Archisketch

Bad app, it makes you pay after you have added a certain amount of things

CatNamedPandaWed, Mar 27, 2024

United States

This App proports to be a great digityal design tool. However, it's neither intiuitive nor easy to use. Unfortunately there are more problems. First, despite having an "English" option, support is not offered in English. Second, it does not work with MacOs. Subsequently, your work is not seemless across the many platforms that you might be using. Finally, it is very easy to purchase the in App upgrades, but there are no descritions of the various otions. "What am I paying for?" "WIll this fix the problems that I am having with this App?" I cannot recommend this App.

buzzgossSat, Mar 23, 2024

United States

I use it to make electrical drawings. Conduit paths and device layout in a commercial medical setting.

DylanW&TWed, Dec 13, 2023

United States

Very nice app. Intends to do exactly what I need it to do. The only issue I’m having is that it freezes whenever I’m trying to “duplicate” multiple objects at the same time. I keep having to close the app and reopen it. I waited about 20 mins the last time it froze and it never unfroze. Perhaps it’s bogged down by too many elements??… That is unfortunate since I’m not even halfway done with my drawing. (I have a fairly new [2022] iPad Pro and I have closed all other apps, I have other more robust apps (SketchUp) that work well on my iPad too so I don’t think it’s an issue with my iPads processing power…) Starting to regret the $18 I spent!!😔

Jayn119Mon, Nov 13, 2023

United States

I like to look at an inverted screen with a dark background and detail in light colors. I can do that in the drawing, but tool/menu bars at the bottom and top of the screen are annoyingly bright. If I could toggle those to dark with light detail, 5 stars.

HiloSliceFri, Apr 21, 2023

United States

First off, I use this app primarily for top-down scale drawings. So this review will be primarily focused on that. Scaling is simple, but has a big caveat. The idea behind scaling is easy; Find two reference points, and set the distance between them. The rest of the drawing is scaled automatically, based on those two points. So if you know the distance between two walls, just set your ruler between them and tell it how far apart they are. The big caveat is that working in mixed units is imprecise. If I choose to work in inches, I can get precise control over the scale. If my reference points are 120 1/4 inches apart, then I can simply type 120.25 inches and I’m golden. But the carpenter side of my brain prefers working in mixed units, and feet only allow for a single decimal point when scaling. Since 1/4 inches is less than 0.1 feet, that same 120 1/4 inches (which is 10.0208333 feet) rounds to a flat 10 feet. Maybe not a big deal if you’re only working on a 10’ piece, but when another wall is 100’ long, it’s now 2.5 inches short on my drawing. The lack of precision adds up quickly. A quarter inch here, a half inch there, and suddenly my entire building is 6 inches too long/short. I know that the app supports fractions of an inch (because it allows for fractions when working in inches) but when working in feet you’re forced to round everything to the nearest 10th of a foot. Either allow me to enter fractions directly, or allow for more than one decimal point when working in feet. Drawing is fast and easy once you get used to it. The magnet/snap option is great, and allows for easy straight edges. The shape tools are elegant, (although using the polygon tool can be frustrating, as they tend to de-select and close when zooming,) and you can build custom objects to “stamp” on any other drawings/projects. These objects can then be ungrouped into their constituent parts/shapes for modification once they’re in place. For things like tables, chairs, pillars, etc, this is a godsend. I can build a 60” banquet table once, and know that it will be the same scaled size across all of my drawings. But there is a distinct lack of fill/texture options for the shapes. You can fill with solid colors, transparencies, and a gradient. But you can’t fill with crosshatching, tiles, textures, etc… Adding a crosshatch/hexagon fill option would be an amazing improvement, as it would allow you to fill walls quickly and easily without using up all the ink/toner in the printer. There’s also no freehand object tool. The polygon tool is close, but sometimes I just want to make a bubbly round cloud or bush without having to place and move corner points, deal with rounding percentages, etc… Importing jpegs and pdfs is possible, but the latter can be a little convoluted. Jpegs are simple enough if they’re saved in your device’s photos, but pdfs require you to “share” the pdf, then open it in Archisketch via the share menu. That one took me a while to figure out, and there’s no clear documentation on it; All of their documentation simply says to import the pdf from your photos. Not exactly intuitive, (especially since you can’t easily save pdfs in your photos) when they could add a browser for your Files app to import them directly. And my last note was touched on in the prior paragraph: There is a distinct lack of documentation or support. The only documentation is via the built-in Help menu, but that points to a series of video tutorials. If the tutorial doesn’t cover the specific thing you’re looking for, then you’re stuck figuring it out on your own. A written manual with an index/table of contents would go a long way towards solving this issue, as the videos are all very short overviews (usually only a minute or two long) and only scratch the surface of what each tool can do. All in all, it’s a good app. It has increased my productivity, and I plan to continue using it. But it has some notable missing features, which would elevate the app from “good” to “must have.” If they add some/all of these features in the future, I fully plan on updating my rating to 4 or 5 stars.

SomeOtherGuy0Fri, Jan 20, 2023

United States

Lots of good and useful tools for architects but needs some more work to make it a truly useful, must-have app for architects. 1. Documentation of features is very weak, limited to some brief tutorials. I have to figure out how to use some features/tools not covered in tutorial by trial and error. Some tools such as how to get consistently sized text I still haven’t figured out. 2. Support is non-existent. 3. Desperately needs a Cut-and-Paste Tool to select a portion of a drawing or a group and copy it to another drawing. That one tool can change this app from pretty good to a “must have” app. There is a duplicate tool, but that doesn’t use the clipboard to copy to another drawing or app. 4. Needs to import PDFs. I don’t understand this shortcoming because the app can export in PDF format. It only can import JPEGs. 5. It has some built in objects to use in drawings. Personally I wouldn’t use any of them but I’d really like the ability to create my own objects to add my own objects to the menu to use in other drawings. 6. Finally on the apps website it sounds like you can add the optional extra feature package after purchasing the base app. This is incorrect, you only have the option in the App Store to purchase the base app or the app with options features. You can’t add the optional features once you purchased the base app. I recommend purchasing the app with optional features.

Michael in JapanWed, Jan 11, 2023

United States