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Construction Drawing Software?

Tim Hodgson

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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 "Garage" 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?
 

scott43

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AutoCAD is the obvious one. I believe they have a lite version that is not as expensive.. Google sketchup is free I believe although not as great for true construction drawing as AutoCAD.
 

BS Slarver

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For a single project I would suggest the simplest solution, graph paper.
If you’ve already got an engineer ask for some foundation / wall outline drawings with the interior Spaces blank and go to work on that with a ruler, scale, pencil and of course an eraser
 

cantunamunch

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For a single project I would suggest the simplest solution, graph paper.
If you’ve already got an engineer ask for some foundation / wall outline drawings with the interior Spaces blank and go to work on that with a ruler, scale, pencil and of course an eraser

I would go 'tweener on this - Excel sheet the living daylights out of it. Then either draw it or use a CAD program.
 

martyg

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I did a lot of my product design work in SketchUp.

When designing our new home, I did everything in SketchUp. Our architect also worked almost exclusively in it. Watching him at his screen, the dude was a total Ninja Master. Once I finished my drawings, I gave the files to them, and they enhanced them for county approval of the construction.

When it first came out, the free version was exceptional. So much so that few paid for the upgraded iteration. Since then, they have continuous stripped features out of it, but the free version would probably be fine for your needs. Tons of plug-ins and existing, stock elements exist from commodes to couches, to major appliances. If it has to do with architecture, or design, most major suppliers have free SketchUp drawings of their fixtures.

It is also super intuitive. Once you start to use it, you will find a lot of uses for it. Whenever I do any furniture project, I first design in SketchUp. It allows me to visualize what is going on, and to make mistakes in digital,. easy to amend format.

Enjoy!
 

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Tim Hodgson

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martyg: Any chance you could email me a perimeter drawing or a drawing of your floor joists? I can pm you my email address. I will look into SketchUp now.
 

Fuller

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SketchUp is great, I also use EMachineshop for a lot of things, it's free but not an architectural design program.
 

Fuller

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Honestly it (AutoCad) can take a lot of time to get up and running.

Yes, a big learning curve to get proficient at it. I have a copy of TurboCad (about $600 if I recall). If you only need it for one project it may not be worth it unless you really want a challenge.

I used to use an Excel spreadsheet, set the rows and columns to print out as perfect squares and then overlay drawing objects to scale. I'm also known for sanding the entire exterior of the house with a 5' Porter Cable palm sander so don't follow my advice!
 

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Seldomski

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Graph paper is really good. I usually draw stuff on paper/whiteboard anyway before using a CAD package. CAD has a learning curve...

MS Visio can also be used for floor plan layouts and is essentially digital graph paper. Not sure what the license cost is.
 

teejaywhy

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OpenOffice and LibreOffice both have their versions of Visio. You can make 2D scale drawings with those.
 

Eleeski

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Having designed two houses on cad, some cad program is critical. You need to keep track of things (including wall thicknesses) to avoid fudging things. A decent program will have drop in toilets, sinks ranges, doors, etc which keeps you honest on sizing things. Plus it's easy to measure the 3 foot clearance for the handicap requirements (critical for comfortable traffic flows even if you aren't handicapped).

I bought and used Generic Cad 12 years ago. It was easy and intuitive in 2d. The architect was easily able to convert it to files for the planning department. Great program. AutoCad bought it and I'm not sure which version of Autocad it morphed into.

I used Draftsight for some other projects. Not as easy or intuitive but workable. I should have paid for the upgraded version but I never really figured out the program so I was reluctant to upgrade.

Let us know what you end up with!

Eric
 
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Tim Hodgson

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I also posted the same question on the xh2o.com forum and a fellow 2 cycle standup jet skier suggested Home Designer by Chief Architect:


This is what he said about the 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 too intricate for the lower end program.

Cheers and good luck"


Eh? Well, er, I can't believe it but after playing around with the free 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.

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 lines so many inches apart, just select the 'Wall' tool and drag it on the grid where you want and we'll draw the two lines for you and also add the sheet rock thickness on the inside and the siding thickness on the outside (which you can later change to fake rock, brick, or whatever). And then this, "Hey, I see that you just drew the walls. You 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 CD version of Chief Architect, installed it, and threw it in the trash because I could never figure it out.

Thanks to all. I will let you know how it goes . . .
 
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oldschoolskier

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There are a couple of $50.00 CAD programs on the MS store. Better than Turbocad and compatible with ACAD without the heavy duty machine requirements.
 

Uncle-A

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I have used Sketch Up and it was sufficient for getting good floor plans done. But I have also designed a new Kitchen using PowerPoint squares and rectangles as base and upper cabinets. It worked well enough to create a purchase list for all the supplies.
 
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Tim Hodgson

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Short update, since I am using the Chief Architect software now. It is excellent, consisting of a 3-D rendering program where you build your first floor, then foundation, then additional floors and roof. It has an interior cabinet, kitchen layout, etc. which I have not used. You can walk through and look at the 3-D rendering. You can import various layers of the rendering to a Layout to use as construction plan drawings. It has a CAD component which has many useful objects to insert as well as all the CAD drawing functions.

I started with the $199 Home Designer version, upgraded for a discount to the $495 Home Designer version, then jumped all in and upgraded within the 30-day window for a discount to the full-blown Chief Architect Premier version for ~$2,200.

There is a forum called Chief Talk where the experts volunteer to help you. I paid one of them to get me going and it helped. Now I am pretty proficient.
 
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Uncle-A

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I know you already spent your money on a program but just thought I would share another package just in case others are reading this thread. A good little package is called "Punch 5 in 1" design software can be a fun package to use FWIW.
 

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