Most Plumbers and other tradesmen will at some time during their career have to use design drawings to complete parts of their work. If you have worked on New Build then you should be very familiar with the types of drawings needed in our trade. The most popular being a basic 2D Floor Plan layout drawing with details of the installation you need to fit. These drawings often include positions of appliances,fixtures, pipe routes,pipe sizes and any other details required by the installer to make sure the work is completed correctly.
Obviously most companies working along side large builders and landlords can afford to invest time and money into training staff and purchasing decent CAD software packages to enable them to produce good quality drawings. As a self employed tradesman I can neither afford to spend my time or money on such items but I also do not want to loose work because I could not produce what a customer requires. I have produced a couple myself during the last year or two.
With this in mind I have been testing out a number of computer programs, with the aim to see if I can produce my own drawings to a decent standard, without it costing much money and a lot of time and brainpower. (I am a Plumber after all, who can only just work my email correctly)
During this process I have tried out at least 10 to 15 different programs maybe even more and of the ones I tried you could put them into two broad categories, CAD and Home Designer although some fitted into both. In the CAD category you have programs that in the right hands are capable of anything. These programs though take a lot of time and skill to use and are not what I was looking for.
That leaves Home designer programs, which are aimed at home owners, interior designers and so on. The great thing about these programs is they are designed towards the less experienced user meaning less time is needed to learn how to use them and drawing tools are simplified. They also due to the target customers have various levels of 3D rendering to enable “life like views” of your created buildings. On the down side I found that a good percentage of these programs could not be used due to a lack of basic CAD tools like drawing lines to represent pipework. This was a shame as a couple I tried were excellent at everything else, even some free-ware versions.
I am planning to post a few reviews of what i found to be the best software to use, based on ease of use, features and of course price.
Your 3D Home Designer 2 (Deluxe Edition)
RRP - £9.99
Price - £5.97 @ www.Amazon.co.uk
By - Focus Multimedia
www.focusmm.co.uk/shop/home.php
Windows XP, Vista, 7.
REVIEW:
Program Layout: with a basic but pleasant format it does not take a lot of time to be able to start drawing with this software and most tools can be found with ease.
Tools: you get all the tools needed to create basic floor plans, walls are easy to construct and you can even produce cavity walls. Doors and windows are just a simple click and click to insert. You also get a full set of basic cad drawing tools (including lines, rectangle, circle, arch, dimensions, and text input ) which are perfect for adding details and you can even change line weights which can be invaluable.
Features: the library of drawing symbols has most of the symbols you will need to get started, but the biggest advantage this software has over others is that you can create your own symbols and save them into the library for future use. This is an excellent feature, for example you can create your own BS symbols both plumbing and electrical save them and then all you do is drag and drop into position when needed. You can not save plans in standard cad file formats like dwg and dxf but that is no surprise and you can upgrade this feature I believe from the website. You can also import into your drawing picture files.
As with all home designer software this has a number of 3d tools to create 3d views of building, not that they effect floor plans much but they seem to be of a good standard but I have yet to fully learn how to use them.
Ease of Use: Once you have grasped the basics it becomes quite easy to use this software, especially if you have built up a good library of your own symbols. Floor plans can be produced at a decent rate and if you create some drawing layouts it very quick indeed.
Support : Included in the software is a built in manual, help tool, and online you can find video tutorials .
value for money: YES, for £6 how can you go wrong? The plans you can produce for this amount of money put some more expensive software to shame. There are a number of free software’s you can download but most don’t come close to the features this has.
Summary: It does almost everything you need and more and for a very small cost. Even a simpleton could produce a decent floor plan, I know.... I did. LOL . The biggest plus to this software over most others is the ability to create and save symbols, that alone makes it my BEST BUY.
you can download a trial version of an upgraded version of this software if you want to have a try, post your results please.
https://www.ashampoo.com/uk/gbp/pin/0260/CAD & Construction/Ashampoo-3D-CAD-Architecture-2
here are some example plans I have drawn up as well as screen shots.
Obviously most companies working along side large builders and landlords can afford to invest time and money into training staff and purchasing decent CAD software packages to enable them to produce good quality drawings. As a self employed tradesman I can neither afford to spend my time or money on such items but I also do not want to loose work because I could not produce what a customer requires. I have produced a couple myself during the last year or two.
With this in mind I have been testing out a number of computer programs, with the aim to see if I can produce my own drawings to a decent standard, without it costing much money and a lot of time and brainpower. (I am a Plumber after all, who can only just work my email correctly)
During this process I have tried out at least 10 to 15 different programs maybe even more and of the ones I tried you could put them into two broad categories, CAD and Home Designer although some fitted into both. In the CAD category you have programs that in the right hands are capable of anything. These programs though take a lot of time and skill to use and are not what I was looking for.
That leaves Home designer programs, which are aimed at home owners, interior designers and so on. The great thing about these programs is they are designed towards the less experienced user meaning less time is needed to learn how to use them and drawing tools are simplified. They also due to the target customers have various levels of 3D rendering to enable “life like views” of your created buildings. On the down side I found that a good percentage of these programs could not be used due to a lack of basic CAD tools like drawing lines to represent pipework. This was a shame as a couple I tried were excellent at everything else, even some free-ware versions.
I am planning to post a few reviews of what i found to be the best software to use, based on ease of use, features and of course price.
Your 3D Home Designer 2 (Deluxe Edition)
RRP - £9.99
Price - £5.97 @ www.Amazon.co.uk
By - Focus Multimedia
www.focusmm.co.uk/shop/home.php
Windows XP, Vista, 7.
REVIEW:
Program Layout: with a basic but pleasant format it does not take a lot of time to be able to start drawing with this software and most tools can be found with ease.
Tools: you get all the tools needed to create basic floor plans, walls are easy to construct and you can even produce cavity walls. Doors and windows are just a simple click and click to insert. You also get a full set of basic cad drawing tools (including lines, rectangle, circle, arch, dimensions, and text input ) which are perfect for adding details and you can even change line weights which can be invaluable.
Features: the library of drawing symbols has most of the symbols you will need to get started, but the biggest advantage this software has over others is that you can create your own symbols and save them into the library for future use. This is an excellent feature, for example you can create your own BS symbols both plumbing and electrical save them and then all you do is drag and drop into position when needed. You can not save plans in standard cad file formats like dwg and dxf but that is no surprise and you can upgrade this feature I believe from the website. You can also import into your drawing picture files.
As with all home designer software this has a number of 3d tools to create 3d views of building, not that they effect floor plans much but they seem to be of a good standard but I have yet to fully learn how to use them.
Ease of Use: Once you have grasped the basics it becomes quite easy to use this software, especially if you have built up a good library of your own symbols. Floor plans can be produced at a decent rate and if you create some drawing layouts it very quick indeed.
Support : Included in the software is a built in manual, help tool, and online you can find video tutorials .
value for money: YES, for £6 how can you go wrong? The plans you can produce for this amount of money put some more expensive software to shame. There are a number of free software’s you can download but most don’t come close to the features this has.
Summary: It does almost everything you need and more and for a very small cost. Even a simpleton could produce a decent floor plan, I know.... I did. LOL . The biggest plus to this software over most others is the ability to create and save symbols, that alone makes it my BEST BUY.
you can download a trial version of an upgraded version of this software if you want to have a try, post your results please.
https://www.ashampoo.com/uk/gbp/pin/0260/CAD & Construction/Ashampoo-3D-CAD-Architecture-2
here are some example plans I have drawn up as well as screen shots.
