I'm not sure if this is what you mean exactly. I just got my Embroidery machine last month so I'm still a newbie with all this stuff. . When I bought my Babylock. The dealer sweetened the deal by throwing in Designer's Gallery Studio Plus. I love it !! It is so easy to use . I just download the "free" patterns online and voila I see it in this program. Here I can watch it stitch up. Try different colors . Mary in Va

We're doing a major remodel / rebuild that encompasses more than just the kitchen. Our architect uses Archicad for Mac. He is advising us on interior design, but our design budget was used up months ago. So I found a program for the Mac called "Live Interior 3D" on Apple's "App Store" for $39 and thought I would give it a try. It has been great. I imported the 2D PDF of plans from the architect and then traced walls in my app, then added windows and floors, etc. and added furniture. Architect and I will have discussions about design concepts for living room / kitchen (mainly so far) and I'll draw them up and share screenshots and we'll chat about it. So he helps with design direction but I do the work of creating the visualization. Now that we have it, we can use it to consider color, flooring, etc. You can add lights, change size and luminosity, change time of day, etc. and the program renders shadows etc. We used this technique (combined with very helpful ideas from this forum) to determine that we would go with a counter height eating area on our peninsula with a seat at the end. Once we had that, I figured I could get a nice 30" drawer in before the prep sink. Also used it to visualize a 36 vs 30 inch range (going with 36). Then last week we met with the cabinet guys and I gave them screenshots and ideas (including custom depth for an upper cabinet for a microwave near the fridge). It's not in any way a kitchen design program per se that will give you quantities of cabinets. But it doesn't for instance let you change the cabinet face style etc. You can change wood color. You can import objects from sketchup, including searching for objects online through the software interface. Here's our "fridge wall". At the top will be other top-hinged I imagine cabinets but I was lazy and didn't put them in. The cabinets (where the micro is put) are 18" deep so we can put a decent microwave in their. I showed this to the electrician yesterday and he made a mental note to put the power receptacle in the cabinet above it. Also told us to have the cabinet guy put in a shelf that would support the weight of the microwave so we don't have to hang it. Right now I'm modelling different sizes of range hoods from ProLine to figure out which one will both look good and give us 1000+ cfm venting. Here is the range wall (opposite fridge on end of U) with the geometry of this hood: http://www.prolinerangehoods.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=32_46&products_id=200 Here is a rendering: I created the range hood geometry by adding 2 blocks and giving them a metal surface texture. To the right of the range we **could** fit a 24" Miele Chef. I'm going to defer this purchase, but based on this modeling we're going to run conduit now, and put in Miele-friendly drawers so in the future if we want to add it we'll be able to without totally ripping apart everything. Really easy to use program if you're Mac-centric like me. Great tech support too. http://www.belightsoft.com/products/liveinterior/overview.php

For learning SketchUp there's a pretty decent series of books called "Google SketchUp for Interior Design and Space Planning" or some such. I bought them last winter when I was first learning it. The books ended up being a bit too basic for me, since I learn computer stuff quickly -- it's what I do for a living. By the time the books arrived I'd already learned most of what was in them. But for someone who's just starting out I think they'd be good. The series has 3 books. They're all pretty thin and fairly inexpensive. I bought them on Amazon. I agree that graph paper is a good place to start, though. Or go buy a cheap architects' ruler at Office Depot. I think I got one for $5 or so. Laura still annoyed that Google got rid of SketchUp

My suggestions as a tech guy & TKO type: Better Homes & Gardens Home Designer for designing spaces. It has a small learning curve and costs money, but it's flexible enough and more user friendly than other options. Pinterest.com to manage ideas / inspirations / products. Addicting. Simple. Genius. Excel Spreadsheets can not be beat for managing other information. A tab for vendor contacts and notes, a tab for budget, a tab for appliance comparison shopping, etc.