Archisketch

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

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

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!!😔

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.

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. Ther

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.

I paid for the full version, plus the extra $6.99 to be allowed to save to the iCloud. Nothing works, every-time I try to save, email, or print the app just closes. I’ll be requesting a full refund.

Was loving this app - used many hours per day until Apple rendered unusable with its ridiculous split screen multi view. Someone needs to fix this - either Apple or the developer.

Trial mode doesn’t give you enough freedom to even see if this is a good app. Can’t recommend an app when choices this bad were made for the initial experience.

One advantage this app has over other iPad drawing apps is the ability to draw to scale. Unfortunately, the one feature that would have helped me the most was the ability to import library items from Adobe’s Creative Cloud. That didn’t work at all. I have an extensive library of images and architectural elements that I use to create shop floor planograms and wall displays. I didn’t want to have to recreate them, and interoperability with Adobe’s CC Libraries would have been a huge help. I contacted their support email. After about a week, I got a reply. Going back and forth with them didn’t solve the issue. They blamed it on Adobe, and said it worked for them. That wasn’t very helpful, and they couldn’t explain why it wouldn’t work for me. Giving up and requesting a refund from Apple. Maybe it can be fixed, maybe not. The interface is kludgy, as pointed out by some of the other reviewers. The app has promise, but charging another $6 for extended color libraries and $8 for extended import/export access seems excessive. Just price it at $19.99 for the full version. Can’t recommend at this time.