Floor plan software?

Hi all. I'm new here, although I've been lurking for a while. My name is Guy Staley, and I'm an enigineer living in Seattle, WA. Been doing studio work for 15 years, and I've had a long-term interest is acoustics and studio design. I've had a studio in my home for the last two+ years. I'm gearing up to put together something a little more commercial, but first I need to come up with some basic design concepts so I have a better idea of what kind of space I'm looking for and what kind of construction costs I'm looking at. I'll be doing most of the work myself, and I need to start somewher, so... I'm on a Mac, running OSX and I'm looking for software to do simple floor plans. I'm having trouble finding something like Smartdraw for the Mac. Any suggestions? You folks have a GREAT forum here, and a great community, and I feel lucky to be a part of it. Sincerly, Guy Staley

Guy - the only program that I know that is Mac is sketchup.com which has a mac and pc version but it's also a 3D program - it's very easy to use and you soon get hooked on it - it will do straight 2D drawings as well. A friend recently had smartdraw operating perfectly well on a mac using virtual PC. cheers john

Thanks John. I've already downloaded Sketchup and am trying to get the hang of it. After downloading your Skethup rendering of the basement studio, I can definetly see how useful it could be. How long did it take you to create the drawing? -Guy

a couple of days. The main thing with sketchup is to make groups of everything - so if you want a stud create one then group it - all you need do then is double click it and you can edit it if necessary. if you don't group things you can get into an awful mess. also start to assign shortcuts from the start as they make everything simpler and faster - it's in the preferences. soon it will start to drive you crazy when you find yourself trying to orbit around pics on the net :) cheers john