Home Design Concept to Reality Workflow

[sicamore]

What computer and operating system are you using?

I think what you want is something that will let you play with your ideas and then see how it would look. I assume you also want to be able to make changes easily and try that out.

The professionals that said they would take your ideas and start over make sense, particularly if you have extensive requirements for codes, permits, etc. East Africa must have changed a lot recently if that is true..

Spot on GregB - yes, I fully expect my plans will just be guidelines and are really for me to flesh out what I want from the requirements list I have built. I fully expect then a professional will rebuild it from the ground up to follow correct architectural practices and building codes. The house will either be in SE Asia or the Carib. This part of the world has next to no building codes, which is actually in my opinion for home building a great thing!

Thanks to all for the great replies. I think I will go with Home Designer Architectural (win7) for the moment and upgrade if need be if I need more.

Is there any reason why I couldn't give the file to someone that has HD Pro who can then send it to Chief X4 to export as a 3ds / 3d dxf file for me to render in a professional render package? That would be really my only requirement for Chief.

On the thought of Sketchup - yes, I reasonably conversant in this package (I have pro 7) but it is seems a lot less architecturally focused and flexible than Chiefs packages.

I especially like this software for the fact that the community was so quickly supportive of my questions. That speaks volumes!

Shaun