Home design

[tooleman]

Does anyone out in ingo land know of a free home designer??? I am looking for something like acad, however nothing that in depth. Just something I can use to help the wife understand how things need to be laid out.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

No but I know a great interior designer

 

[jd42k]

Maybe look into Google Sketchup. It's a free program.
http://sketchup.google.com/download/

 

[perry]

Maybe look into Google Sketchup. It's a free program.
http://sketchup.google.com/download/

Yuuuuuuuup

 

[spasmo]

Does anyone out in ingo land know of a free home designer??? I am looking for something like acad, however nothing that in depth. Just something I can use to help the wife understand how things need to be laid out.

[STRIKE]You will more than likely not find a free interior designer. That's like asking a professional photographer to take pictures for you for free. It's their life and it's how they make their money. Someone may offer you a bit of a discount though. [/STRIKE] Ignore that, I was tired.

Good luck with the designing. I wish I were better at it myself. Or even knew where to begin.

 

[tv1217]

I'm pretty sure he means software, spasmo.

 

[spasmo]

hehehe that makes more sense why it would be free.. hehehe duh! It's late. I need to go to bed.

 

[jeremy]

You will more than likely not find a free interior designer. That's like asking a professional photographer to take pictures for you for free. It's their life and it's how they make their money. Someone may offer you a bit of a discount though.

Good luck with the designing. I wish I were better at it myself. Or even knew where to begin.

Did you bleach your hair again?!

 

[slackerisme]

Does anyone out in ingo land know of a free home designer??? I am looking for something like acad, however nothing that in depth. Just something I can use to help the wife understand how things need to be laid out.

Well, no but let me tell you what I did to solve the wife thing. We bought as many books of home designs that we could find. IIRC they sell them at the home depot. The cool thing is most of these books are aout the same size and the prints inside are almost the same scale. I went to work and told her to bookmark every print that she liked, and keep a log of what she liked and disliked about every design.

Then we went over each one she liked together. It's a painful process if your wife is like mine, she would fall in love with a completely unpractical design. Anyhow, after that we scanned all the mini prints into my computer and used GIMP to manipulate, crop, rotate and paste together a design that was functional and to both our liking.

Then, I printed the frankenprint and took it to a architect. I found out after the visit this step is important so your roof doesn't collapse after the first snow. Total cost for our "custom" designed house was $900 for two full sets of working prints and a few mini "briefcase" sized.

I GC'ed my own house saved a boatload of cash and we got exactly the house we wanted. If your not going that route, the last part of this story is useless. I took the prints to a place very close by that has the ability to copy full sized prints. You need a lot of copies of both styles when bidding work, some contractors lose them or sell them, I don't know maybe they eat them, we just did not get them all back. I know its not what you asked for, but in my quest for design software I failed. What I did find was either so simple it was useless or to complex to learn how to use quickly enough to be useful. Good luck.

 

[Mr Evilwrench]

"The dog ate my blueprints" hehe in my case it would probably be true, this varmint eats things that amaze me.

Anyway, there are free CAD programs, and probably house layout ones, that should be sophisticated enough to make a design that'll give you a good idea what you'll wind up with, and an architect to work up a real plan. Be ready for the architect to make some modifications though, load bearing walls, that kind of thing, then there are various building codes, plumbing, electrical, whatnot. I wouldn't try it without a real architect, though; they've got the government so jumpy that it's just cheaper to lay the liability off on someone else. Deny "the ones" their pieces of copper and they make sure they'll be taken from you in other ways. Oh, I'm ranting again. Tell me to shut up.