Update on the CA Home Designer Landscape and Deck program.
In a word, its only real function is to give a halfway decent rendering of your finished product, but is sorely lacking in design features. I purchased it last week, with the intention of playing with it over the weekend, but ended up working 12 hour days saturday and sunday, which resulted in me getting an RFP for a deck replacement from the HO who we had just finished up a job installing 16 sections of t&g cedar framed panel fence, and 2 other decent sized jobs in the past month. the guy loves our work, so i'd never say its a sure thing but im pretty optimistic on this one. i dont know about the rest of the county, but the construction market is booming something fierce here in Southern CT (New Haven and Fairfield counties), and the weather has been perfect to boot! So I gave myself a crash course this morning, and attempted to design a simple deck to fit in the newly fenced in area (approx. 32'x9' rectangle running alongside the house). there are a few obstructions alongside the house, an outdoor shower, oil tank, and a door which is down 2 steps from the existing deck, which is sitting direclty on grade, terrible design by the way, 2x6 joists @ 24" o.c., no footings, 5/8" or larger gap between deckboards, oh yeah and no ledger or fastening to the building of any kind. hackjob would be a compliment to this abortion. the HO actually was surprised that the thing tried to sail away after the hurricane last year. back to the software, i had already drawn by hand my plan view, materials list, work scope, cost breakdown and wanted to wow the guy with a 3d rendering to seal the deal. so I created the house, the fence we had just put in, and started on the deck, only to find out that you cant adjust any of the framing members with this version, I couldnt make the thing understand that I needed my ledger to not be a continuous run, but to bump out around the obstructions. if this thing cant to something as simple as account for multiple points of attachment and identify point loads, then its simply not worth even considering. I'm returning the thing tomorrow, i spoke to the tech support folks, and they said that the full version ($500 as opposed to $80 for this deck module)) has the capability to allow you to adjust framing members and aparentlly a whole lot more, im going to finagle a free trial out of them to test it out before i shell out any more dough.
a few questions for you all based upon this experience....
is decktools as limited in its design as this product?
so now im looking at the 500 to 1500 dollar price range, whats the best full design and estimating program most relevant to primarily decks, and exterior construction?
and on a different note, looking for recommendations on a project management program that wont break the bank, any ideas?
hope everyone else is as busy as we are, feels like the good old days again!
