Floorplan Software for Macs?

jgardner asks: "I was asked by my employer to create a scale drawing of the floorplan for our company's buildings. Using Illustrator or Freehand and building everything from scratch seems too time expensive. I spent a long time online looking for a program which is designed to create floorplans, but only found expensive, high-end products. I need something inexpensive, and it just needs to draw flooplans. No 3D modeling, or walkthroughs required. There are plenty for PCs that are under $100. So far for the Mac, I have only found Architecture 3.03, by Abracadata. This program was originally written for OS 6.x, so it is very old, and has severe limitations. Does anyone know of a better Mac alternative? Maybe even an inexpensive set of tools for Illustrator or Freehand? Preferably OS X, but I can boot into 9 or operate in Classic if forced to."

Comments

Graffle it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that omnigraffle, a flow chart program that comes with most newer macs has basic office layout symbols built in to it.

It's not the most exact in the world, but it's something at least, no?

Re:Graffle it! Here's the key

[Anonymous Coward]

The key thing with OmniGraffle is that you can punch your dimensions into a text box and it will draw everything to scale. You don't need to muss with rulers, scale conversions, etc.

On top of that, it comes with pallettes of objects (desks, network access points, chairs, server cabinets, etc.). You can download extra pallettes, and you can make your own pallettes by dragging and dropping images.

I used it to draw out plans for a kitchen conversion in our office. I've also used it to draw out network diagrams; diagrams of where data is stored on the server... It's a great app!

Re:QCad

[Jermsy]

Yes, QCad would do everything you need... and it's free!

http://www.qcad.org/

Mac Architect's Site

[geperoo]

There are lots of options. See http://architosh.com or http://architosh.com/DPG/software/tables/cad_archi tecture_aec.phtml
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They don't list QCAD, a free Mac OS X native 2D only program. I recently loaded it on my 64 450 it has worked well so far and should do what you need. QCad uses the AutoCAD .dxf as it's native format so you can import/export infomation from other sources.

PowerCADD X is also a good choice, simple and stright forward. The new Mac OS X version is $895.00 with $150.00 extra for a AutoCAD translator. Cheap for a CAD application but still a good outlay of cash for something you may only use once or twice.

Floor Plans, etc = SketchUp

[ShimmyShimmy]

SketchUp absolutely takes the cake on this one. SketchUp is the best 3-D modeling design software available (no reason you can't work in 2-D). SketchUp features automatic length and surface area calculations, as well as automatic labelling and dimensioning.

You can also use walkthroughs; literally walk through the model. You can build on different layers and hide any/all of them, and even deaignate a plene on your model, such that everything on the positive side of the plane is hidden, but the rest is visible (perfect for cross sections, cutaways).

SketchUp costs $475 for the full version, but you can get a demo, which can either work for 30 days, or for 12.0 hours of actual use time. THere is a windows client as well. The best part about SketchUp is the versatility. You can actually save drawings as .dwg (AutoCAD drawing), pictures, and many other formats.

SketchUp is definitely the way to go.