I have been doing my own designing and drawing for my projects for several years. I remodel existing spaces as well as do 1 and 2 story additions. I’ve owned a computer for a couple of years ,but have mostly used it for word processing, a little bookkeeping, and business forms. I am very interested in learning a cad program. Of course, I am looking for something cheap (maybe used ?) and quick and easy to learn (way too much to hope for ?) and especially suited to residential remodeling and custom homebuilding. I glimpsed a discussion a few weeks back, so I apologize if this is redundant. Thanks for any and all feedback.
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Everyone will have a preference. I use cheif architect the full version around 900, but a very good program is 3-d home architect. about 40. It is a mini version of chief and if you learn 3-d home you can jump to chief. One will import to the other too. 3-d home will get you up and running with a learning curve of about a day. with chief you can click a button and switch to full cad and not click and drag exsisting walls , windows etc.
both of them , you need to know code, with my version of chief it does not size beams etc, which it did, maybe a new version does
go to the web site for a demo
Thanks siverhammer
I actually do have 3-D home Architect, but haven't given it much attention. it was a disk given me by a friend. I'll check into it now. An architect friend told me about Autodesk just a little bit ago. Does anyone have any feedback on that ?
About Acad...
It's not easy and it's not cheap.
I dismissed suggesting it based on your criteria.
I have a degree in Cad, have used it for years. Tommorrow I'm dumping it for softplan.
I don't know about chief architect, but softplan has a lite version. I think it is around $400.
Auto Cad is hand drafting on super steroids. If you can do it by hand you can do it better in Auto Cad, but it is general drafting tool. If you want to draw a line, you draw a line. If you want to draw a wall you draw two lines. It does have its advantages, but I wouldn't even concider it for what you want. Unless you want to go on Kazaa and download it for free. I had a friend that was able to get the full Acad2002 from Kazaa. It took him three weeks of nights on dial-up.
Also go on ebay and look for old versions of software. If you want autocad any version newer that R13 will work.
shep ..we use Chief Architect... now loading vs. 9.5.. been using it since '97 (vs. 5.0)
the 3 programs most builders use are Chief, Softplan, and Vectorworks
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
You might want to check the following recent threads, there are also a number of older ones if you can find them with the "search" feature:
37574.1
35699.1
35551.1
36226.1
Thank you for the referals to the threads...lots of great info and opinions!
Have a look at this: http://www.imsisoft.com/
There is no best and there is no easiest. There's "best for what you need to do" and there's "easiest given your bkg and skill." And with CAD more than most, that's gonna vary by person. For my work, scripting is a huge part of making CAD work with round stuff, but most people wouldn't put such high value on it. So, be really clear on what you need it to do, and what you don't need, and use that to narrow your list.