Deck Bill of Material

[Homeremodeler]

I am thinking of purchasing Home Designer Professional. If I use it to design a deck does it give me an accurate Bill of Material?

[David J. Potter]

Software is a tool, if you construct a deck and make sure it is exactly as you intend to build it in the field, it will by way of its materials list feature, tell what you did to build the virtual deck, no more or less.
This ability takes an investment of your time to fully learn and master the tools within Home Designer Pro, the accuracy of any resulting Materials List will reflect only your own competence and nothing more.

I consider the process fun and creative but it was work never the less, only you can decide to apply yourself or not for such results.

DJP

[Kbird]

If you are willing to use HDP to "draw" each joist , post , stud etc manually then you may have an accurate enough model , with auto-decks probably not esp. if your defaults aren't setup right, I find the M.List pitiful at least for how I build.

Not sure if you saw this on your other post Jim (Don coulson's thread)? .....here it is C&P'd just in case.....


Jim , I use the software for what you intend and the Materials List was one of the things I wanted it for too BUT the list isn't worth the paper it prints on , there are complaints on the chief site about it too ,but perhaps I need to put (a lot) of hours into the Materials List Master list to make it work right or something?

No 3D Cad software is easy to learn but this will get you going on smaller projects for sure as it did for me fairly simply but the more you use it, read the manual etc the more you will get out of it. try the Trial if you haven't , perhaps start with Architectural and upgrade if needed as I did ( you get a rebate for Arch. if you do.) for really simple stuff like a bathroom or kitchen where only interiors are needed even Suite might work for you....

M.

ps. note that the 3d images are NOT photo realistic in HD Titles , though pretty good , only Chief can do that.