Designing a Kitchen

[Anonymous]

I am looking at Archicad to help me design kitchens for a few people.
It would be nice for clients to have walkthroughs etc.

My Question is: If I choose Archicad, are there libraries out there from appliance companies say, Smeg, Bosch etc? Which will enable me to design a kitchen with the exact appliance the customer requested? Or do I have to learn about creating these objects myself?

If Archicad is not suitable, can anyone recommend any other appropriate software?

I have placed this in new user, as I am new to Archicad, I like this software and hopefully it will be suitable. Thanks in advance

[Dwight]

You should arrive at expensive whole hawg Archicad after being frustrated by several lesser programs first.

DecoTech 3d, for instance.

http://www.pulsarusa.com/

or
http://www.kitchendraw.com/

or
http://www.plan3d.com

or
http://www.homeplanpro.com/

or
http://www.artifice.com/free/dw_lite.html

or:
http://www.kitcad.com/
They named a candy bar after that last one, it was so good.

[Anonymous]

Dwight,

I think I may stay with archicad, I suppose the real question is weither I have access to smeg, bosch etc objects, like dishwashers, ovens etc.

I would hate to have to build all these myself.

by the way thanks for your quick reply.

[Dwight]

You WILL have a hard time finding the full appliance range.

[Anonymous]

we are poorly supported in this regard. It is a major shortcoming of a parametric object based cad program not to have vendor "support" In a world full of manufactured parts we should be spending far less time "winging" it

Cary

ArchiCAD 11 build 1200 usa full
windows XPsp2

[vfrontiers]

Cary wrote:
we are poorly supported in this regard. It is a major shortcoming of a parametric object based cad program not to have vendor "support" In a world full of manufactured parts we should be spending far less time "winging" it

Cary

ArchiCAD 11 build 1200 usa full
windows XPsp2

Please note that any .3ds file can be converted to ArchiCAD object (sans parametricity)... but for one-offs, this should be fine. Most appliance manu that supply 3d objects will have .3ds or .dwg. Many 3d object houses may also have these available. They probably won't be free, tho.

[Dwight]

One of the reasons Plan3D is included in my suggested softwares is: