Rating: 
Summary: Is this as good as it gets?
Review: From reading a number of reviews of various home design products, it looked like Punch Pro was the best of the lot. This may be so, but it is more indicative of the poor state of the home design software market.The good:
- Nice, intuitive interface
- Relatively easy to get started
- 3D view is impressive, at first (see the bad) The bad:
- 3D view is slow & hard to navigate. Helicopter view is somewhat better, but still not very user-friendly. Ability to navigate with cursor keys instead of mouse would help
- Buggy. I crashed several times, and lost significant work (save early, save often)
- Some features are very limited. You cannot rotate a shower 90 degrees. You cannot resize sinks and other bathroom equipment
- Overkill. Some features like plumbing and electricity might be attractive to some, but I would rather have had more focus on the basics
- CPU intensive. I have a powerful PC, but changing views & navigating can try your patience The ugly:
- For the price [I paid] I expected a more polished, easier to use piece of software
Rating: 
Summary: Buggy software and worse support people
Review: Had Broderbund Total3D Home version2 which is old and limited so bought Punch's Home Design Suite Platinum.
If it would do what it is supposed to do it would probably be worth the money but it is very buggy. Not to worry they have a 20Mgb download which will fix some of the problems such as doors not showing if closed and exports not working right. Only trouble was the download was buggy and wouldn't work either. Four days online with support and I was finished with them. They treat the users as if we are brain dead and want to lay blame for their buggy software on such things as " if you have a virus checker running when you download it might affect the download" and etc. They never answer the question of why their software doesn't work and frankly I decided they simply don't know. If this was version 1.o it would perhaps be understandable but it is version 4.5.0 and costs over a $100. No excuse for such software on the market or such bad support. Buy one of the other companies such as IMSI or Broderbund give Punch a wide berth.
Rating:
Summary: Good for conceptual designs
Review: I am a physicist/software developer, not an architect, and have experience with Punch Platinum (Punch), Better Homes and Garden Suite 6 (BHG), and DesignWorkshop Lite (DWL).
None of these are architectural design packages -- for that you'd pay big bucks and a lot of learning time. Rather, these are perspective drawing packages. DWL is in a slightly different category being closest to a true 3D modeling application. It is the only one that builds 3d objects from fundamentals, importing house objects from libraries. Hence, it takes more time to get going.
BHG and Punch are great for rapid prototyping, allowing you to construct a semblance of a home in just minutes. Punch has a big advantage in that it uses the popular OpenGL rendering engine. It also has a true 3d CAD capability to build unique objects that can be integrated into the design. Objects can be 'grouped' to form compound onbjects, but this capability is not available for their house objects, like walls and roofs.
BHG claims CAD tools, but they are simply 2D drawing tools -- rather useless as a design tool. I found BHG too limiting to use -- could not do multi-level flooring, etc. Punch, on the other hand seemed to do most of what I wanted.
One caveat for dealing with additions or remodeling: these packages, especially BHG, may not be able to model pre-existing structures accurately enough.
Here's my bottom line:
BHG: useful only as a concept designer for very traditional homes. It's single advantage is easy to use, but that feature is comparable to Punch which adds much more capability.
Punch: has true 3D capability as well as good object design based on OpenGL software. I regret it doesnt carry object design techniques, like grouping, over to the home oriented objects.
DWL is free and perhaps the most sophisticated at 3D design. It is a bit weaker on rapid prototyping and to do anything serious, you may need to buy the upgrade. DWL is cross-platform software, running on both Mac and Windows, and so it suffers from minor oddities in the GUI.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Broderbund's Home Design Package
Review: I bought both the Punch Pro Platinum and the Broderbund Home Design Suite Deluxe 4.0 Ok, if you are a computard than neither program is for you. If you want features then Punch beats Broderbund Hands Down. IF you want ease of use, then Buy some paper a ruler and a pencil. Now I am a software developer, but I know nothing about House design. I spent 8 hours with Broderbund Deluxe 4.0....end result was that I kept running into one limitation after another. Very weak package. I spent 4 hours with Punch and I had my entire house built. Another eight hours later and I had four different variations on the additions, on roof layouts even funriture. Frankly, I want to mail the Broderbund software back to them with a pile of dog doo in the box. Punch on the other hand, while it is a little wierd to get used to at first with its click, double click, two click, right click scheme, once you get used to it is a breeze. Caveat - I did not read the manual or go through the tutorial on either package, so ease of use has to be Punch. On top of that its got a slew of features and had no problems installing on win XP (something that the Broderbund ...could not do...it kept creating read only directories in the install procedure and then tried to write to them and couldn't....imagine that.)
Rating:
Summary: Good floorplan capability, but not much more
Review: I had my hopes up when I bought this package. Initially, the experience lived up to my expectations. It was pretty easy to get started, in my case with the floorplan. Drawing walls, adding doors and windows, even flooring was pretty easy and intuitive. No major hang-ups with the software. Better yet, I did not have to consult the manual to get it done. Overall, it took my less than 3 hours to get the floorplan done for the first level of my house. However, once the floorplan was done, I started to run into problems. I tried to "design" an L-shaped deck -- easy way to do it. The only way to do this is to create two rectangular decks. Put the deck on posts -- functionality does not exist. Attach the deck to the house -- functionality does not exist. Run railing around some sides of the deck, but not all of them (since some are attached to the house) -- functionality does not exist. Adding a patio -- functionality does not exist. Texturing a deck with redwood planks -- texture library only supports brick textures, so you have to create your own wood textures. It became even worse when trying to deal the landscape. Shaping the terrain might work for a house on a flat lot, but if you have a downslope, forget it. The landscaping tool is extremely limited, so even if you manage to get your terrain half-way in order, there's no support for outside stairs, curved pathways, rocks aso. I gave up after reading the 4 pages in the manual, ckecking Punch's FAQs and fiddling with the program for an hour. Extremely frustrating! The manual at this time was no help at all. It nicely describes how to execute a certain function or a simple task (e.g., resize a wall), but does not describe how to perform a more complex task (how do you create a downslope, containing an initial slope, then a flat part, then another slope.) Neither was Punch's site of any help -- it contains FAQs, but their content is so light, I only learned one thing from them (about basements) -- and I'm a novice user!!!! Punch should include a terrain editor (just check out the terrain editor in Rollercoaster Tycoon -- it's simple, but versatile), so you can shape your own terrain. Punch also needs to significantly update its landscaping tools, so you can do at least some basic landscaping. And what about support of utilitarian buildings, such as garden sheds, carports aso? To summarize, the more you want to work on tasks inside of the house, the better this package it. Don't have your hopes up for achieving a lot on the outside of your house. Despite the manufacturer's claim, this package is not more than a glorified floorplan designer. While this might be exactly what you are looking for, it bears the question whether it is worth the price. Personally, I do not think so, since I had higher expectations
Rating:
Summary: Not for Beginners
Review: I have purchased and used several different home/landscape design programs. I've used the Punch programs though quite a bit more than the others. The main reason is that I like the graphics. I think too that, for the most part, there is an excellent variety house and landscape options (wall types, colors, plants, etc). Even so, when I first used this program, I quickly became totally frustrated and confused. That was partly because I generally start using programs without reading directions first. With Punch, I had to force myself to sit down with the book and go through it step by step. After that, I was able to design a house and yard from scratch, and even do the 3-D rendering. Unfortunately, there were some things about the final product that I couldn't get quite right. The roof was very tricky to figure out, and I was unable to get the walls to match up as they should. The tools for the roof and walls look simple, but getting them to render appropriately isn't easy. It would be nice if the program did this automatically. Actually, I did have a lot of fun with the landscape function. That part was very easy to use. I made a path through an elaborate garden I'd created from a vast array of plant choices. I wanted to also construct different kinds of decks and gazebos, put in fountains and playgrounds, etc, but these options were extremely limited. If I could suggest some other improvements, it would be to have a wide variety of home plans available in the program and/or website. I think there are maybe a dozen in the program now, and they're extremely basic. Mostly all they do is give you a starting point. I'd spend a lot more time with this program if there were some houses (such as the one in the picture) already done for you. It's much easier to make changes to an already existing plan, than to draft one from scratch. Another thing I'd strongly suggest adding is a good tutorial.
Rating:
Summary: I think I'll Pass
Review: I have used 3 different versions of Broderbund Home Architect and Design programs. All leaving me with the notion,
is this as good as it gets??? So I thought I would try Punch Home Design Platnium after reading the company's descriptions and features I was ready, but after reading the reviews from folks who have actually used it, well, I think I will save my money for now and get out the paper, ruler and pencil the other reviewer recommended. Hopefully these guys get their acts together and make some major improvements. Thanks for saving me time and money and headachs.
Rating:
Summary: Mark Cauley must own stock in Broderbund
Review: I own the Professional Home Design suite and this was my second purchase of home design from Punch. I had hoped that the new package would work better than terribly poor - which is what I rate the first one. Unfortunately, my second purchase is just as disapointing. The software is purely a patch mess. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: Non-intuitive software with lots of bugs
Review: I purchased this software online after seeing a commerical and reading numerous reviews. Figured the ones on how bad the product was from people not familiar with software. I'm very software literate having built commerical software for Apple, Microsoft, and others.
This software is not intuitive whatsoever. The help system is terrible. Even attempting to do things like "Undo" doesn't work, or if it does it is impossible to figure out.
The program crashed multiple times trying to render the design. In spending $100 bucks, a complete waste of money, I wouldn't suggest anyone using this product unless they take a class.
I read through the help system but it was poorly constructed, and would give you icons but rarely a clue where to find them.
Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Awful
Review: I purchased this software thinking it would be better than an old version of 3D Home V.3 I was currently using. What a joke. Do not waste your money. Very Difficult to navigate. limited fixtures. I could draw faster in ACAD 2002.
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