Punch Professional Home Design Platinum 8.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)First off, I'll start by saying I have been researching the home designer software titles for months. After exhaustively comparing specs, professional and consumer reviews, I finally landed with Punch!'s new Home Design Platinum 8.0. Platinum 8.0 is newly released, this version only has one upgrade - that's the highest end Punch! product, AS4000. See, the NEW Punch! Professional Home Design Platinum 8.0 is built on the same platform as AS4000 - very impressive to say the least.
Make no mistake, Punch! Platinum 8.0 is very high-end and makes a complete joke out of Better Homes and Gardens home design software...well, the affordable version anyway. If you compare the specs on Better Homes and Gardens 6.0 vs. Punch! Platinum 8.0 you will scratch your head in disbelief at the higher price point on Better Homes and Gardens 6.0! [...]
There is little you cannot do with Punch! Platinum 8.0. The item library is limited, but there are Punch! sites where you can download free user-made 3D objects (very well done I might add). Or, use the built-in CAD creation tool and create them yourself! Or, import a photo of an item. Something I found exceptionally useful. Most if not all the name-brand appliance and home furnishing outlets are online. Well, they normally have pictures of their products. With Punch! Platinum 8.0, you can copy the product picture and import it into your floor plan. How is this useful? Think about this...you design a door, but it doesn't look exactly like the manufacturer's door. Create the door using Punch! Platinum 8.0, then import the picture of the REAL door into the floor plan and place it over your created door!!! Now your looking at a door that looks REAL and will give you a better idea how the door will look with your house! Do the same for cabinets, appliances, and other furnishings!
The design tools are relatively easy to use, and the video tutorials help get your through many functions. Just don't expect to be a pro overnight. I suggest spending only a few hours on it initially, otherwise you can become overwhelmed with frustration. Try building a small house initially with just the foundation, exterior and interior walls. Get an idea of how it works. Then get into designing your house or home addition. When you run into problems, there is a whole network of experts on the Punch! Forums.
One major complaint...and I'm not alone on this one. LiveView isn't all that great. It will take you hours to get used to it's controls. Worse yet, you cannot change the viewing angle when using walk-through mode. That's absurd! In other words, if you wanted to look down a staircase, look up at your wonderful cathedral ceiling, you can't. Hopefully, Punch! will release an update to fix this...it's a common complaint.
Well, this is already to long for anyone to read, but I'll end by saying that Punch! Platinum 8.0 is definitely worth every penny! Better yet, they give you a FREE 90-Day Satisfaction Return Guarantee!

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With Punch! Professional Home Design Suite Platinum 8.0 you get the power of professional home design software (Punch! Professional Home Design Suite), plus fully-integrated landscape software (Punch! Master Landscape). This easy-to-use home and landscape design package will have you planning the home of your dreams in minutes.

Punch! Professional Home Design Suite lets you design and view all of your home's rooms in photo-realistic 3D. Punch!'s PhotoView technology lets you import real-world photos into your home and landscape designs to create a truly realistic image of your home.

You can import a photo of your own home, add landscaping design or deck design, and then view your work from any angle -- all in realistic, 3D perspective. What's more, the software's LiveView window continually updates your home designs, in real-time and in 3D, as you draw. Meanwhile, interior and exterior 2D elevations are available with a single mouse click and the exclusive ClearView tool renders your design with a "glass house" effect, allowing you to see through walls to maximize your design space. The powerful 3D graphics engine also lets you create real-time walk or fly-throughs of your designs.

Creating wonderful new spaces outside your home is just as easy as creating the interiors. The garden and landscape design tools allow you to create multi-level or multi-story decks with 3D photo-realistic textures, stairs, railings, object placement, and color capabilities. Helpful deck design wizards walk you through railing, baluster options, and more. Choose a basic shape or create one from scratch and watch the program draft a beautiful 3D rendering of your new deck design. Your deck and landscaping designs come to life with photo-realistic 3D -- complete with shadows -- giving you a stunning, true-to-life representation of your home design. Plus, the integrated PlantFinder provides extensive information for a wide variety of plant species including botanical name, soil and moisture requirements, mature height and other facts so you choose exactly what you want for your garden and landscape design. Tap into information for over 2,000 selections of flowers, shrubs, trees, ornamental grasses, ground cover, and more.

Other features built into the Home Design Suite are designed to give you incredibly detailed control over your design decisions. Features like Cabinet Wizard for your kitchen designs, as well as modules for plumbing HVAC, electrical wiring, and even your house foundation are included. There's even a Home Estimator module for estimating your construction costs.

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