I used Chief Architect to basically design the whole house before we even went to an architect, they used my floorplan unchanged. Saved us a couple of months of working with these boneheads probably
I should have gone with a builder/designer that actually knows how to build a house, they could have had a draftsman just convert my stuff to buildable plans.
I sent them all kinds of wonderfully rendered 3d views of the inside and out. Which they seem to have completely ignored. I shouldn't be venting here, but the last plans they just sent for review are about six weeks old, all the corrections we made since then appear to be gone.
Like you I tend to plan everything out in 3d these days, even a simple shed. I'm starting to think a lot of the free "open source" apps are better to use than "professional" stuff. The free stuff seems to use many more commonly used file types so exchange and importing/exporting objects is much easier. And of course FREE is always good.
I miss my old industrial sewing machine, used to make all kinds of canvas covers and such for equipment, soft cabs parts for tractors etc.
Here is a render of the Kitchen area from Chief Architect. Makes the stuff from the "professionals" we are working with look like crayon drawings.
