Design your own home
By MIKE BERMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
January 23, 2002

Some of us dream about designing and building our own homes.

Others do it.

The Professional Home Design Suite ($89.95) from Punch! Software can help you make that dream come true.

This is the most complete home designer I've seen, and I've played with quite a few. But it's not for those of us who are easily frustrated or have a need to do everything on the computer in less than an hour. There area lot of things for a novice to learn. And if you're not willing to spend the time experimenting and learning to use all the tools in this package, do yourself a favor - hire a professional.

The suite has 3D Home Exterior & Interior Design, Ultimate Deck, 3D Landscape, 3D Furniture Workshop, FloorPlan Trace, Home Estimator, AutoFraming, 3D RealMode, Foundation Planner, HVAC Planner, Electrical Planner, Plumbing Planner, 2D Elevations and the ClearView transparent viewer. All these tools are designed to work together to give you a complete picture of what your dream home will look like.

You begin by creating the foundation and exterior walls, eventually adding electrical wiring, plumbing and placing furniture. You can even design your landscape, placing trees and flowers to your heart's content.

The manual was my constant companion as I became familiar with all the features and tools included in the program. In fact, the first two chapters give a comprehensive overview of how to use the program and show you how all the components work together.

After I finally mastered all the components, I was ready to design my first home. Although I could have taken the easy way out and used one of the 20 professionally designed plans that came with the program, I jumped in, determined to create an architectural masterpiece. This is where your frustration level comes into play.

My first few efforts were far from perfect, but - with time and effort - I created my masterpiece, complete with real floor-plan notations and a professional-looking drawing of what the finished product will look like.

Some key features:

- 19 auto-insert, customizable "click and drag" window styles that you can stain or paint and flip horizontally or vertically.

- Stair design tools, including curves and handrails.

- 12 auto-insert, customizable door styles that can be clicked and dragged anywhere in your plan. You can also click and drag the door swing angle and adjust width, height and trim.

- All elements of the foundation - slab, pier, support beams and post tension - are automatically excavated into the lot. It also automatically draws footings and includes an elevation slider basement tool.

- You can scan and import existing designs.

- One mouse click frames your house, including custom stud spacing.

- The Auto Wall Generator includes automatic floor generation (which can be turned off), custom shapes, designs, elevations, angles and sizes.

- Furnishing and landscape objects, including everything from sinks to shrubs.

- Thousands of textures and colors for carpets, siding, grass, etc.

- Photo-realistic technology that gives you a real-time walk-through and "fly-around" of your home. You can even walk up and down stairs.

- A standard spreadsheet interface that outlines the schedules for each phase of the project.

- A fully-integrated 3D CAD program that can be integrated into your design.

The final result is a complete plan of your dream home, ready to be shown to an architect and contractor, which is the next step in bringing this dream to reality.