Punch! Home Design Studio (Mac) [OLD VERSION]

This is absolutely the worst home design program I have ever used. In the past I've used 3D Home Architect and Better Homes and Gardens, but I recently bought a Mac so I could no longer use my old programs. I bought this one because the Punch website had tons of beautifully rendered graphics and they supposedly won several awards. Here's the truth-the graphics are the worst I've seen on a home design program since the early 90's. Far from being realistic, they remind me of that old Dire Straits video "Money for Nothing". The objects lack basic details like door knobs and trim with beveled edges. Also, there are very few objects to choose from, for instance there's only one shower and it's a corner shower. So if you would like anything other than a corner shower in your bathroom, that's just too bad. They also only have one style of kitchen sink-a double bowl. So again, if you would like a single or a triple sink, I guess you'll just have to use your imagination. The program is also supposed to draw curved walls. Well, that's a lie. The truth is it draws a "curve" by using a group of straight and diagonal walls. So if you want to draw a circle, it will come out an octagon. The other major problem I have with this program is how hard it is to use. All of the other home design programs I've had in the past were so easy, I could immediately start using them without having to study the manual. But this one is so complicated, I had to read half the manual just to figure out how to zoom in and out of the screen. I've now read the entire manual with the hope that once I've learned everything, I'll be able to enjoy it. But every time I use it, I just want to cry because it's such a terrible program. Bottom line, don't let Punch's fancy ads and awards fool you. This program just sucks!

Being the only home design software for the Mac I could find at an affordable (but not inexpensive) price, I bought a copy of Punch! Home Design Studio to use in designing a remodel of our kitchen. I had used another vendor's software to do a bath redesign a few years ago, so this ought to be a quick learning curve. Wrong. This is the only time I have regretted gettng the Mac.Punch! Home Design Studio is not in the least intuitive, and seems to have a mind of its own, which it cannot make up. So if you like surprises, you'll love Punch! Home Design Studio.The process seems to want to start with the foundation. A good idea for your building contractor, but not for the designer.The package does include a paper manual, which should make an old guy like me happy, but it is pretty pathetic. And of course the help screens just parrot the stuff in the manual.So, to plan my remodel I had to get out the old t-square and pencil, and wish I had started there in the first place. Anybody need to design their foundation?

I've been working with this software five days a week, 7-plus hours a day. I've read many reviews about it. And I confess to being completely baffled by this puzzling mystery: Why don't the Punch software people invest in some good interface design for a major new Punch release? This software has such obvious potential.The review consensus, here and at other sites, seems to boil down to this: it is hands-down, the best home-design out there. AND this is faint praise because it has few competitors that can touch it in power and flexibility, short of a professional CAD program. This is a mass-market product; there are lots of small businesses trying to use it as well as plenty of homeowners. Judging by these reviews, the program's actual use seems simultaneously to be a most frustrating experience for many reviewers, with clumsy navigation, less-than-optimal implementations of half-thought-out features, barely adequate libraries, and just plain missing features, along with the best graphics engine in its niche.After using it myself, I have some suggestions to make. In fact, I'll lead the redesign team myself, if they want me to, because for me, it was hours of fun. Really. with so much missed revenue-generating potential, I'd work for stock options. The property has SUCH potential that I don't know why it's been overlooked by its publishers.First, I think the rendering engine on this program is really impressive. It has reasonable rendering rates on reasonably affordable platforms such as the Intel-backed iMacs. It seems quite stable and responsive, even on older Macs, though the speed differences can vary widely with different OS/hardware combinations (I did not test it on the PC).That said, the critics are only partly right about the usability problems. I am an experienced user of 3D programs, and after an hour or so, I had the navigation down pretty well in the Live View window. It is reasonably usable, meaning my sense is, if the features justified the investment, most people who could benefit from using this software would be able to learn it.Usability could be improved, and brought closer to standards established by other graphical design and visualization software, especially for navigation and window control in the 2D tools. But most of the core features are in place.The real missed opportunity here lies in features. Many of the features most useful to users are also target-marketing opportunities to die for. For instance, the program has Content Libraries, and advertises their availability as a feature. The libraries include content from home design product vendors, such as tile, paint, and wallpaper vendors. I was pleased to see they had a Partner program that included Sherwin-Williams, since there was a store near the design site. I'd looked forward to picking up paint chips and trying out various colors. The problem was, there was no way to match the color samples at Sherwin-Williams to the representations of color in the program. After three weeks, I hadn't discovered any way to know what color to buy once I'd chosen something from the S-W paint library, nor had I found a way to input a color by number, update new samples from the Sherwin-Williams web site, or mix a color from a palette and find the closest match to paint that met my criteria, such as interior vs. exterior, or finish availability.You see what I mean? This is an obvious win-win if Punch can work a bit on that partner program and the business model supporting it. Sherwin-Williams would sell more paint (and get an edge on Behr's until THEY sign a partner agreement with Punch), and the consumer is delighted to buy the software when they find out they can actually preview their actual paint color. Doh! What am I missing here? Can it be this easy?Punch's concept is right, but the libraries are so disappointingly limited that its utility as a design tool is likewise limited. Design features we wanted to add, such as a greenhouse window, were missing. Simple window features, such as recessed frames, are missing. These are missed opportunities for manufacturers of windows. Well, you can't have everything before you ship, right?No, but you can provide ways of updating content, and importing and exporting content so users who have unique architectural features can create them. Perhaps they could share objects with others. Users creating and sharing (free) content creates user communities. User communities create more marketing opportunities. More content attracts more users.Punch's decision to use a proprietary graphics format just doesn't seem to make economic sense. I could find only one "power user"" advertising her work on the user forums, a clear sign that the format is a forbidding hurdle even for users with considerable 3D modeling experience. This is an old business model, and Google's SketchUp, with it's open formats, may eventually catch up with it.All of this is a shame, because the software is lots of fun, despite these gripes. We've found it useful. So on the whole, I'd buy it again. But what a shame.