magicplan

I’ve been in tech since ‘83 and have used (survived) and seen plenty of “user friendly” apps in my day. Magicplan stands out because it’s good, very very good. I didn’t use the camera to do my measurements and went right to the manual entry process to map out my entire house - walls, doors, windows, and some utilities. The best way for me to describe the user interface is to say it’s a natural workflow. Things are where you can get to them, they are when you need to get to them, and they allow modifications when appropriate. This adds up to a display that’s not packed with every option all the time which is crazy making. When you only see and interact with options when you need to see them and then can work them out easily then you understand the care and smarts put into the user experience. Oh and if you do something out of bounds it tells you why and you can make it work - “doors can only be added to rooms”. The entire process was completed in under 90 minutes. A beautiful PDF was the result and my remote architect was impressed. He said the “as built” drawing will go very quickly with the Magicplan doc as the source, saving me time and money. I used the free product level and it did everything I needed. I’m going to upgrade and go for the paid features not because I need it, I’m going to pay to support these developers and reward excellent work. Thanks MagicPlan.

So simple to use oh my goodness. I used it to mock up finishing plans for our basement and the free stuff was enough to lay out the walls using AR. That alone was great. Took a screenshot and got a cheeky message about “violating their terms” haha. I actually wanted more out of the app mainly the stuff behind the paywall (features in the rooms like furniture and fixtures) so I looked at their options. The monthly/annual is WAY too much. Unless you’re a contractor don’t buy that. BUUUUT they have an option to “purchase a property” which just lets you layout everything for an entire house that was only $3 (one time) which to me was well worth it. That was BEFORE I even turned on the 3D rendering. I was expecting something hokey that didn’t really look like what I had thought but boy was I wrong. It brought my vision to LIFE. Way exceeded my expectations. If you’re DIY like me or even just want to visualize rearranging furniture this app is LEGIT; free or paid.

Being able to turn off the sound of the app without having to turn off the ringer of your phone would be really great. Also, when choosing colors for tiles/carpet, after purchasing a plan...why is white and grey not an option? If I'm doing tiles in my laundry room, I'm not going to use pink or green on the floor...it would be wonderful to include the full color spectrum for flooring, and maybe have a way to change wall colors/materials as well. I may want tiles on my shower walls rather than glass, but no option that I've found for doing so. Having options for exterior siding, deck materials, etc would really be great as well. Seeing the house in 3D really helps me to visualize my ideas, and fix any fine tuning issues. But I have no way to tell if my deck or shed are going to work well with the rest of the space, as they do not show up in 3D mode. All in all, I still really like using this app, it would get five stars in a heartbeat if these features were added :)

As a commercial real estate investor and developer I have used Magicplan for floor plan designs. Most recently, I used it to build floor a plan for residential appraisal purposes. You can be as detailed or basic. Building floor plans for basic square footages or to show tenant improvement changes. I used the camera on my iPhone and the measurements were very close to spot on. In the future I will incorporate a laser measure. Even if you cannot actually “see” the corners of a given floor plan (if obstacles are in the way) one can get it very close based off the apps ability to find “square” and the level of your floor. Hard to explain but trust me this app is very intuitive. You can always manually change the dimensions easily when building the floor plan. I am an older guy and I was able to learn the interface quickly. The first complex residential floor plan took me about 2 hours to build and verify. The next one only a hour! This app WILL save you so much time. I thank you Magicplan for developing such a great app. A truly AMAZING tool. I used the basic version but like so many others, I will upgrade to the next level. Not that I need it but want to support great companies that make our lives easier!!!!

response required

This used to be a fantastic app but I’ve been having a lot of problems lately. I reached out to customer service a number of times and continually emailed them with no response. There is no phone number to call just email. I finally got one response months latter and the response was sarcastic and no help whatsoever. Their reply was telling me to change a setting that in numerous emails I had already explained I had tried and it was not solving the problem. When I replied to their email letting them know it did not solve the problem, no response. Their customer service is nonexistent. Sad, because I used to love this app and I pay a lot of money for it each year. If you’re looking to create floorplans were just the foot measurement shows, (not foot and inches) on the printed PDF, currently this not the option to pick. It shows correctly on the screen, just not when printing. Hopefully they can fix this problem in the future and provide some type of customer service.