Home Designer Professional 8
Page 3
The CAD tools allow you to take a side picture of a wall, save it to a certain format then import it and change some of the aspects then add in with the CAD tools to get your detail drawings. Things like foundation footings, wall sections and roof truss joints are going to be needed on final blueprints and why pay someone else to do this if you can.
Of course this is something you may want to just skip over and let the construction company take care of but the nice thing with this program is you can do it, easily. The Home Design program gives you all the choices from colors and materials to the manufacturers of the common home construction materials out there like Benjamin Moore and Armstrong.
The new and added features of the Professional version give you all the tools you need to design and print a full blueprint of a home. You can also use the program to perform some very detailed remodeling work or even some great deck and landscaping but this is the add on parts and not the main features.
The professional version has all the added features that go beyond the do it yourselfer wanting to redesign a room or give a floor plan to an architect to show what you want in a home. The only thing missing here for a full sized blueprint is the large matrix plotter to handle the 18” x 24” layout blueprints this program can produce.
The Home Designer 8 Pro version comes with the full program on a DVD, the DVD tutorial video and a reference manual that is over 800 pages that covers all the main features. You also get the website support and added downloads the company offers and continues to add to like new kitchen appliances and landscaping that companies continue to make.
The Home Designer 8 Professional version is a great fully featured software suite for home design that has all the tools to build your own blueprints. The next best thing that I could see is the much more expensive version that is more for the professional from Chief Architect.
If I was doing some remodeling projects and just wanting to see what things were going to look like or handing a set of plans to someone else to make the blueprints I would stick with the Home Designer Suite 8. For a more complete suite of programs that goes into the finest details the Home Designer 8 Professional may be all you need to hand a complete set of blueprints to a construction company or city for permits.