Others say...

"Don't waste your money"
I just bought Punch deck design. You would expect that it would be taylored to designing decks. Guess again. It is nothing more than a simple cad program with a few deck related overlays. You must build multiple decks to create a single mult-tiered deck. It does nothing with deck supports or even patterns of wook on the deck. Stairs beyond a simple straight stair case forget it. DO NOT BUY this product. Get a piece of paper and ruler and you will be better off.

"junk"
i purchaed this program to design my deck.All it does is create a picture.I used to have a program that designed a deck and also gave me a break down of materials to build it and accurate dimensions in which to cut my lumber and also a walk through the construction.This program [punch]does nothing like that at all.If anyone wants to build a deck using this program they are wating there money.

"I recommend a pencil instead"
Home design software should have both flash and substance. Unfortunately, Punch! is only flash. You can put together a nice cartoon of your vision but you can forget about getting any useful blueprints or material lists or even getting the precise design you want. I was looking for a product that could produce the drawings I need to get the go-ahead for my deck from the building commission. Instead I was able only to get a rough layout of my deck. I say rough because Punch restricts you to a handful of basic designs and shapes. The most unfortunate fact is that all of PUNCH's competitors seem to have fallen away so it's either PUNCH or a pencil. I recommend the pencil.

"DECK DRAFTING"
The only thing that I can say good about this product is that it has a nice live view. Other than that , I think the product is a waste of time buying. Now that I purchased this product from "PUNCH". I don't think I'll be puchasing anything else from them.

"See your backyard today"
When my wife and I moved into our freshly constructed house about three years ago, we had little more than fenced in dirt in our backyard. The first year we did the basics such as, mowed down the weeds, and hired a contractor to put some grass in along with sprinklers and a border of rock. The second year, we just enjoyed what we had, and worked on growing it a little. This year, determined to make more progress, we began mapping out our backyard and putting it to graph paper.

The graph paper gave us a scale idea of how things would lay out. For example, if we put a deck in, would the existing spriklers sufficiently cover the remaining grass? And what of that deck, should it stop half way across the house? Where should the openings to the deck be, and how high should it be? Should there be shrubs, flowers or other greenery around it? And what of the rock along fence, and putting shrubs there? While it looked good on graph paper, we just couldn't SEE it. So we started looking for software.

Needless to say, the reviews on the various available softwares are pretty horrible to say the least. And visiting the few web sites of the vendors offers nothing more. But, completely by chance, while surfing the newsgroups on this topic I ran across Punch.

Punch Ultimate Deck and Landscape allowed my wife and I to sit down in front of our computer, easily install the software, and within a couple hours including walking through the tutorials in the manual, we had a picture perfect view of what we wanted our backyard to look like. Seeing the deck come together in front of our eyes was fantastic. And with a few clicks on the mouse we were able to see various configurations, sizes, and material textures.

Then there was the leftover space, and how to fill it. While the software has a pretty good variety of shrubs and flowers to fill in your open space with, and several ways to see how it would grow to fill out, the tools provided to designate fill areas (such as mulch to put your trees in) are extremely weak and frustrating. With a little practice you can get pretty close, but it should be much easier.

We were also displeased with features we found on some objects we placed, but not on others. For example, we could specify that the deck needed to be 6" off the ground on one level and 1' off the ground on the second, but there was no way to put the sliding glass door opens onto the deck at 6" off the ground as well (which is how most houses are built). So instead we needed to pretend by setting the deck's first level to 1" off the ground and the second level to 7" off the ground. And in the end this gave us a very solid representation, it would have been nice to know that it was physically accurate.

Note that if you're looking for a piece of engineering software that will allow you to exactly represent the architecture of your house and deck, than this is not what you want. But if you have a blank slate to work with (or a nearly blank slate) and are looking for direction, than this is exactly what you want. It won't give you accurate costs of materials, sizes of materials, etc., but it will provide you with a view of the future backyard you'll be hosting BBQ's in.

This software may also present problems for those already having a substantial portion of their backyard complete. I would say that this software works really well for the homeowner whose house is freshly constructed, but nothing too much more advanced. And if you do decide to get this software, I suggest that you measure out your backyard and put it to scale on graph paper first. This will save you countless hours running back and forth between your computer and your backyard. As an additional recommendation, you can put some velum over the graph paper and put in the various additions you are thinking of. Once you have it all together, this software makes for a great way to see it come togther, and to fill out what will most certainly be your backyard heaven.