Product Description

Interior Design Suite Apply your design in seconds! There are thousands of new furniture objects and accessories included in Interior Design Suite. Re-create your own existing furniture by simply entering dimensions. Add any digital picture, like a special rug, your family portrait, or even a pet to your design. The Punch Door, Window Designer, and the Trim Wizard for designing intricate trim, makes the design possibilities endless. System Requirements: Pentium, Celeron, Xeon, AMD Athlon, Duron, Opteron, Turion, Centrino. 64 MB of Ram. Windows 98 or higher. 3.0 GB, VGA card capable of displaying at least 800x600 with 16 bit color depth. (24 bit recommended) 32MB or higher, CD-rom drive, Mouse or pointing device.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #646 in Software
• Brand: Punch Software
• Model: 81500
• Released on: 2005-10-25
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows NT
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.50 pounds

Features

• Select from a huge assortment of doors, windows, furniture, and cabinets included in the object library
• Choose everything from paint to wallpaper to sink & faucet designs -- it's all here for you
• Basic drag-and-drop functions apply the right colors and textures to your new interior
• Trace a unique floor plan that fits your sense of style and makes the most of your space
• Turn layered drawings on and off for uncluttered viewing of your home design -- combine as few or as many layers as you wish

From the Manufacturer
Punch! Interior Design Suite takes the best of all Punch! Software features, adds powerful new technologies, includes top home improvement manufacturer product libraries and combines them all into one easy-to-use interface.

Punch! Interior Design Suite allows you to renew or redo your entire home from kitchen and bath design to basement remodeling, you have the power at your fingertips.

What you can do:

• Design your own storage with the Cabinet Wizard
• Layout your rooms easily with the Room Wizard
• Make moldings and baseboards with the Trim Designer
• Frame your outdoor view with the Window Designer
• Build a hearth for your home with the Fireplace Wizard
• Try new treatments with Decorator Theme Palettes
• Get help when you need it with the Help Tutorials
• Take a view through your roof by designing skylights
• Make your furniture fit with object resizing

Customer Reviews

Harder to use than I expected -- here are some tips
This proved to be a very powerful program, but heed the warnings about how difficult it is to use. I use parts of MS office that no one has seen before and have a background in computer programming, and this suite still drove me very close to tears.

I used this just for an apartment floor plan to think through moving walls around, not for complete house construction or modeling.

Here are some tips that might make things smoother for you:

- For some reason, the default flooring thickness is 12", so my doors were getting lopped off at knee-level. Once I reset all the flooring thickness to 1", I could see the bottoms of my doors again.

- If you have a wide screen and it's set to 120 DPI, the display chops of some of the customization controls on the right side of the screen.

- The distinction between exterior and interior walls matters, and is often at the root of flooring and ceiling problems. (E.g., grass in the living room or tiled front lawn.) The wall types sometimes morph into each other by rules I never figured out. If I had to do this again, I'd do all the exterior walls first, lock them against changes, and then add interior ones.

- My performance with the undirected fly-through is exactly what you'd expect from watching me play speedracer. Better way: Click on the binoculars on the left and you get cursor you can position for a "controlled walkthrough." You can look around using the 3-d display, but no more accidentally falling through the floor.

You get what you put into this software.
I have purchased both the Home & Gardens interior and the Punch interior software. Home & Gardens is much easier to use. You can really start without reading much of the manual. Punch demands that you read the manual (342 pages). It is not intuative. But Punch can do so much more and has so much more creativity. IE: Punch has a library of trees, shrubs and flowers for your yard. Home & Gardens only have potted plants, nothing you can use to landscape. Punch also allows you to make custom doors or windows to your exact specifications. H&G doesn't. You have to choose a set style of door or window and change options.I also could place digital photos of my backyard behind my "house" on Punch to make it more realisitic. I like both software programs, but Punch has more options, but you have to do your homework first.

Punch for Beginners
I was very anxious to receive the Punch software and thought I would be able to figure it out quickly (despite the warnings of previous reviewers). Unfortunately after 4 hours, a pinky cramp, and much frustration I found the other reviews to be very accurate. . . the software is not intuitive and you spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what you did wrong/what to do next. It would have been helpful to me if the user manual had a quick 1-2-3 guide, tipsheet, or easy button for those of us who just want to create and decorate a room---not build an entire house (or maybe that's in there somewhere and I missed it).

I also found the paint choices to be limited. Long and short of it, I put it down and have not gone back to it. My decorating project is now complete without help from Punch. Maybe I'll try tackling Punch again one day, but as of now I consider it a waste of money.