punch professional home design suite review

#Punch professional home design suite review software
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Once you’ve got your design down pat you can use the Material Painter or the Material Eyedropper to make it more lifelike. The Plant Chooser is particularly good, enabling you to search not just by name but by characteristics – so if you want a particular colour of foliage or want plants that will attract butterflies and birds, you can search specifically for plants that meet those criteria and add them to your plan. The Terrain menu enables you to create a realistic or fantastical landscape to sit your building in, and you can customise it with everything from plants to water features. The app is just as interested in what’s outside your dream home as what’s in it.

#Punch professional home design suite review free

Many of these objects are provided free by the developers or by manufacturers who see them as an opportunity to advertise their products, but some are chargeable: expect to pay $2.99 for a typical collection of lights, cupboard doors or mirrors.

#Punch professional home design suite review download

If realism is your goal you can expand the collection by getting extra objects online, so for example you can download particular garage doors, lighting ranges or potted plants. They’re organised into clear categories – architectural, backdrops, exterior and interior features and so on – and include everything from speakers to spiral staircases, chandeliers to computers. Home Designer Suite 2020 also includes an extensive library of predefined objects that you can drag and drop into your floorplan. As you’d expect there are predefined objects for essential items such as doors, windows, stairs and electrical outlets (if you’re outside the US, these might not be appropriate: for example the UK symbols for power outlets are different than the ones the app provides).

The Build menu makes it really easy to create almost any kind of structure, with options not just for walls but for fencing, decking and railings too. The app also includes standard CAD drawing tools and shapes and text boxes. They also snap to each other, so when two sections of your wall meet the app automatically creates an angled join. Dimensions are displayed as you draw, and unless you specify otherwise your drawings snap to the grid. To build your first structure it’s just a matter of choosing the section you want to add, so for example to draw an exterior wall you’d select Build > Wall > Straight Exterior Wall and then position it by drawing it on screen. While the interface might appear a little frightening at first, it’s actually very easy to use. To be fair, the same was true when I tested the kitchen-specific IKEA Home Planner and Punch Software’s Home & Landscape Design NexGen 3.To create a structure, create each floor in the Floor Plan view and then switch to 3D to see the results (Image credit: Carrie Marshall) When I was creating my imaginary abode, I was able to fudge on the details a bit whenever necessary, but when held to a more exacting standard, I found the experience frustrating. That’s because I found it cumbersome to place all of the existing elements, like cabinets, sinks, and load-bearing walls, in their exact location.

#Punch professional home design suite review software

The results were less impressive when I tried to use the software to remodel my existing kitchen. The result was impressive, especially when viewed with the application’s 3D capability. The experience was fun, though it took a bit of time, especially when it came to adding doors, windows, and interior design elements, like fireplaces. I used the HGTV software to create my dream house, based on nothing more than a design in my head. You can turn these tips off, but I never felt comfortable enough to do so. And every time you click a new tool, the tutorial window helps you use it. When you begin a project, a tutorial window appears to guide you through the process. HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite lets you pretend to be one of the network’s home design experts.To its credit, Home & Landscape Platinum Suite does guide you through using its many features as best it can.