for this, but good old pen and paper is good also, its where I start when working out the beginings

Get a piece of graph paper, cut out some squares/rectangles scaled (eg 2cm : 1m) to the approx room sizes you want and just move them around on the graph paper, have lots of different sizes & shapes and play around with the layout.

when you have come up with something that looks OK ,then put it into something like sketchup.

I used an application called "3D house design" to visulaise the design after the paper exercise, then redrew it in autocad for planning etc

janmc

http://www.mydesignin.com/

I haven't used this myself, but I'm wondering if it might be useful in this case. It's not a CAD program though! More a web 2.0 version of home layouts. :rolleyes:

TontoMurphy

Hi folks,

found a piece of software called "3D Home Architect". Available here http://www.3dhaonline.com/full_store.html about $40 so pretty good to start with... Thanks for help..