I'm using Sketchup, which is priced right FREE, and find it is incredibly capable allowing awesome detail including among other things a 3 dimensional site pan and excavation plan. There is no manual and the learning process takes a while. If you try it you'll soon need to learn how to use layers, components, and how to print, none of which are intuitive. You'll also want a printer that'll print on bigger paper, I have, and am very pleased with, an HP 7610 that will print on 13" x 19" paper and was quite reasonably priced. I do most of my printing on 8 1/2 x 14 because I can scan them into PDFs that anyone can view. I'll offer to help with the learning by email. Feel free to contact me directly with Sketchup questions [email protected]

There are dozens of sketchup tutorials on you tube.

I have found free software is worth what you pay for it. Chief Architect software has numerous videos to help you learn and has a 30 day free trial.

Liebler,
Your subs will like you more if you pony up and print some full size sets from digicopy instead of sending a PDF, I think I speak for many saying its generally not good sliding an architectural stick against your monitor glass and few subs can print large format and in general just pisses people off. What stinks even more is printing a copy that isn't scaled to whatever your printer puts out.

Since you have a larger format printer you might want to try doing your page setup and layout in 11x17, you can usually get 3/16 scale on that for miniprints and when the plan is done change your page size to ARCH D which proprtions nicely with 11x17, then you only need to adjust page size and scale output, print to PDF and send the file to a printer. Here it is $1 or less a page for ARCH D.

When are you going to build this house of yours? You've been talking about it for years.

For an aspiring designer or armchair architect, I would try to find someone selling an older version of AutoCAD or Chief Architect, new versions are very similar to old for both.

Greentree,
Thanks to your prodding I splurged and actually bought a virtual printer. One of the weaknesses of Sketchup is it's print function doesn't allow print to file, just direct to whatever printer is installed. Now my Sketchup thinks it's printing to a printer but it's a virtual printer that creates a PDF and allows me to create a PDF scaled for D or even E sized paper. I now have a choice of creating a D sized PDF and printing it at the local office depot, on D sized paper or printing "shrunken" version of the PDF or printing directly up to my paper size. The build will start soon, I have the lot, and expect to apply for permits next week. I was taught that no one should never need to scale a print, all the necessary information should be conveyed by notes and dimensions.

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