Thread: House Design Software

There's a whole range of software in the market place Chris with a variety of prices and learning curves required to drive them.
I've personally only used Autodesk products over the years with AutoCad LT being the baby of the range. If you haven't used Cad before you should be reasonably competent after 2 - 3 weeks with the basic 2d packages.
Which ever way you go the programmes only draw lines or streamline the drawing process. You still have to have a thorough knowledge of architectural drafting, regulations etc to produce drawings to a level for submission to council.
If your just looking for a programme to produce a scaled layout of your ideas to pass on to someone to finalise the drawings for you then any of the under $200 software programmes will fit the bill.

I have just submitted plans to our shire for a 45 sq m deck off the second story of a our house, and what a trial that was!

I was going to employ a drafstman to do it, but the job is too small, so the price was $1500 +, as nobody wanted to do the job.

I experimented with a couple of supposedly easy to use 3d design tools, such as BH & G Home Designer Suite amongst them. The learning curve was just too long for such a simple task.

Anyway, I decided to go it alone, and draw it by hand. I bought a scale ruler, which is worth it's weight in gold, BTW, and a A3 pad of grid paper.

As stated previously, the biggest stress was not the drawing, but the structural integrity of the deck. I was dreaming about span table at night!

Personally, I think the $200-300 would be better spent elsewhere, software of that calibre might not be able to do the job you want, draftsmen use software that is worth $1500 +, and is extremely powerful and takes a long time to learn how to use, that's why you pay them so much to design the house. If it is just to get your design ideas across to the draftsman, then I reckon you can't beat the pad and pencil, there is no learning curve, and all your effort can go into the ideas, not learning how to use a piece of software.

Most councils will accept a hand drawn plan as long as it has all the relevant information on it.

When we did the extension on the house we are living in at the moment I drew what we wanted and took it to a supposed draughtsman, I had all the details that were needed all he had to do was pretty it up, simple.

Wrong......
I had to go over the "professional" plans myself and add all the stuff he didnt put on there, the bloke from the council saw it and when I explained he told me I should have saved my money and submitted the first ones I had drawn up as they are acceptable.

Draw up a rough plan and see what Sir Stinkalot can do for you.



Al

What about SketchUp? Its free and you can print to scale drawings in plan, elevation etc, and Isometric. Heaps of good video tutorials on the net too. I ain't reaching for a pencil and paper again.

Thanks for the input. I downloaded a program called Chief Architect. It looks fantastic however, it will take months to get my head around half the things it does.

I'll PM Stinky and see what he can do for me.

Originally Posted by Grunt

Thanks for the input. I downloaded a program called Chief Architect. It looks fantastic however, it will take months to get my head around half the things it does.

Ive never used design software before, and I got the basics down for SketchUp in about 4 hours. = $0

I use Chief Architect.

There are two problems with it - it has a huge learning curve and it's very US oriented.

However it is fantastic for drawing up a floor plan and then doing 3D walkthroughs so you can see what it will look like.

Measure up all your furniture and drop it in so you can make sure that things will fit and that it's practical.

It's even worth doing it if you're going to get someone else to do the drawings (which is what I did) because it will save you money if you already know what you want.

How much did you pay for it? There is a number of versions out there.

I forget. I got it about 5 or 6 years ago. Not cheap...

Grunt,
do you want to learn how to drive a CAD program or do you just want to draw up your plans? If the formwer then I can't advise you, but for the latter, buy, borrow or make yourself a T square and buy some set squares, mechanical pencils and a scale rule and go for it. CAD is only a tool for producing drawings, but you don't yet know how to use it. In less time than it will take you to learn you can use tools that you already know how to use to produce your drawings. I've hand drawn a few plans and succesfully submitted them to council. They don't need to be pretty, just need to have all the relevant information. People have been hand drawing plans for a few hundred (or more) years quite succesfully.

Mick

I'd suggest going with the hand drawn method but have a friendly chat with the building dep't first to see what documentation they want.
The real benefit with CAD programmes is in the speeding up of repetitive drawing - i've got all window types & sizes in both plan & elevation predrawn & it's just a case of cut & paste. Same with door assemblies, baths, sinks, toilets, room labels, construction notes etc
If we do a new home design the client can come back to us years down the track & we can do redraws for extensions, decks etc quickly & at a cheaper price because we don't have to do a complete redraw.

For 3D work I use Architectural Desktop which can automatically generate elevations, sections etc from the floor plan. Probably the only thing it can't do is whistle dixy & put up with my temper tantrums but it took around 12 months [part time] fiddling to get the most out of it & around $8000 [from memory] - not something you'd waste your time on for a one off job

There's nothing wrong with submitting a hand drawn design but it will still come back to having all the correct details on the drawings to satisfy council.

FWIW I did my set of plans by hand. They were for a renovation. It went through a few iterations before I got the final design right. I think I've still got all the old rejects lying around somewhere. Each one represents hours of drawing. I submitted them to council and had no problems with the approval.

The thing I like about CAD (and in particular architectural packages like Chief Architect) is that you can do 'what ifs' easily. For example, SWMBO comes in and says "I wonder what it would be like if we had the kitchen on the other side and put the kid's rumpus room down the back". With Chief Architect, you just save a copy and then butcher it to your heart's content. You can always go back to the original, or use the new one.

With paper, every time you want to make a change or try something new, you have to start again.

What I did with the house we just built is I spent a few hours in front of the computer (granted I already knew how to use the package) drawing up what we wanted. I started with room 'modules', which are like boxes that you drop on the page roughly where you want them. You move them around and resize until you've got what you want, then click a button and the package turns all the modules into walls and doors. It guesses where you want doors - some were a bit odd, like in one case it put a door in the back of a wardrobe that opened into the bedroom behind. I'm sure the guests would love that.

This does all the tedious drag and draw stuff to get the walls in place. Then you can resize them and drop in windows etc. Muck about with furniture etc.

Then I sat down with SWMBO and we went through the whole thing, using the 3D camera to see what the rooms would look like with furniture etc. She wanted a few things changed, so we'd try different things. We'd sleep on it for a few days and then go back to it. Whole thing took about 4 weeks I think before we had something we were happy with.

Then we printed it out on A4 and took it to a designer. He had a look over it and suggested a few changes, made sure it would comply with the building code etc. Then he drew it up on paper (by hand) and after a couple of iterations, we submitted it.

Originally Posted by ausdesign

The real benefit with CAD programmes is in the speeding up of repetitive drawing - i've got all window types & sizes in both plan & elevation predrawn & it's just a case of cut & paste. Same with door assemblies, baths, sinks, toilets, room labels, construction notes etc
If we do a new home design the client can come back to us years down the track & we can do redraws for extensions, decks etc quickly & at a cheaper price because we don't have to do a complete redraw.

For 3D work I use Architectural Desktop which can automatically generate elevations, sections etc from the floor plan. Probably the only thing it can't do is whistle dixy & put up with my temper tantrums but it took around 12 months [part time] fiddling to get the most out of it & around $8000 [from memory] - not something you'd waste your time on for a one off job

I know this is falling on deaf ears, but you can do all of those things with SketchUp 6.0(free version. I think the Pro 6.0 is $600+).

Grunt, at least download it and have a play. Do some research on it, as there is loads of info on it. There is also a guru on SU on the Sawmill creek WWForum if you've got any Q's.
Not going to cost a cent. (Wheres Zenwood when you need him. )

It's not falling on deaf ears matrix.
But if you're in doubt repeat it a couple of more times