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:
Home Designer Pro for DIY home enthusiasts. Enjoy the same tools that professionals use for home design.
www.homedesignersoftware.com
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 . . .