Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 12
 Home Design Studio for Mac September 8, 2009
D. Snodgrass
40 out of 40 found this review helpful
Honestly, I bought this to replace it's bigger brother -- thinking it would be easier and more intuitive and friendly with their new nexGen technology. This product has a steep learning curves and a thick, but useless user guide that explains each tool but not how to use it. I've tried (in vain) to design my upcoming remodel. In both programs, I stopped, just plain overwhelmed and discouraged.
Horrible, un-Mac-like software. July 8, 2009
D. Eadie (Tifton, GA USA)
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
I've used professional CAD packages like Cobalt that are far, far less frustrating to use. Very un-Mac-like behavior, very limited ability to edit existing walls, slow 3D performance on my iMac.
Wish I could recommend another home design package for Mac, but at least I can say, "Stay away from this one, folks!"
buyer beware UPDATED July 19, 2009
L. Hurley (Arizona)
37 out of 40 found this review helpful
It doesn't work. At least not on my MacBook Pro w/Leopard. I had high hopes for the program, but after several calls and e-mails to Punch! support we don't have a solution. Worse, the Punch! techs appear to have given up. On top of that, Punch! is refusing to refund the purchase price.
The good news is that Punch! actually has toll-free tech support and I was actually able to reach them fairly easily. And to a certain extent they've tried to help. Maybe some of you will have better luck than me. Or maybe not. Good luck.
*****************
UPDATE: Somebody at Punch! figured it out. HDS is incompatible with the Mac's "case-sensitive" disk format and that's what I had. Don't know how I got that way or why it matters (Apple didn't know, either), but a complete erase, reformat, and reinstall later and the program is working with all objects and tools available.
so I would give it 3 STARS. It's a decent program - probably best at this price - but this hard drive format thing needs to be fixed.
Laughably bad software, not recommended! October 2, 2009
spinoza (North Shore, MA United States)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
For some reason I thought that Punch would have learned a thing or two in the past couple of years and so decided to purchase the upgrade to this software. Astonishingly it was as bad as before, and the new features they included are as poorly designed as the existing software. Very little about this software is intuitive, and you must read the manual from cover to cover to even begin making sense of its ridiculously bad interface. The only problem is that the manual itself is almost useless, so getting anywhere with this software becomes an exercise in frustration. After spending the better part of a day attempting to do a simple plan for a sunroom I am building, I finally gave up and did it using a simple drawing app for the Mac (Acorn)... in less than half an hour. It's really criminal that a company can get away with selling software like this.
Not for Remodelling March 9, 2010
Merinda E. Reeder (Maryland, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this thing to design my remodel project.
It is not intuitive. I haven't had to go to a users manual for anything in 5 years, and I'm constantly in this manual. It doesn't work intuitively. The manual doesn't show how - just what. I thought there would be a video tutorial... all I've found is the short marketing video on their website. No basement. You tell it you want to measure in inches and it only allows you to lay out in feet.
I haven't figured out how to zoom in.
The cabinets in the kitchen designer are insufficient... very limited.
I wish I could return this stupid thing.
I was using Google's free sketchup, and found it to be a whole lot more precise, powerful, and easy to use.
I thought this would be a step up - providing shopping lists, blueprints, and such. I thought it would be better for submitting plans to the local permitting office, I just expected to have a good usable tool.
Warning: the shopping list is for everything, not just the remodel. Like, buy a slab of concrete, studs, etc.
If there is a way to enter precise measurements in this thing, I haven't seen it.
I hate it. That said, anybody want to buy a used copy?
If this is #1, then the bar is very low.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 12
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