Construction Drawing Program?

E350

Site Supporter
Location
Sacramento Delta
I am raising our house. Which entails a new foundation. Which will be used for access, storage and parking. I have hired an older professional engineer to design the footing and the foundation and the walls. He has prepared his load bearing calculations, etc. and he has hand drawn some plans which I would like to spruce up and revise as needed.

Since this is entitled a "Computer Help" subforum, and since I have unsuccessfully scoured the internet for a construction drawing program for our new, under the existing house garage, I thought I would ask you guys and gals if you had any suggestions for a construction drawing software program?
 
Hey ya. I help run a residential construction company here in Ontario, Canada and I've been using Home Designer Suite for 5 years. Its simple enough to use with very little learning curve at the expense of being limited. I've drawn out half a dozen small projects for permit approval and the town has had no complaints - Anything larger I use our architect. It may be what your looking for

I should note I've drawn hundreds of smaller projects for client approval and bids and it works perfect for that. Just some of the details of permit application might be to intricate for the lower end program.

Cheers and good luck

https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/home-designer-suite/
 

E350

Site Supporter
Location
Sacramento Delta
@Mdavies_02 : Eh, well, er, I can't believe it but after playing around with the trial version last night I think I am going to spend the $495 USD to buy the Pro version of Home Designer by Chief Architect plus another $14.95 for the Backup USB.

https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/home-designer-pro/

The video tutorials make sense to me. It is not subscription based. I can keep it and use it forever, and only update it if and when I want to.

And here is the deal.

There are primarily two ways to organize things in life:

1. Topical (i.e., by category such as organizing the various types of lines together such as rectangles, arcs, circles, etc. -- the Corel CAD program I bought was organized this way and I couldn't ever figure it out.)

2. Transactional (i.e., "You want to make a wall?" Hey, we know what a wall is. So rather than make you draw two line so many inches apart, just select the "Wall" tool and drag it where you want and we'll draw the two lines for you and add the sheetrock thickness on the inside and the siding thickness on the outside (which you can later change to fake rock, brick or whatever). Or this, "Hey, I see that you just drew the walls, want to put a roof on it next? Here you go, just drag and drop, I know that you want to put a roof on that thing right?")

Maybe 'cause I am not a linear thinker but a relational thinker, Transactional organization is usually more intuitive to me.

Home Designer is organized in the Transactional way.

No the program does not talk to you. But it is arranged in the order of how you build a house, from the ground up -- brilliant no?

There are two cheaper versions at $199 and at $99. But I know I would just end up upgrading to the Pro version eventually, so I will buy it now.

Funny thing is that years ago I bought a used old version CD of Chief Architect, installed it, and through it in the garbage because I could never figure out how to use it.

Thanks Buddy!
 
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