What Architecture Software?

[brandon184]

I'm looking for some architecture software. For design homes and stuff. I want something where I can design the interior and exterior of the home, and the have a roundabout view of the exterior of the house.

[brandon184]

^

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

can you afford Auto CAD 2000? If not just go to your local computer software store I'm sure you'll see something that can fill your needs. I usually see several of them.

[brandon184]

I can afford it, but how easy is it to use? And/or learn?

Most architecture software that I've used is fairly easy.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Auto CAD may have a small learning curve but it is worth it. Although the last version that I used regularly was release 13 or so (one of the DOS versions, uh ) back in 1992-94. I happen to have a copy of Auto CAD 2000 but I havn't quite had the time to play around with it yet, I would expect that it is more featured than the version that I am used to. I know it exports to *.dxf for importing into a 3D rendering program such as 3D Studio and the like...

In the older version, most of the "drawing" was done with coordinates: point to point lines, arcs, bisections, etc...

Sorry, I wish I could help more but, I wouldn't want to give bad advise since I havn't used the windows version much yet.

[This message has been edited by Mr. Mojo Risin (edited 09-18-2000).]

[RampageIII]

How about Broderbund 3D Home Architect? Easy to use and there are various versions for deck design and landscaping.

[cynik]

Hey dude. I'd go for AutoCAD 2000 LT if I were you. Why? It offers almost all of what ACAD 2000 has, but at not even *1/10th* the price (trust me - I'm sure you won't notice the difs like lisp support, etc, lots of stuff ACAD vets use).

If ACAD 2000 LT is still too much (about 500 american I'm guessing), Autodesk (the company that makes AutoCAD) offers tons of variants of ACAD that are stripped down in different ways to suit some particular needs (these versions are usually bare bones though, hence my strong preference for 2000 LT).

I'm an AutoCAD tech myself, and I personally almost always use LT. It doesn't take very much time at all to learn to use ACAD. Give yourself a little while with the manual and your computer to learn the basics (not even a week), and from there on its all about efficiency. An ape could use AutoCAD. An intelligent ape will do it in half the time (using ACAD "tricks", just learning to do things as fast as they can be done in ACAD with the same final result - and trust me, there's *lots* of ways to do anything in ACAD).

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. Just wanted to state my whole point, as thus:

Get ACAD 2000 LT (also called Lite). It's worth it, and it's compatible with pretty much any other drafting proggie out there.

Regards

cynik