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July 19, 2025, 01:15:53 AM

we're back, baby

The last house I built was in 1989, and I am about to build one last one for me. I used to draw my own plans way before computers and would like to know if any can recommend a drafting program to use so I can find it locally.

TIA

1989 was before computer generated blueprints? I have no idea what you would use, sorry.

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I have no idea what you would use, sorry.

I want to use a computer program to draw my blueprints, I am asking which is a good one to use.

There are still a lot of people who draw plans in pencil. In any case, I'll suggest AutoCAD. I think that's what the cool kids use.

Yeah, AutoCAD seems to be the norm for doing plans.

Autocad Architecture is a professional tool focused on light commercial or residential building and documentation. It has way more fiddly bits and tools than a non-pro or one-shot home builder would ever need or use. It's too damn expensive for your average user ($4k + a $500/ year/ seat subscription required for support. ). Plus the learning curve is a bitch to draw things without being frustrated as hell or taking way, way longer than just putting pencil to paper.

I'd stay away from Revit entirely, because it's even more fiddly than Autocad Architecture and made for really large commercial projects. The learning curve of putting walls together was lower, but I only played with it for about 20 hours. I have no idea on the accuracy of what I'd drawn as it was just fiddling to get an idea of if it would work as a software solution for my previous employer. (It wouldn't.)

Of course, there's vanilla AutoCAD, which is just drawing vector lines in a 3-d space, but you get no walls/ doors/ whatever out of it. It's no better than line drawing on paper, and in fact, once you figure out printing (ha ha, no you can't just hit print. There's a whole process.) you'll wonder why you fucked with this instead of just breaking out a T-square and Triangle. (Note this is true for all AutoCAD products.) If you insist on buying AutoCAD, go for the LT version. (~$950) Not quite as many features and no customization but fuck it you're drawing one plan and don't know the program to begin with. You'll never know what you're missing.

Autodesk has a 30 day trial version of all their flavors on their website.

Really, I'd recommend Chief Architect.($1200 retail, no subscription for support) Much, MUCH easier learning curve than Autocad Architecture, AND it does 3-d plans/ views with a lot less fiddling in the program. Printing was as easy as hitting "Print" and selecting a scale, if I remember right. The tutorial in the demo was fantastic for learning the program, and if it had done options in-plan I'd have recommended it to my last employer during the feasibility study for simply being damn cool.

Really, if you want to draw it yourself you'd be better off picking up one of those home plan programs from Amazon, like This one. Cheaper than all of the above and should do what you want.

Unless you're just going to get an eyepatch and yell "Yarr!" Then go with Chief.

I always liked Vectorworks. It's design philosophy made it really easy to move from hand drafting on vellum to CAD as it draws in scale (instead of the wacky full-size shit AutoCAD used to use, and still sort of does), layers work like old school vellum overlays, and there is quite a large built in library of shapes.

I don't know what it costs now, but I think I paid less than 100 bucks for it a decade ago (AutoCAD 14 was running about 1500 at the time). EDIT: Apparently, it is getting into the higher priced stuff now as well, though still a lot cheaper than AutoDesk products. Oh yeah, it is also Mac/PC agnostic.

This has always struck me as a badly underserved software market niche: there really isn't a good piece of simplified architectural software that would help homeowners plan small-scale additions, sketch out dream houses, design garden installations and so on. All of the cheap stuff is really bad in one respect or another, in terms of usability and flexibility, and the expensive stuff is crazy expensive AND in the case of AutoCAD, kind of bad in its own way. I think a $150-ish package that was siimple, flexible and modestly featured would find a lot of demand out there.

Fuck all this shit, Google Sketchup is all you need. Pro version is cheap, and the free version is free!

Yeah, I like SketchUp. Before we moved into our house I modelled the main floor and then modelled all our furniture to figure out where it'd all fit in and how it'd look. Beats the hell out of dragging stuff back and forth.

Generally when I need software I hit up Sourceforge.