Sep 17, 2014 In our testing, we found that Punch Home Design Studio for Mac is a great tool for designing landscape projects. With a sizeable selection of plants and trees as well as growth simulation and lighting recreations, you get a clear idea of how each tree, bush and hedge would look now and far. Home Design Studio 17.5 for Mac can be downloaded from our website for free. Our built-in antivirus scanned this Mac download and rated it as 100% safe. The program lies within Design & Photo Tools, more precisely 3D Modeling. Tutorial home design studio pro gratis free you with punch 12 home design studio pro for mac v17 free you punch landscape design stunning home studio pro for mac.
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Punch! Software Home & Landscape Design Studio for Mac 14.1
Home & Landscape Design Studio for Mac 14.1 is a 3-D program aimed at home owners who want to design or remodel a home or landscape. This updated version creates a much richer experience for Mac users, than the previous package. New features such as QuickStart home layout, built-in green building tips and materials, and an expanded object library including Google 3-D support, will have users designing quickly and easily right out of the box.
Home & Landscape Design Studio (H&LDS) tries to provide you with results similar to a professional CAD (computer-aided-design) application with the ease of use and quick learning curve of a consumer-level design program.
Timesavers
One of this version’s new standout features is the QuickStart part of the SmartRoom technology. It works like this: At the start of a project, you drag and drop rooms onto a grid as simple rectangles. Want a kitchen? Grab the kitchen box, place it, size it, and move on to the next room. When you finish this rough layout, the program automatically creates a floor plan with labels and dimensions. But the plan is not simply 2-D; it is 3-D as well. So you can view your creation in 3-D, add an automatically generated roof, and view a photorealistic rendering of the project. Click the Continue button to move back to the 2-D design space to refine and modify your drawing.
This process works great on fairly simple designs (not too many twists, turns, or alcoves). However, when creating designs that are more complex, or after tweaking the walls of your design, it does not always work perfectly. For instance, the automatic roof creation function would often get confused after wall edits and come up with something odd, impractical, or just plain impossible.
Another timesaving new feature is the included library of templates. Instead of designing a kitchen from scratch, you can go to the template library and choose a pre-designed kitchen. Then you can decorate your kitchen with your preferred colors and materials. With templates for most rooms in a house, you can quickly plug in pre-organized rooms with minimal effort to create an entire home. You can edit templates for dimensions and content, but each element making up the template must be edited individually for good results. So, if you find templates that satisfy your vision when designing your space, then this process works great. Designing a custom kitchen or other room from scratch, or by modifying the included templates, is much more time consuming.
Fast photorealistic views
One really fun element of H&LDS is the real-time 3-D. Once you have the basics of your design down, try opening the 3-D window and watch the design update. Adding 3-D objects to your 2-D design will cause them to appear in your 3-D model immediately. Adding color and textures to finishes in your design will bring it to life and give you impressive photorealistic views. You can move through and around your design to see how rooms will feel, what the view will be from windows, or how spacious that bathroom really is. Punch! has improved the program’s performance for this release. Even on an older PowerBook G4, the 3-D rendering engine had no problem keeping up with the 2-D design window in real time.
If you are working on a landscape plan, adding plants to your landscape can be a little frustrating; they are so small and unimpressive when first planted. H&LDS solves this problem by letting you “grow” your landscape by up to 20 years so you can see how foliage will look when it’s mature. The program includes a fairly large library of plants and trees, although you will inevitably find that specific plants you would like to use are missing.
Going green
New for this release are “green” features that include “green tips” and green library objects. The tips consist of a list of general guidelines for green building. For instance, one tip is to include storm water collectors to be used in air conditioning, but there is no instruction on how to implement this in your design. The same green tips could easily be obtained online with more useful detail.
In my review of version 11, I encouraged Punch! Software to add more brand-name manufacturer products and materials to future versions and for this version and they have; the new version’s 3-D library includes items from many manufacturers, the most significant being a new group of Green objects for making more environmentally sustainable selections. These include finishes such as bamboo flooring and EnviroGLAS counters and objects such as wind turbines and solar collectors.
In addition, H&LDS now lets users import SketchUp objects from Google’s 3D Warehouse. This gives you access to thousands of objects from furniture to entire buildings. These objects are created by SketchUp users, so quality, scale, and usefulness may vary.
Construction tools
There is a new cost estimation tool for H&LDS. Estimator will help you determine the construction cost of your creation using a spreadsheet that is broken into sections such as foundation, flooring, and landscaping. Each section automatically shows the items and material quantities from your project that H&LDS has calculated for you. The catch is, you have to provide your own unit costs. For instance, if you have added a concrete patio, you will have to find out and fill in the cost per cubic yard of concrete in your area, including labor and delivery.
Also new is a Framing Editor that allows you to design your framing elements such as beams, floor joists, roof joists, and more. Note that no contractor will commence a construction project without a design executed by a certified engineer or architect. However, the H&LDS framing 3-D view automatically shows you what your house framing might look like, and is very cool.
Still quirky
Home & Landscape Design Studio is definitely a fun program and can engage users in the excitement of designing. The tutorial videos are extremely useful for learning new tools. Keep the inch-and-a-half thick user’s guide handy, though, as you will run into situations that are difficult to solve through intuition alone. For example, creating a multiple story house is a snap but adding a staircase and cutting away the upper story floor will prove much more difficult. Once you get comfortable with the basics and start having fun, you will soon run into frustrations as you try to make your model more detailed and more dimensionally accurate.
Practical applications
Home & Landscape Design Studio users will likely fall into two categories: They’re designing a new dream house or dream landscape or remodeling an existing house or landscape. If you are starting from scratch and are willing to stay within the limits of the QuickStart features, the provided object libraries, and the auto-generated features, you can get astounding 3-D rendered views of your creation with a minimum of effort and time, especially when compared to more expensive and complex professional CAD and drawing programs. However, if you are drawing an existing home plan into the software, be prepared to spend a great deal of time tweaking walls, doors, and windows to get them to the correct size and positions. Specifying exact wall sizes requires a special wall tool. Changing the size of a wall and placing it exactly where you want can be challenging. Angled walls and other non-standard wall features are difficult to replicate in the software.
Home & Landscape Design Studio is marketed as a way for you to design your own home, and Punch! even includes a way to send your plans to a printing service where you can pay for prints. It also provides a way to contact contractors through a Web site referral service. The problem is that your drawings will not be exact enough to build from, or even to get a building permit. The drawings will lack information needed to satisfy local building codes and show construction methods necessary for producing construction documents. You would still need to employ a professional architect or designer for that. However, your drawings will be an excellent way to communicate your ideas to such professionals.
Macworld’s buying advice
Punch! Software’s Home & Landscape Design Studio for Mac 14.1—at about $150—is an excellent value for what it does well: create quick and impressive 3-D views of your dream home or landscape design that showcase your vision for your property. Staying within the bounds of the QuickStart process, the templates, and the provided objects and materials make this process a blast. But coaxing the program to the level of customization and accuracy demanded by construction documents or to create some of the impressive and detailed renderings used in their marketing, while technically possible, will prove a time consuming and sometimes frustrating experience.
Punch! Software Home & Landscape Design Studio for Mac 14.1
Pros
- Impressive renderings with little time and effort
- Template library includes pre-designed rooms
- QuickStart features
Cons
- Entering existing plans and creating more detailed models can be time consuming and frustrating
- Green tips are not detailed enough
Once you’ve got a basic collection of recording gear…
The next big task is designing your room.
While most beginners underestimate the importance of this step, the truth is…
A well-designed room can be the difference between smooth sailing and major headaches down the road.
So to spare you the months of frustration…
In this post, we’ll go through the ENTIRE step-by-step process of setting up your recording room the RIGHT WAY.
So let’s get started. First up…
STEP 1: Choose the Best Room
In an average household, you might have the option of 2-3 rooms to set up your studio.
If you only have one option…then just use that.
Otherwise, you have a decision to make…
And since some rooms are better for recording than others…
Here’s what I recommend you know to make the best choice:
The Top 4 Things to Avoid
Choosing room is less about finding good qualities, and more about AVOIDING bad ones. Particularly, these 4:
1. Small Spaces
The general rule of thumb is: the bigger the room, the better.
Big rooms allow for:
- More space for multiple musicians, and…
- More space for your ever-growing collection of gear/instruments
Not to mention…they sound better (more on that topic later).
While beginners might prefer the privacy and coziness of smaller rooms, my advice is…
Be smart…and choose the bigger one.
2. Noise
In everyday life, you forget how much noise is actually around you. But once you hear it through a microphone, all that noise is magnified 100x.
All these things are common sources of noise that can easily ruin your recordings:
- Cars
- neighbors
- plumbing
- birds
- crickets
- wind
- rain
So pay close attention to which rooms are the worst noise offenders, and choose the quietest one with the fewest neighbors.
In addition to avoiding outside noises, you must also realize that YOU will undoubtedly be a source of noise for OTHERS.
Ideally, you want a perfectly silence space where:
- you can make as much noise as you want.
- at any time of the day you want.
But since very few rooms are like that…
Some degree of soundproofing may be required in order to create a useable workspace for yourself.
3. Poor Flooring
For your recording room, hard flooring such as concrete, tile, or hardwood is ideal.
Carpeted rooms often cause problems for two reasons:
- studios get a lot of foot traffic, and carpet wears out quickly.
- carpet absorbs high frequencies, but not low ones, which hurts the acoustics.
If and when you need carpet, such as for a drum kit, you can always lay down an area rug instead.
The other problem to watch out for with upstairs floors especially is excessive foot noise. If possible, choose a downstairs room instead.
Up next…
4. Poor Acoustics
Bedrooms in a typical family home look something like this:
- They’re small,
- With low ceilings,
- And parallel walls made of drywall.
Sadly for us…
It just so happens that ALL those features NEGATIVELY affect acoustics.
Ideally what you want is a large room with high ceilings, asymmetrical walls, and lots of irregular surfaces. However, the chances of having access to a room just like this are virtually ZERO.
Pro studios have them, but only because they spent tons of cash to DESIGN them. You on the other hand, will most likely need to compromise.
Don’t expect perfection, just choose your best option.
You can always improve the room sound later by adding acoustic treatment (and we’ll get to that part in a bit).
But if at all possible, it’s best to use a room with great natural acoustics, as it will be less work for you later.
Got it? Moving on…
STEP 2: Clear Out the Room
Once you’ve chosen a room, it’s time to prepare it for the project ahead.
So before we start adding new things INTO the room, let’s take everything that we don’t need OUT.
- Clear off all floor space
- Take everything off the walls
- Remove anything that vibrates
If the room also doubles as bedroom, living room, etc…you may not be able to clear it out completely, but anything that CAN be removed, SHOULD be removed.
Done? Let’s continue…
STEP 3: Add Acoustic Treatment
Previously in Chapter 3, I showed you everything you need to know to put together an amazing acoustic treatment plan on virtually any budget.
Now that you have an empty room to work with, it’s time to put all that knowledge into practice.
So put up your acoustic treatment, and come back when you’re done.
Classic Example Package:
- Auralex Roominator – (Amazon/GuitarC/MusiciansF)
Done? Cool. Up next…
STEP 4: Arrange Your Workstation
Now that you’ve got an empty room with great acoustics, it’s time to add some some gear.
Since your desk/chair will always be the centerpiece of your room…
It makes sense to start with those two.
Youtube Home Design Studio For Mac V19
While any desk/chairs you have lying around the house can be used for starters…
Ideally you probably want your workstation to look a little more professional if at all possible.
And so…to find out what I recommend and why, check out the following two articles:
Classic Desk Example:
- Studio RTA Producer Station – (Amazon/GuitarC/MusiciansF)
Classic Chair Example:
- Herman Miller Aeron – (Amazon)
Up next…
STEP 5: Arrange Your Recording Stations
While pro studios have the luxury of multiple rooms for multiple tasks…
In your studio, you’ll likely be using ONE room for EVERYTHING.
So the setup will be different.
The general idea here is to have TWO stations:
- a desk/mixing area for the engineer (which we’ve already done)
- a recording area for the musicians (which we’ll do right now)
The problem is…
A setup that works well for recording others, usually doesn’t work so well when recording just yourself.
But don’t worry, because there’s a workable solution for every scenario.
Let’s start with this one…
The Standard SOLO Setup
For an efficient “one-man” setup…
What most folks do is cram all their gear around them in a circle…
Which allows them to play BOTH engineer and musician from one location.
While this setup CAN work well…
The downsides are:
- Too much gear around you creates added reflections, which hurts the acoustics.
- With the computer so close to the mics, fan noise can leak onto the recording.
The biggest problem of all with this setup is…
It doesn’t work for multiple people. To record others, you must completely rearrange your studio…
Into something more like this:
The Standard DUAL Setup
To record in your studio with two or more people…
The standard strategy is to divide the room into two stations.
On one end, there’s a station for the engineer…
Which includes his mixing desk, and all the standard gear such as an audio interface, studio monitors, etc.
On the opposite end, there’s a station for the musician…
Which includes microphones, and any instruments/MIDI controllers they might use.
The problem with this setup is…
While it works well for multiple people, it doesn’t work AT ALL when recording by yourself.
Because to play both engineer and musician requires you to constantly jump back and forth between stations…which simply isn’t practical.
So up next…here’s a 3rd option:
The Hybrid Setup
Ultimately, what you want is…
A setup that works well for both solo, AND group recording.
So what I recommend here is, a hybrid setup closely resembling the “dual” setup…
With one KEY addition:
On station 2, you’ll need some kind of remote, that at the very least…
Allows you to press record, play, and stop while away from your desk.
Over the years, people have tried many ways of doing this…and until recently, all of them SUCKED.
The earliest versions were stand-alone hardware devices such as the Frontier Tranzport that were hard to program, and frustrating to use.
Later on when wireless keyboards and wireless mice grew more sophisticated, some folks starting using those instead.
While they worked somewhat, it still left much to be desired. It wasn’t until years later that someone finally invented something GOOD…
The “DAW Remote”
Far more sophisticated than a simple transport remote…
An app created by the Eumlab company, known simply as the DAW Remote…
Offers an unprecedented level of functionality, rivaling that of a real control surface.
While there are other similar apps available, this one is BY FAR the best.
The 2 different versions are:
- DAW Remote – for iPhones and other smartphones.
- DAW Remote HD – for iPads and other tablets.
With this one tool, you can run your session and record your instruments from anywhere in the room, all by yourself.
For mounting, one great tool is the IK Multimedia iKlip Expand.
Simply by attaching it your mic stand, you can precisely position your iPad exactly where you want it.
And it eliminates the need for adding extra stands in an already cramped studio.
- Click here to see current price.
For the iPhone, check out the iKlip Expand Mini instead.
- Click here to see current price.
Up next…
3 More Useful Accessories
To make your studio even more user-friendly for solo recording…I also recommend the following:
1. A Headphone Extension Cable
When you work alone, you spend a lot of time moving around the room…
And for most of that time, you’re wearing headphones.
The problem is…
The average headphone cable is far too short for unrestricted movement.
Which is why I recommend a headphone extension cable at least 20 ft long, such as this one.
NOTE: When choosing a headphone cable for this specific purpose, avoid cheap ones, as they’re prone to crackling sounds with constant movement.
2. A Secondary Computer Monitor
One of the tough parts about running a session with a DAW remote is…
You don’t have the same visual feedback you get when sitting in front of the computer.
But with a large flat screen mounted on your wall…
You can clearly see what’s happening within your session from anywhere in the room, and it’s a great visual aid for others as well.
The only downside is, it’s expensive, because in addition to the monitor/TV, you’ll also need a desktop computer with multiple video outs, such as the Mac Pro.
Classic Example:
- HP Pavilion Monitor – (Amazon)
3. Virtual Instruments/MIDI controllers
I think we can all agree, that to record music by yourself…
You MUST be a multi-instrumentalist.
But since few of us have enough real instruments to cover an entire song…
The standard solution is to use a virtual instrument/MIDI controller combo instead.
In addition to saving you both money and space…
The editing features of most virtual instruments are a great way to compensate for your lack of playing skills on an unfamiliar instrument.
Classic Example:
- Spectrasonics Keyscape – (Amazon/GuitarC/MusiciansF)
STEP 6: Connect Your Gear
Now that you’ve finished the layout of your studio…
The next step is connecting your equipment.
If you don’t have much gear right now, then the setup should be pretty simple.
However…
As your needs grow over time, so too will the complexity of your routing.
Home Design Studio For Mac V17
In order to make that work…
Punch Home Design Studio Mac
You must have a solid understanding of how it all fits together to form a single working system.
In recording circles, the concept is known as signal flow, which simply means:
The path an audio signal must travel through your gear, from beginning to end.
To learn how it all works, check out this post:
And once you understand that, you still need to know which cables to use to make all those connections.
So check out this article as well:
Moving on…
STEP 7: Position Your Studio Monitors
Now that everything is set up and looking good…
The final step to completing this project is to tweak the position of your monitors.
A lot of folks assume that just because they have an expensive pair of studio monitors…
They’ve solved the problem of “good monitoring” once-and-for-all.
But the truth is…it requires SO much more than just that.
Besides a whole bunch of other stuff which we won’t go into right now…
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GOOD MONITORING starts with GOOD POSITIONING.
House Design Programs For Mac
And good positioning depends on a wide combination of factors including:
- The position of your head
- The position of the walls
- The position of “spot” acoustic treatment
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Needless to say…this topic is far more complex than you imagine.
To see in full detail, exactly how to position your monitors, check out this post:
As you will discover in that post, the ideal spot for your monitors requires very precise positioning, which you may or may not be able to achieve by placing them on your desk.
So one last item to consider is a pair of studio monitor stands.
With a fully adjustable height, angle, and width, they make it possible to position your monitors literally anywhere.
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To see which ones I recommend, check out this article:
Classic Example:
- Ultimate Support MS-100 – (Amazon/GuitarC/MusiciansF)
And That’s It
Congratulations, you’re finished. 🙂
Really though, you’re just getting started. Because next it’s time to use your new studio to finally record some music.
And we’ll cover that in the next chapter: