Punch Master Landscape & Home Design

This is a pretty useless piece of software, unless you only happen to have the plants in the lists. A good idea otherwise.

We were scratching for ideas for our garden so we paid a professional garden desinger to come up with some ideas and do some sketches. I then wanted to visualise them and this is where the software Punch Master Landscape & Home Design has come in very handy.We have a clasic problem with terraces, retaining walls and slopes. It took sometime to get the hang of the software, but it really is very good value for money. Changing the design of the garden is not difficult and you get both plan, and 3D views.Since developing professional plans from sketches would have cost me £800, I consider the effort and the fun I have had doing it myself and debating the design with the landscape gardener for nothing a bargin.The forum pages on the supplier's Web sites also give useful tips. In summary don't expect the world with this software, but you should be able to do most things and get a really good idea of what your final design will look like.

I found that I rushed to use this cd without finding out how to use it! It takes patience to learn exactly how to use all the different features of this home and garden designer. I have planned some garden designs on it, and I love the plant finder which draws the plant to scale on your diagram and shows its colour and shape, etc. I like the little man who runs around the garden to see its scale and there's also an arial view from a helicopter to see how your garden would look from the air. But I recommend using the slower speed setting, as it made me dizzy whizzing around the plan - which is also 3D when viewed this way.I am trying to use the house planner, but as a typical gardener -I am drawn to making garden designs. A good cd-rom for beginners and advanced users - if you read and take time to learn it!!

I bought this software not too long ago. Changing the color of a selected siding is not allowed. Your only allowed to use the preset color. Working with some of the roof tools was difficult. The ground fill tool has a glitch on the 3-d view. On many parts it seems to float above the topography even though the feature is not selected. Rasing and lowering the elevation of the ground, in say a flower bed does not work well at all. Changing the grade of a certain part of your lot is near to impossible to make it look right. I spent about 10 hours working on my house and it turned out semi-ok. It seems they spent to much time on giving you a selection of plants, and not enough time with the building features. The 3-d custom workshop is horrible. You would need a degree in engineering to even start to figure it out. Anyway, in the end it is not worth $70, but if you don't mind some glitches in the program and aren't looking for prefection, it will be good enough to get the job done.

I bought this especially to use for decking design. The whole program is poor and VERY difficult to understand and use, trying to master the viewing option is terrible and on the whole I would say this is a waste of time completely.

Bought this software with the plan to use it for getting an idea of how my garden would look after some changes it. What a mistake! I am an engineer who has used CAD packages for years, and this particular package is, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed. I have never before used a peice of CAD software that is this strange. Totally illogical.....!