Features I found difficult, the 2D navigation control was ok. You have a dot and arrow to control movement of the 3D tour, it requires two clicks, one to move, and one to orientate. If you have a computer graphics accelerator card, the running man mouse navigation is two fast even at the slowest setting.

I have a VR home exportable to VRML for the internet. I've seen my home before it was built. The control of size and portion was very helpful. By adding color and texture, lighting, and landscapes the complete picture of your home is possible. You can import photo images into the model increasing realism. A good buy for the money.

"Fine for the consumer, but not for constuction documents", Punch! AS 18 gets a C+ grade at best. It's fine for drawing up a house to "walk though" to get a feel for what it will look like, but it falls frustratingly a bit short of providing the tools needed to design real construction drawings that you could give to a contractor or submit for permits.

I'm designing a two bedroom apartment over a garage, and I need to submit drawings to my city for permits. The last design I submitted to the city for permits was a garage that I designed using pencil and paper four years ago. I'm an engineer and I'm used to drafting in this fashion. However, it was painful when I had to make a change to a window or a door, erasing and re-drawing all the wall studs and everything. So, being the 21st Century, I figured that there has got to be some architectural software design program out there that a design/builder could use to draft up drawings to submit to the city for permits without having to manually draw wall studs (like AutoCAD and other general CAD programs).

I searched high and low and found that you could spend $1,000 or more for a true architectural design program like Chief Architect or ArchiCAD, and everything cheaper seemed to fall into the consumer floor plan design category of not being able to produce real construction drawings. Since I draw up buildings for permits about once every four or five years, I didn't want to spend $1,000 for a program. I thought Punch! AS 18 would be just the ticket. It has a framing utility for automatically framing walls, floors and roofs, and it has an elevation editor.

The frustrating part of this software is that on the surface it appears to provide the features needed to design construction documents. It's only when you put the software to work that you realize its deficiencies. For instance, the software has a framing tool for adding wall, floor and roof framing. It provides very "pretty" 3D views of the framing. But, when you decide to print a framing section, you find that you cannot print the section to scale. It also doesn't insert any dimensions or allow you to manually insert dimensions or text. Your typical contractor isn't going to pull out a scale to find that your header is 2 @ 2 x 12, and the city wants to see this information. So, you can sort-of work around this deficiency by saving the "image" as a BMP file, editing it in an image editing program like PaintShop Pro to print at the correct scale and add the required text. The question that begs itself is why Punch! didn't program the software to automatically display dimensions and text in the framing editor? It already has all the information in the design for header sizes, height, width etc. It also doesn't allow for edits to the rafters or studs. One of the rafters was displayed with a large spacing of about 25" on my design, while all the other rafters were spaced at 16" o.c. It doesn't allow you to edit this at all, and again, you have to edit the BMP file in a drawing program to try to get it right.

This is only one of the deficiencies. The DXF export utility will export every floor on top of itself. So, when you open the file in a CAD program, you see a huge mish-mash of dimensions and floors on top of itself. The program really didn't want to draw a basement, and I had to do all sorts of work arounds to show one. At one point I had a 3' deep foundation showing up at 6' high in the air, and it took me hours of editing to get the foundation to display correctly. As with other reviewers, I had the problem of objects protruding through walls, and I had to constantly view the design in 3D to be sure everything was aligned and not penetrating another solid body.

If all you want to do is see what your house design will look like after it's built by using the 3D walk through and fly around features, this product should work fine for you. However, it seems like there are plenty of lower priced competitors (3D Home Architect, FloorPlan 3D, etc.) that will do the same thing. If you want to draw construction documents, look elsewhere or draw it up by hand. While you may be able to monkey around with this program to get what you need eventually, either by editing in another program or editing with a pencil after printing, it's a frustrating experience when you know that other software out there will do what you need.

"Better than I expected!", I did a lot of web based research on this product and others before buying Punch! A/S18. There were a number of negative reviews from people who seemed to want a something that would give instant results or complained about system crashes. I installed the product, and then installed the latest update patch from the Punch! website before actually using the product. I have about 20 hours use on this product installed on a Dell PC (Dimension 8250 2.4Ghz, 512k memory, and ATI Radeon 9700 XT series video card.) It runs very fast and I have had no crashes.

This software requires a learning curve to become comfortable and proficient. Do not expect instant gratification. If you want that, buy the $30 - $50 packages that allow no freedom of design.

Rather than telling you what it does (you can read that on their website) I think I should tell you what to expect. First, I was frustrated when I tried to jump right in. Then I kicked back, opened the printed manual and read through it with the software open to follow along. The included video examples are great. I made good use of them.

There are some stumbling blocks, but there are work arounds for all obstacles I ran into. Example: I wanted to have the support posts show in the basement in 3d fly through mode. There is nowhere to choose them from a menu. But, if you go to the Punch! 3D Workshop (a really cool program) in THREE clicks I had drawn a column, then saved it to my floorplan.

There are textures for all the concrete, brick, stucco, wood, paint colors, etc needed to textureize or color your floors, walls and ceilings. More complex items like staircases are chosen from a menu and sizeable. The staircase tool will put stairs wherever you drag your mouse, so you can make some wild staircases. Walls are just point and click. Dimensions can be added where they do not appear automatically if you need them.

When adding things like doors, you can choose the style, size, and hinge side and swing. Just drag and drop to the floorplan. Same goes with windows, archways, etc. There are many premade objects like cabinets, dishwashers, range, TV's, furniture, furnace, A/C, etc to drag and drop onto the plan. Any object you can add to your plan is customizable in the 3D workshop. There is also a user website (www.punch-alternatives.com) that has many 3D objects you can add, from autos, to customized cabinets, etc all made and contributed by Punch! purchasers.

Overall, I rate the product very high, especially for the money. Its abilities put it head and sholders above the $60 products. You need a little patience to get started, and then you will just fly through the construction process. You are only limited by the amount of detail you are willing to add.

One last thing, when I called Tech Support to find out how to cap a half height wall, they actually answered the phone. No menu, no waiting. And they talked me right through the problems I had. Now I keep the included PDF manual open when I'm working to do searches on topics I need to learn. It makes things so much easier. So take your time and enjoy!

Chef Peta