Rating: 
Summary: Ceveat Emptor - don't expect the sky
Review: Kudos to the marketing and packaging gurus for Punch! products. As a veteran 3D modeler and animator, I purchased the product to help me do certain home design tasks more quickly. The pictures on the package made it look easy and fun. The reality was a little disappointing. First, the strengths. Laying out floor plans with quick drag and drop windows and doors was a pleasure. The landscape, deck, and furniture workshop features were useful (although the workshop had limitations, of course). Setting up my basic dimensions and floor plans were a treat. I was beginning to marvel at the simplicty of creating a home plan. BUT, only if you are designing a house with no crawl space! In light of the expenses of fixing bad plumbing in slab houses, I believe a crawl space is most sensible way to design any house, so I was a little put off when I realized Punch!'s software doesn't do that. Look at the pictures on the packaging, you won't see a crawl space. You may see a house that looks like it has one, but in fact it is a two-story house with a basement and landscaping. That's the key to "faking it out". Nor does the software allow simple placement of windows in a roof end-cap. The way to get around the crawl space limitation in RealModel would be to print an additional strip of brick (or whatever material) to paste on your foam board model, but you would have to do measuring on your own to figure out how to allow for the extra height of the ground floor wall. A simple remedy would be for Punch! software to allow wall heights to be customizable, just as the door and window sizes are. Then, of course, having a door height selection just like the window height ones would allow realistic placement. To get around the window placement limitations, try creating the desired feature in Furniture Workshop. The .dxf export function will allow me to send the floor plan out to my 3D modeling software, which is helpful to those of us who own them. The lack of .dxf import was somewhat irritating. Am I going to return it? No, because at the cost it is just barely useful enough to outweigh the trouble of returning it. Would I recommend it? I probably would only recommend a more basic Punch! product such as Home Design with none of the other modules, to create floor layout work only.
Rating: 
Summary: too hard!
Review: ok i totally want to be a home desinger/architect when i grow up. So i asked my brother for design stuff and he gave me this. I thought it was easy at first with the walls, windows and doors. But the flooring thing never works and staring at the 12 chapter "help" booklet doesnt "help" very much. they tell you what to do but not how. I'm sure this isnt a kids game but my dad is a genius and he tried it an he cant even figure it out. I wouldnt tell other people to buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: It ain't professional... but it might as well be!
Review: This has got to be the easiest home design software I have ever seen (and yes, I've seen a great many)! Having NEVER used, or even seen this product before, I have managed, in less than 10 hours, to design and completely finish a very professional looking, 2-story 32' X 24' Garage/Loft Apartment. And I never even cracked open the instruction manual. You'd have to be a total idiot to not be able to use this software.The only limitation I have found (so far) is that it won't allow you to insert a door of any size into the side, support-framing of a staircase which I would have liked to have been able to do in my garage/loft project. It does, however, leave the end open underneath the stairs for this. If you're hard-to-please and expect to get more than you're paying for, this software may not be for you. Otherwise, I very highly recommend this software... even to those who just want to have fun. I had a ball just learning what all it can do! OH! By the way... for those of you who are into small scale modeling of various sorts INCLUDING model railroading (as I am), this software also allows you to print templates in both architectural scales AND Hobby scales including HO, S, G and O! I recommend a PC with at least a 500+ MHZ processor for the 3D pan-viewing, but my 233 will handle it... slowly.
Rating:
Summary: too hard!
Review: This is a click and drag program which can be manipulated fairly easily, but it is highly limited. The only good thing about this product is that it lets you input dimensions of your own yard, room, etc. However, it assumed all yards are grass, and all hills are round, all fences are wooden stakes.
It does let you change window and door dimensions, configurations, etc., as long as all you want is rectangular. (No oval windows, etc.)
As far as being able to design furniture, which is why we purchased it, it works if all you want to design is gigantic, blocky slabs with NO MEASUREMENTS. Nothing in here is as described on the package. The directions are too simplistic and much is left to learn the hard way. Even then, when you think you've accomplished some design on a floor plan, and turn it to 3-D mode, what you've really designed is a rakish spline hanging in the sky.
The floor plan item works all right, which is the only reason I grudgingly gave it one star. If all you need is a floor plan, however, there are cheaper ways to do it. I HIGHLY recommend a pencil and the back of a paper bag as superior to this program. Save your money. Or, heck, if you really want to try it, buy mine.
Rating:
Summary: Frustrating, Simplistic, and Annoying
Review: This is a click and drag program which can be manipulated fairly easily, but it is highly limited. The only good thing about this product is that it lets you input dimensions of your own yard, room, etc. However, it assumed all yards are grass, and all hills are round, all fences are wooden stakes.
It does let you change window and door dimensions, configurations, etc., as long as all you want is rectangular. (No oval windows, etc.)
As far as being able to design furniture, which is why we purchased it, it works if all you want to design is gigantic, blocky slabs with NO MEASUREMENTS. Nothing in here is as described on the package. The directions are too simplistic and much is left to learn the hard way. Even then, when you think you've accomplished some design on a floor plan, and turn it to 3-D mode, what you've really designed is a rakish spline hanging in the sky.
The floor plan item works all right, which is the only reason I grudgingly gave it one star. If all you need is a floor plan, however, there are cheaper ways to do it. I HIGHLY recommend a pencil and the back of a paper bag as superior to this program. Save your money. Or, heck, if you really want to try it, buy mine.
Rating:
Summary: Okay for beginners....
Review: This is the first home planning software I've ever bought. I found most of it difficult to use until I got accustomed to the program. There are some features I wish it had such as more 'undo' options and more home plans. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known beforehand that it only had 20+/- of it's own house plans that you could alter. Several other similar programs boast 100's of home plans that you can alter to your tastes. Regardless, it's a good program if you want to be able to "build" your home, design the interior, and landscape the outside and fairly simple to use.
Rating: 
Summary: Call their Customer Service First
Review: This product builds you up with alot up marketing. It then shuts you down after needing answers not supplied in weak user's guide. Call Customer service. I did. Send them an email. I did. No response from either attempt at contacting them. Hey? Take a chance if you don't believe me. This is just my personal experience. I'm taking my copy back for a refund. That my punch!
Rating:
Summary: Save your time and Money
Review: This program is absoulutely worthless unless you consider your "Dream House" a rectangal or square. I decided that after using using Broderbund 3D Home Architect Deluxe 2.1 for a couple of years that it was time to move, so I thought. into a program that appeared to have more function and features. Boy was I wrong! Try to design a Country Home with a Wrap around Porch with this program. It can't be done because of the inability to create shed roofs and walls that only have posts and railings. Last year I used the Broderbund 3d 2.1 to design a home remodling project. I'm not saying that Broderbund doesn't have a few quirks but I was able to create multiple roof lines with various pitches and shed roofs, open walls depicting posts, railing and balusters for the porch and tie them all together to get a very realistic portrayal of what the finish project would look like. I couldn't even get close with the Punch Super Home Suite. I thought wow!, Punch provides the Realmodel with all of the wonderful Roof and exterier texture options, the Autoframing, Landscaping etc....... Unfortunently they don't mean a thing when you can't even create,design a relistic protryal of the center piece of the project, THE HOUSE. Lastly, the package comes with what are so called professionly design plans by Wolfgang Trost Architects. It has to be a fictious company. If not they would be the but end of many jokes at their local building and zoning offices. None of the plans they provided in the package would get past design stage if summitted to any competent local building/zoning commitee for review. The flyby function showed rooflines that would be a structural disater if allowed to be built. The packaging of the product by Punch was wonderful with all of the pretty pictures etc...The application was anything but! If you want a resonably price application buy Broderbund 3D Home Deluxe. It may not be as pretty but it is FUNCTIONALLY SUPERIOUR.....
Rating:
Summary: Fun and Disappointing
Review: This program is fun. I built my current house to see how the house would look remodeled. The graphics were good. Easy to use. A couple of things ticked me off. The ability to cut or edit a wall once it is drawn. The roof tool is great if you have only a few types of roofs. You can only change the pitch and sizes. Did they even consider Saltboxes? porch roofs? Hey how about the ability to customize or edit, wallpaper, doors, floors, sidings.
Rating:
Summary: Good program.
Review: This program is one of the easiest to use and great for DESIGNING and VIEWING what your home will look like. If you expect it to lay out professional architectural drawings that you can use to build a home from forget it. Those programs cost hundreds of dollars. Most of the things that are missing you can get from user that have contributed objects and textures. You can also do your own (thus the 3d Furniture Workshop). If you want a program that will do everything for you and have everything that you want, be prepared to spend $500 or more. For the money, this is a great program.
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