Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
It's quicker and easier then Illustrator or Photoshop. It's also a lot cheaper.
http://www.stone.com/Create/Create.html
Don't have any personal experience with it, but wasn't there a blurb about QCad a wihle ago?
... that's all i wrote...
Load up your X11 server and run xfig. :)
And, if you don't know what xfig is, a) shame on you, b) here is a link.
Have you looked into ConceptDraw? It's a Visio style drawing and flowcharting program. There are a couple of versions at different pricepoints. I've used it for flowcharting, site mapping, wireframing, org charting, and, well, designing my new kitchen. :-)
Here's a link to the libraries. I think even the cheap version supports floor plans.
http://www.conceptdraw.com.ua/en/tours/libtour/cdt ours.php
I've used ConceptDraw a lot in a work setting. I don't think it's quite as good as Visio, but it is the most full featured program of its type for MacOS. I found it very stable but with quite a few UI quirks. (Not as polished as an Adobe or Macromedia product.)
Anyone know why when I searched for "Mac floorplan software" in google I got a ton of mac warez/hacking sites? I guess a lot of pirates these days have grown, and need to design their new super 1337 pad.
I must say, SketchUp wins hands-down over any floor-plan-type software. It does have 3D modelling and walkthroughs, but you don't have to use them. The only thing is that it's not inexpensive, as you specified (the web site says US$475), but there is a free 30 day trial. Check out some of the tutorials, too, to see what amazing things you can do with this app.
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!
I'd highly recommend Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba Software). It's a mite expensive (~$350) but it excels at doing technical drawings/illustration particularly to scale. I've been using Canvas for doing starship deckplans for the Traveller game, and I can set the scale to be 1 X to be 1 Y and then have all of my drawings/measurements displayed in the Y units.
Canvas is pretty easy to learn though it has its quirks. On the plus side, while it is geared towards technical illustration, it's also a general purpose graphics package that can handle bitmap editing (subset of Photoshop functionality, and some photoshop filters work with Canvas), light page layout, and flow charting. Canvas imports and exports a wide variety of formats. I couldn't live without it for my work (user interface design).
There is a free 15 (I think it's 15) day trial version available.
As far as I know, Visio will not be ported to the Mac.
I've used both Omnigraffle and Visio. Visio is a very good program and very comprehensive. The problem is, it's not very easy to use. It's fairly difficult to make it do what you want it to do. Make a mistake or need to resize your chart, you are in for hours of editting.
Omnigraffle is much easier to use! Very intuitive interface, easy to adjust things -- and yes, it does come with an office layout pallette. You can even import your own graphic elements, if you choose. The new version 3 does even more cool stuff!
If the folks at Omnigroup ever decide to take on Excel (my favorite M$ product), I've got some money I'd like to throw at them...
Whew! This water sure is cold!
I suggest you go to VersionTracker and search "CAD."like so.
You may want to see if these fit the bill for you.
CADintosh X 4.4 - 2D CAD - 2.6M - Shareware
CADtools 2.1.4 - CAD plugin for Adobe Illustrator
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
There are lots of options. See http://architosh.com or http://architosh.com/DPG/software/tables/cad_archi tecture_aec.phtml .dxf as it's native format so you can import/export infomation from other sources.
--
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
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.
Design your entire home from the ground up and test it for paper-airplane-friendliness!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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.
.dwg (AutoCAD drawing), pictures, and many other formats.
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
SketchUp is definitely the way to go.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"