Try google sketch up. It's free. There are also free training videos you can watch to learn it.

Great news for us Mac users out there: Ikea has just made their kitchen planning software available for the Mac!! Check out their website - you download a plugin and you are all set. It is web-based and you need Leopard and the latest versions of Safari or Firefox. It does everything that the in-store planner does (with that annoying 'snap in' feature) and it also lets you select flooring, backsplash, wall colour and even the view from the windows (garden or city lights?). There are a few bugs (some appliances and dining tables and chairs come up as options but then don't select) but the basic cabinet planning part all seems to work well. The 'snap in' feature is annoying, though, and might cause problems in a tight layout because it doesn't let you set small distances for clearances. Or at least if you can I haven't figured it out yet. I guess you could use a filler strip as a substitute, but sometimes I couldn't even find the filler strip in the layout once I selected it: they are virtually invisible and the software often drops it into a spot next to a cabinet edge so you can't see it. I'd end up with filler strips in odd places which I only found when I couldn't move a cab into a particular spot. So I'd advise people to allow for those small clearances in their own measurements and not rely totally on the software measurements to lay out everything precisely.

Hi Katrina, To your first question regarding moving wall cabs up and down: Select the cabinet to be raised or lowered. Go into 3D view. Get a close up view of the cab. To the right (maybe sometimes to the left, I'm not quite sure) of the cab you'll see an up/down arrow. click up or down to move the cab until it's at the desired height. Planner tips: If your software is lagging, it helps to give it some time after every click before continuing. When you select a cab, wait before continuing until the cursor stops spinning. All that will prevent it from getting overwhelmed. Make sure that all extensions in your browser are disabled. That seems to help. Keep saving often. I mean it: really often. Ikea updated the software about 2 weeks ago. Since then the planner works much better on my Mac Ibook using Firefox. I haven't tried to run the planner with Chrome or Safari since the update. I'm sure some layout experts will eventually chime in with design help. Good luck!

I used a free interactive graph paper. Tom Maitland. I then save the outline in paint and add stuff. I've bought various programs but I found them cumbersome and not custom enough. Some people love Sketchup but it was very hard for me to learn so I gave up on it.