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Floorplan Software for Macs?

Posted by Cliff on from the tools-for-digital-architects dept.

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."

2 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just use an emulator... by muirhead · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The only question is price. If your time is worth the price of the VirtualPC software. But this would seem to be the simplest answer to your question.

    You forget to mention that users are also required to pay for a licensed copy of the Windows operating system to run Windows programs using the Virtual PC software.
    There are plenty of solutions much simpler than resorting to an emulator.

    And please, spare me the philosophy.

    No.

    It's seems unjust to recommend giving money to a convicted felon for no good reason.

  2. Re:Floor Plans, etc = SketchUp by eduo · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I found it strange nobody had mentioned Sketchup yet. Sketchup is a great, native program (not a port, but made from scratch for the Mac) which uses OpenGL to do 3D rendering on-the-fly (and works as well for 2D) and has lots of tools that ease the layout of floorplans or buildings.

    http://www.sketchup.com/ has several demos and tutorials to try out. The thing has automatic scaling, several libraries of objects and materials, a bustling community and the people behind it must be some of the nicest businessmen still out there..:)

    Eduo