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Hi all, i'm looking a website that i can use to design the back of my property, mostly a raised decking area, anyone know of a site i can use for free? any pointers from others that might have done the same? i know what i want but want to mess with some designs first
Any help appreciated
Google SketchUp
Not free, but cheap and devastatingly effective..
I use it for work every day
For Battleships?
Hang man!
MS Paint is your friend
Photoshop probably won't help in designing something from scratch, it's a photo editing tool.
Google Sketchup (as Drac says) is what you need.
https://www.sketchup.com/plans-and-pricing/sketchup-free
Thanks for those, Sketch up looks good. Ideally i want to upload a photo of the back of the house / garden and then add on my designs and try different things
Fusion360 might be a bit ott for what you want, but is free and will allow you to overlay a canvas (pic of your house) that you can calibrate to a certain size to line it up with any model you might have created.
If you don't have a 3d CAD background, the learning curve might be a bit steep for what you want to achieve.
If you want a 'traditional' tool -- ie not SketchUp -- then Inkscape and GIMP are free alternatives to Illustrator and PhotoShop.
Not bothered with Graphics packages myself in years, but if you use Linux there's lots of alternatives for free...
'GIMP' (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is still about I believe, and there's a windows and OS-X ports of it too IIRC...
GIMP is great but like Photoshop a steep learning curve. Doesn't sound like you need a graphics package though.
There's a free version of [url= https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=36180 ]Microsoft Expression Design[/url] that would probably do the job too.
+1 Fusion 360. Sign up for an hobby/educational licence and its free.
A steep learning curve but loads of tutorials out there and very satisfying. I find very similar to building a model, you really need a bit of effort to get it right but when it comes together its great.
I've been doing similar in Draftsight, which is a free version of AutoCAD (2D design CAD).
Again, it a piece of software with a steep learning curve but I use AutoCAD at work so it's not too bad.
I can imagine that Sketchup is a better too for home use, I only haven't looked in to it because I'm comfortable using 2D views and couldn't be bothered to learn new software.
gimp
Draftsight has stopped being free unfortunately. I've replaced it with Nanocad, which is another Autodesk clone.