I talked to a contractor about building us a little back porch, 6 feet by 5 feet with four steps, and he came back with a bid for $5500. Yeah, right!
So, I’m designing and building my own porch. I’ve been diddling around trying to find a simple, reasonably-priced CAD or drawing package to do the working drawings with. I took a lot of mechanical drawing and CAD in high school, and I did a lot of working drawings for my Dad’s business, Jarrett Machine Company, so I know what I’m looking for.
We’ve got Visio at work, and I spent a couple hours with it and got completely frustrated. The CAD systems are all too complex and too expensive.
Then, I stumbled across SmartDraw. What a wonderful package! It’s everything I expect from Visio but don’t get: simple, straightforward interaction; a large library of well-drawn objects; lots of screen real estate for the drawing.
They offer a free 30-trial for download, and you can purchase a version for anywhere between $69 and $198. On the same day I first tried it, I bought the Pro edition with the Floor Plans package for $129. The trial version has some bugs and crashes, but those were cleared up with the licensed version. I finished my top-view construction drawings in a few hours, and I’m really happy with them!
Of course, there are weird little interactive things, like not always grabbing the object you expect and linking two objects at odd places, but it’s SO much easier than Visio. All the object properties are available directly from the right-mouse menu, instead of from three confusing dialogs as in Visio. And it supports layers, so I can show my footers separate from my framing, separate from my trim, separate from my decking, separate from my railings… all in the same drawing so I know the positions match. Excellent.
