Dream homes: Mac Apps for architectural and interior design
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Vivian Wagner
If you're a Mac lover, then clearly you love to surround yourself with beautiful things. So why not use your beautiful Mac to make your home more beautiful, all the while tapping into those graphic-design skills everyone assumes you must have, since you love Macs?
A wall here, a door there. A sunroom stretching out from the back of the house, just so. Recessed lighting in the kitchen. A custom-designed fireplace in the living room. And outside, a deck, a curving walkway, and a strategic planting of a few yews and Japanese maples.
If playing with such details of home, interior and landscape design sounds like a good time to you, you're not alone. Mac users with an urge to design have plenty of programs, both beginning and advanced, from which to choose. And to give you a head start in the world of home design apps, MacNewsWorld explored some of the possibilities that are out there.
For amateurs interested in designing their own home or planning a remodeling project, there are a number of Mac programs available. Punch Software for instance, offers the Home Design Studio, and the Home Design Studio Pro. Emphasizing drag-and-drop capabilities, these programs are perfect for homeowners who want to design their dream home.
"It's the whole dream home thing," Stuart Cohen, director of partner programs for Punch Software, told MacNewsWorld. "There are people who like to just conjure up ideas, and it's great for that."
Home Design Studio lets users draw in 2-D and then see their design in 3-D. It also has libraries of images, such as for landscaping and furniture, that can be added to flesh out a design. For users who want more advanced capabilities, Home Design Studio Pro offers even more features, including the ability to design your own furniture, design a fireplace, and turn lighting on and off to visualize shadow-casting in a design.
"You can imagine and explore these things," Cohen said. "They're fabulous tools to communicate with architects."
Some programs, such as BeLight Software's Live Interior 3D, focus solely on interior design.
"Live Interior 3D goes far beyond standard interior design functionality, including the ability to draw 2-D plans and surf 3-D environments," Pavel Kyrylchenko, product manager for BeLight Software, told MacNewsWorld. "The program features many exciting and unique capabilities. One of them is a fully functional 3-D view, where you can perform real-time walkthroughs, move and edit furniture, apply materials and much more."
Users of programs like Live Interior 3-D typically try many different designs before settling on the one they want to implement. And users have managed to find many different types of projects for the software.
"Many people use Live Interior 3-D to change their room or house layout, to visualize all their interior changes and plans before starting to actually change anything," said Kyrylchenko. "We know a few Realtors who use the program to make presentations for their clients, some designers who use the software for preparation of draft design projects."
Professional architects and designers have a number of different Mac-based computer-aided design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) programs available. Which one they choose to use depends in large part on the features they're looking for.
Mark Benner, owner of Mark Eric Benner-Architects in Northbrook, Ill., uses Graphisoft's ArchiCAD, one of the first Mac BIM programs to have been released to the professionals. Trained in hand drafting and design, he first ran across an early version of ArchiCAD back in 1989, while he was still in college.
"[ArchiCAD] took things from the 2-D world and turned it into a 3-D environment," Benner told MacNewsWorld. "In the past you would draft several views, and you had to interpret what was in an architect's mind."
ArchiCAD's 3-D computer design is nothing short of revolutionary, according to Benner, particularly since it helps architects to communicate more effectively with their clients than with 2-D drawings.
"In addition to the data, by operating in -3D, it really allows the architect to visually convey a wealth of information with realistic views," said Benner.
"You can have a dialogue with the clients or consultants, and you're able to have a dialogue within the workspaces," said Benner.
Architect Christopher Rose, president and owner of Christopher Rose Architects, which is near Charleston, South Carolina, had long been using the Mac design program PowerCAD, a primarily 2-D design program that he and his associates found especially user-friendly. Even interns could come in to the practice and learn the program in a short amount of time.
"It's amazing that with PowerCAD it takes a couple of hours and they're using it," Rose told MacNewsWorld. "It's very intuitive and very easy to get started on."
Recently, his practice has been switching over to Vectorworks because of its 3-D capabilities.
"Vectorworks is a more complicated program," Rose said. "It seemed to have more capabilities to do custom work. We've been pretty pleased with it. It's kind of new to us; we're still learning it."
Whether you're an amateur or professional, one thing's certain: 3-D design is here to stay and is likely to become increasingly advanced. Mac software, in turn, will continue to harness the computing power and design capabilities inherent in Macs.
"There's an enormous amount of data in a design," said Benner. "Now that we're drawing things in 3-D, we can really capture the embodied data that lives within the model of the project. It really is the future of how things are going to be built from now on."
.............
Internet
If you're a Mac lover, then clearly you love to surround yourself with beautiful things. So why not use your beautiful Mac to make your home more beautiful, all the while tapping into those graphic-design skills everyone assumes you must have, since you love Macs?
A wall here, a door there. A sunroom stretching out from the back of the house, just so. Recessed lighting in the kitchen. A custom-designed fireplace in the living room. And outside, a deck, a curving walkway, and a strategic planting of a few yews and Japanese maples.
If playing with such details of home, interior and landscape design sounds like a good time to you, you're not alone. Mac users with an urge to design have plenty of programs, both beginning and advanced, from which to choose. And to give you a head start in the world of home design apps, MacNewsWorld explored some of the possibilities that are out there.
For amateurs interested in designing their own home or planning a remodeling project, there are a number of Mac programs available. Punch Software for instance, offers the Home Design Studio, and the Home Design Studio Pro. Emphasizing drag-and-drop capabilities, these programs are perfect for homeowners who want to design their dream home.
"It's the whole dream home thing," Stuart Cohen, director of partner programs for Punch Software, told MacNewsWorld. "There are people who like to just conjure up ideas, and it's great for that."
Home Design Studio lets users draw in 2-D and then see their design in 3-D. It also has libraries of images, such as for landscaping and furniture, that can be added to flesh out a design. For users who want more advanced capabilities, Home Design Studio Pro offers even more features, including the ability to design your own furniture, design a fireplace, and turn lighting on and off to visualize shadow-casting in a design.
"You can imagine and explore these things," Cohen said. "They're fabulous tools to communicate with architects."
Some programs, such as BeLight Software's Live Interior 3D, focus solely on interior design.
"Live Interior 3D goes far beyond standard interior design functionality, including the ability to draw 2-D plans and surf 3-D environments," Pavel Kyrylchenko, product manager for BeLight Software, told MacNewsWorld. "The program features many exciting and unique capabilities. One of them is a fully functional 3-D view, where you can perform real-time walkthroughs, move and edit furniture, apply materials and much more."
Users of programs like Live Interior 3-D typically try many different designs before settling on the one they want to implement. And users have managed to find many different types of projects for the software.
"Many people use Live Interior 3-D to change their room or house layout, to visualize all their interior changes and plans before starting to actually change anything," said Kyrylchenko. "We know a few Realtors who use the program to make presentations for their clients, some designers who use the software for preparation of draft design projects."
Professional architects and designers have a number of different Mac-based computer-aided design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) programs available. Which one they choose to use depends in large part on the features they're looking for.
Mark Benner, owner of Mark Eric Benner-Architects in Northbrook, Ill., uses Graphisoft's ArchiCAD, one of the first Mac BIM programs to have been released to the professionals. Trained in hand drafting and design, he first ran across an early version of ArchiCAD back in 1989, while he was still in college.
"[ArchiCAD] took things from the 2-D world and turned it into a 3-D environment," Benner told MacNewsWorld. "In the past you would draft several views, and you had to interpret what was in an architect's mind."
ArchiCAD's 3-D computer design is nothing short of revolutionary, according to Benner, particularly since it helps architects to communicate more effectively with their clients than with 2-D drawings.
"In addition to the data, by operating in -3D, it really allows the architect to visually convey a wealth of information with realistic views," said Benner.
"You can have a dialogue with the clients or consultants, and you're able to have a dialogue within the workspaces," said Benner.
Architect Christopher Rose, president and owner of Christopher Rose Architects, which is near Charleston, South Carolina, had long been using the Mac design program PowerCAD, a primarily 2-D design program that he and his associates found especially user-friendly. Even interns could come in to the practice and learn the program in a short amount of time.
"It's amazing that with PowerCAD it takes a couple of hours and they're using it," Rose told MacNewsWorld. "It's very intuitive and very easy to get started on."
Recently, his practice has been switching over to Vectorworks because of its 3-D capabilities.
"Vectorworks is a more complicated program," Rose said. "It seemed to have more capabilities to do custom work. We've been pretty pleased with it. It's kind of new to us; we're still learning it."
Whether you're an amateur or professional, one thing's certain: 3-D design is here to stay and is likely to become increasingly advanced. Mac software, in turn, will continue to harness the computing power and design capabilities inherent in Macs.
"There's an enormous amount of data in a design," said Benner. "Now that we're drawing things in 3-D, we can really capture the embodied data that lives within the model of the project. It really is the future of how things are going to be built from now on."
.............
Internet