How They’re MarketedTwo of the programs, Chief Architect and SoftPlan, let you design everything that goes into and around a house. In SketchUp, everything has to be drawn manually, although over time you can build a library of parts you’ve drawn. With most of the others, we found it faster to “draw” the members and place them with a mouse click. For example, most of the programs don’t adjust the location of the main beam if the deck bumps out - you have to move it manually (see drawings, facing page).Īt complex framing design, Chief Architect is the best of the bunch. We also found that when the deck had angles or offsets, the automatically placed framing elements didn’t always end up where we would have placed them. The quality of this feature varies, though. With all the programs except SketchUp, you can create construction drawings for simple decks by drawing a perimeter and having the program automatically fill it in with elements like joists and beams. Machines with less RAM or without a dedicated video card will still run these programs - they just won’t do it as well. A dedicated video card is a good idea, as well. Make sure you have enough installed (8GB is a good amount). RAM is the memory largely responsible for the speed of image-intensive software like these CAD programs. If you’re serious about doing design work on a computer, be serious about your computer. Most have modular parts you can simply drop into place - from joists and beams to landscaping elements like trees, shrubs, and walkways.
With some of the programs, you can import a photo of the clients’ house and build a rendering against it, while with others you have to draw the house. What the Programs DoEach of the programs we tested - Chief Architect, DeckTools, Realtime Landscaping Architect, SketchUp, SoftPlan, and VizTerra - has good points.Īll are capable of producing renderings you can e-mail your clients as a sales tool, though SketchUp requires complementary software to do this well (accompanying each program’s review, except for SketchUp, is a rendering generated by that program see pages 28 to 32). And finally, as with any tool purchase, you need to consider your budget. You also have to think about how hard you’re willing to work to learn the program and how much support you’ll require. Do you want a sales tool that produces renderings to show your customers? Or a design tool capable of producing detailed drawings you can give to the building department and your crews? Do you want a cost-estimating feature? Do you want to design more than decks - say, porches or additions? The first step to finding the right one for you is deciding what you want it to do. No single CAD program is best for all deck builders. Whether you’re dissatisfied with your current program or you’re making your first foray into CAD, buying a new program means investing a chunk of time and money hopefully this article will help you spend both wisely. How do the various CAD programs out there stack up for deck builders? That’s the question we set out to answer.
#DECK AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN SOFTWARE FREE MANUAL#
The drawing on the bottom shows the manual changes that were needed. In the drawing at top, the deck bumps out, but the software continued the main beam straight.
While most do an adequate job automatically filling in the framing, they tend to hiccough when the deck isn’t a simple rectangle. A common weak spot for all the software was the framing drawings.
0 kommentar(er)
