[fancyabrew]

We've nearly finished the inside demolition work on our new house. All the internal walls are down so its now virtually two big long thin rooms upstairs and down, measuring about 12m by 4m (plus two other rooms measuring 3.5m sq, off of the main room and another small utility room the other end of the house). Now we know what we want to do (down stairs will be open plan, kitchen, dining space and living space) and upstairs will be 3 bedrooms, one ensuite and a bathroom.

Anyroadup, does anyone have any recomendations for some good room planning software? Don't mind paying hard cash as the renovation work I think will be costing me around the £80k-100k mark so £100 on some software isn't a problem! I need something that we can use to layout ideas and room designs to workout how best to make use of the space, being long and thin is a bit of a pain!

[joshwa2k]

My suggestion would be not to spend a penny and download Google Sketchup. You will see many room designs on here that have been created using Sketchup. It can be made as easy or as complicated as you like depending on how much time you spend with it. I started using it a year ago and found it very intuitive, it includes loads of demos on how to work with different applications within the software.
Once you have created your basic room layout you can then either create your own furniture and save it as a seperate component which will allow you to move it around the room easily or search through thousands of online designs that people have created and put on the database, then you simply download for example a sofa, edit it to the size of your sofa and place it in your room. For a free application it is very advanced.

[fancyabrew]

good plan I'll give it a go!

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going to be a BIG job

[lechacal]

Another vote for Sketchup. The fact that it's a stripped-down app is one of its advantages. Anything that you pay for is likely to have a lot more features and a steep learning curve.

[gareth_alien]

What a fantastic 'blank canvas'! I am green with envy!
Look forward to the build being documented and photographed.

- Gareth

[fancyabrew]

I'll start a thread. The pics are from last month should take some more this weekend. A few more walls have gone internally (one left to go I think) and most of the rubble and mess have been cleaned up

[RipMaster]

Looks like you have a fair bit of work ahead of you there! Another vote for sketch-up from me. Takes a little getting used to but very flexible once you get started. The Google 3D warehouse had 1000s of items ready made so all you need to master are the basics to get going. Worth spending the time on the tutorials unless you are familiar with 3D/CAD apps already.

good luck!

[M2GX]

Vote for google sketchup plus you can use Kerkythea to render the drawings once you have finished.