Best Home Building Software?

[Jim Smolka]

Time to build a barn for my wife's horses. Afterwhich, I can then build onto the garage so I can have the 3rd bay with a lift.

Anyway, I need to design the barn (24'x48'). I have used autocad inventor 3D software, but there may be a better home building software package out there. Here is a list features needed.

1. 3 D modeling
2. From scratch design
3. Generate drawings in 2D
4. Show Details
5. Foundations
6. Edit in details and comments
5. ??

What have folks used. And what SW is cost effective?

TIA

[ckissick]

Obviously, I did a search. So, almost 5 years later how about a bump?

I'm designing a house and have the same question. What's a good software package? Hopefully, someone will respond this time.

[porsche4life]

Google sketchup is pretty damn good for free. You might play with it until you get something else bought. I used it to mock up a little shed and put conceptual drawings in a presentation and it worked great.

[silverwhaletail]

I used "Chief Architect" to build a custom home.

It's "little brother", Chief Architect Home Designer, would have been just as good. You can probably get it at Staples or Best Buy.

I still had to hire an engineer to convert my plans to blueprints and then "wet stamp" them.

[imcarthur]

We are just wrapping a bathroom reno plan & I have noticed all of the cabinet dealers are using interior design software from 20 20 Technologies. But . . . from the website 20 20 it appears to be aimed at the commercial market & undoubtedly has a commercial price tag. fwiw

Ian

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Sketchup is a great piece of software for massing models and doing preliminary layouts... We use it professionally up to the point where we start thinking about details and formal contract documents. And it's very simple to use - you can be decent with it after an afternoon messing around with it.