CAD software for house design

[bobbarley]

Can anyone recommend a decent free package for doing some house design?  and no I don't mean Paint/Excel etc etc 

[mcgee9t2]

if you or anybody you know is a student you can get a free student version of autocad, doesent have all the features the full lisenced version of CAD does but should be good enough for what you need.

you might even be able to get the full version on the trial for a month or so, not sure.

there also a google program called tremble or something which is a 3d cad package which is supposed to be good.

theres a cheeper version of AutoCAD (cant remember what its called) but its exactly the same as 2007 only a different colour. dont think its free though, cheeper than CAD but if your only going to be using it once or twice i think its still a good few hundred quid.

[LittleReDuck]

if you or anybody you know is a student you can get a free student version of autocad, doesent have all the features the full lisenced version of CAD does but should be good enough for what you need.

Its actually the full package and is free for a 5 year licence it just brands all your drawings with AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT.

The Google program is called Sketch-Up and is free! Its a good fun program that with a few add-ons can produce some fantastic stuff but i'm not sure how suitable it will be for 2D plans etc

Another program is VectorWorks but i'm not sure how the free trials work with that one 

[Diamond Hell]

The Google program is called Sketch-Up and is free! Its a good fun program that with a few add-ons can produce some fantastic stuff but i'm not sure how suitable it will be for 2D plans etc

This.

Or pay someone who knows what they're doing.

A mate is about to submit plans drawn on paper, in biro, to scale, for an extension.

He don't like computers much. 

[dom]

Sketchup is superb, I use it to teach A-level 3D design.

[bobbarley]

Thanks guys I'll give Sketch Up a whirl

[topher]

im still in the process of unpacking boxes from moving but i may still have some valid licenses from back in the day. sounds like you probably wouldn't need anything newer than LT97 anyway. after that things like viewport scaling and dimension styles got a little too involved for someone new to cad to just pick up along the way.

[dubber36]

Turbo CAD isn't all that expensive. It's better than the stupid amount of money that Autodesk think I should pay to upgrade my AutoCAD LT each year. I'm still using the 2006 version which is fine, but if people send be DWG's they ofeten need to be back saved so that I can open them.

Can anyone recommend a decent free package for doing some house design?  and no I don't mean Paint/Excel etc etc 

There is the alternative of getting me to design your house for you. 

[VW BUSH]

I use E drawings for viewing dxf dwg files when I cant be bothered to fire up solidworks.
What really sucks is that Solidworks keep phasing things out making you upgrade all the time and dropping backwards compatibility
I don't have to pay but its still a pita to use when customers send you old files or files from the new versions you have not upgraded to yet, saving as step or iges just to open files leads to all sorts of busted up models

Catia V5 can be found free on the web if you look around, its pretty good especially if you have not used other software and got into certain ways of doing things.

[kittie]

I was going to suggest SketchUp too. It's actually a Trimble (I think that's where Mcgee is getting Tremble from!) product nowadays though. The free version is called SketchUp Make and when you download it you also get a free trial of the Pro features for 8 hours.

Autodesk Design Review is free and will do for viewing dwg's as well.

I don't use any of this stuff I work in IT at a Uni and my main focus is around our vast software portfolio - management, licensing,  deployment, virtualisation that sort of thing so get a feel for lots of packages.