Guide to Buying Home Design Software

Homeowners planning to re-build their homes or starting can benefit from home design software on their PCs to get a quick simulation of what their dream house would look like, inside and out. Floor plans, architectural and interior designs, garden designs and landscaping can be viewed on your PC with the right designing application that, with some care in the selection as well as self-training, you can do on your own.

A simple Google search on the subject yields pages of various sites offering architectural and home building application suites in varying degrees of sophistication and price points.

If you're a professional home builder or architect, that's most likely up in your alley as one of your indispensable tools in the trade. But for common folks just looking for a means to actually see and have a hands-on simulation of what they want in a house, how it looks both inside and out, a good home design software can be a satisfying application to own and use.

Taking the first step: Defining your needs

Planning for your home is best served by getting the professional home builders to do it for you. But if you have the training and experience, with even a little talent on designing one, the home design software is your best bet to getting there. Admittedly, the application can be more daunting than your usual photo editing or drawing software. But with some patience, you can do basically what the professionals can.

The key is getting the right design software to meet your needs. Doing that requires defining your need or objective. Are you planning to design the whole house, in and out? Or just a part of it? Will it be just a floor plan you need as the boundaries of the house is fixed and you can't do anything about it? Will it be inside the house? Or just the garden? Will redecorating do? The reason for all these is that there are software products that are specialized in addressing and answering each of these questions.

Once you've defined this, the next consideration is the price. There are various design application suites that specialize in or two or even all of them in varying degrees of sophistication. On one end, the more sophisticated, the pricier it gets and can require more patience to learn as they start getting into the professional realm.

And on the other end, one of the easiest to use are often your free design software that you can download from the net. You can't expect them to deliver a detailed home design or floor plan the way professionals do, but they at least can give you a hands-on look and flexibility to alter on the fly the design elements that can meet your needs.

Learning can be Fun

Just like any computer application like your word processing, internet browser, gaming or drawing software, you will need to learn how to use a home design software. You need to invest some learning curve time so you can get the most out of your chosen design software tool.

Some home-bound application suites have what are called "design wizards." These are simply a set of questions about what design elements you want in a house and how you want them placed, sized and where and the application can come up with suggested house design from its database.

The wizards basically acts like a personal assistant that has a compendium of designs you can choose from based on your responses to the questions. You won't get much flexibility here but in many cases, it works to match your needs with the template designs the software carries.

But if you prefer a more personal route where you can draw and fabricate your dream house from scratch, just turn off the wizard facility and get right into using the application menus and buttons. Self-help tutorials are included in the application and can guide you in navigating through all the controls needed to get the application render the house of your dreams. It's often a lot easier to do that you expected, once you have learned your way through it.

House Designs

Will it be a single-floor bungalow or a two-floor townhouse? Whether it will have gables on the roof, made of wood or concrete, your house can be designed right on your PC.

Almost all the design application offer the flexibility to get the look and feel of the house of your dreams as well as within your budget. One of the best designing tools are often CAD-based that allows you to render the house in 3D, specifying the materials, roofing, flooring, walls and color schemes inside and out.

But that can run into a few hundred dollars. You may not need that level of professional sophistication if you only need to redecorate the house, redesign the garden or go into floor plans as there are home design software costing a few dollars that can get the specific job done quickly and simply.

But let's face it. Getting your dream house is not and should not be an exercise in cheap frivolity. If you plan to design your house from scratch, don't get cheap. You can save alright by not getting a professional architect, interior or landscape designer and just do the designing yourself.

But consider the home design application suite as part of your home building investment. Getting the right tool often won't come cheap. But it doesn't have to be that expensive either. It all boils down to doing some online research on what software you need at the right price you can afford. Just spend a little time online to check what's available.

Floor Plan Designs

One of the most basic in home designing is getting a 2D floor plan that graphically defines your living space within the confines of your home boundaries. Your homebuilding budget is your limiting factor in getting your living space. Once you have that out of the way, your next step is to make sure the living space will actually be livable for you and your family.

The floor plan can make that happen. It is meant to optimize the limited space that you have by getting the location of rooms, partitions, and the placement of furniture and appliances right. It defines where your electrical outlets are, you lighting switches, your gas and water plumbing or your phone and data points if you have computers wired around the house. Your floor plan is your home blue print. Getting it right can give you a most satisfying living space for years.

There are specific application tools that can help you come out with the floor plan you need. Even drawing software with multiple layering facility can do the job. But the nice thing about specialized floor plan design tools is the database library where you can use template figures of furniture, fixtures and appliances as well as standard symbols for electrical outlets, phones, lighting and other basic tuff that builders can understand.

The important thing to remember is that your floor plan should be understood by the construction guys who will build your house.

Once you have the floor plan designing software, your next important consideration is getting a handle on how large your house should be. Unless you have unlimited budget, you can't be designing from scratch without some pre-defined constraints.

Your lot area is one. How large your floor area is can only go within your lot area. You could design a 2 to 3 floor townhouse but now you enter into your budget constraint. Needless to say, the bigger the house or the larger the floor plan, the more expensive it gets.

You need to get a handle on your measurements. How large is the kitchen, how many bedrooms and what are their floor dimensions. A design software can help you do various dimensioning scenarios so you can play around within your given constraints. You floor plan and the dimensions you give to it should be as realistic as possible and within your budget. The cost of building materials and the time it will take to build it will depend a lot on your floor plan.

Designing your Home Interiors

When the floor plan is done, it's time to go 3D and get the look of what your bedroom or kitchen will be to give your floor plan a more realistic feel. If you don't have any idea or inclination to design your interiors, getting a professional help is your best bet but it will cost. But if you feel you have the artistic and creative talents to do your own interior designing, you can benefit with interior designing application that contain a database of some of the latest wall paper and furniture designs, even common décor items like planters, paintings and lamps that you can use to kick-off a basic interior concept you can work around.

It's almost like a game that makes your interior a doll house where you can move around common furniture and appliances, playing around with wall colors, as well as move walls and partitions anywhere you like.

Is There a Garden?

City living may not allow one if you plan to build your home in the metropolis. You could, however, opt to get a rooftop garden in designing your townhouse if you decide to maximize your floor area to match exactly your lot area.

Adding a terrace to your bedroom or a patio is another option. The home design software will not fail to provide these elements in your dream house.

But if you already have a garden and all you need is to get a better look to it, there are garden and landscape design software that should help you get there.

Just like specialized interior design software, garden design application products have a library of common elements found in garden and landscaping design that should give you a good idea on how to optimize the look as well as the functionality of your backyard or garden. Of course, you can always get a professional landscape artist if cost is not a problem.

System requirements

While many software tools till run on a modest PC configuration, there are those that require that your PC keep up with technology as they require vector drawing power and polygon rendering speeds that can tax older 3-4 year old PCs and make like hell for the users. Check with the vendor of your chosen software on the recommended PC configuration. Don't forget about upgrading your PC to the latest configuration that can support the design tool you have in mind.

In Summary

Doing it yourself in designing your dream home is not only a cost-saving exercise but can be an enriching, rewarding and fun activity. In addition, as a homeowner, knowing the ins and outs of your house, with design files stored on your computer, can be your resource to helping you in future enhancements to your house. Getting the right home design software is your first step in designing your dream house. Here is a summary of the things you need to consider in getting one.

• Define your needs in no uncertain terms. That means deciding on your constraints such as what you want to achieve and it extent. Is it to design the house from scratch, remodel the entire house or just a part? Will it be just interior decorating, landscaping or re-doing your floor plan?

• Once your objective is defined, scout around. You can talk to professionals or get online to search what software is available out there. You need to define as well how much you are willing to spend on the software, bearing in mind that a good software need not be expensive, nor should it be cheap so that it becomes a limiting factor to your designing enthusiasm. Consider getting a design software as an integral part of your investment in getting your dream house or needed renovation if you plan on designing it yourself.

• Define your budget and living space constraints. Designing anything is always anchored on cost parameters apart from other constraints like living space and materials. Get a good grip of your lot area and the measurements of your house and each of your rooms. Decide on the materials to be used and color schemes, inside and out. You can't design a house without knowing these. The software will help you to play around with these variables.

• A home design software is a tool. You can come up with your ideal home with everything you want in it within your budget constraints. Construction realties can come in later to adjust your home design. Consider your house design plan as a living document that may require revisioning as your construction proceeds.

• Lastly, make sure your PC is adequately configured in terms of memory and CPU to run your chosen software program without giving you any problem like sluggish response or freezing.