there's some reasonable cheap and cheerful drawing software available nowadays... the programme I use professionally is NOT one of these !!! however I also have 'interior designer for iPad ' it was cheap and it's ok as a quick tool for sketching out ideas on site ...

My flying carpet. It gets me quickly to the stores and back. I always park in the rug store and no one notices.

We are using houzz... we post pics in design dilemmas and users provide solutions. Some solutions provided are doable, while others are very funny and/or unique. For the doable ones i am willing to pay just for the design itself...i.e. like you, I don't want AutoCad

so do you think lots of people post on here instead of hiring a designer / architect / landscape architect / concept planner etc - or to find someone to hire ?!

@OnePlan-I post on houzz but I still had a designer on hand when I got stuck.

Judging by some of the stuff that gets put up on the design dilemma discussion thread there are definitely people getting their floorplans designed on Houzz for free. Post up your ideas, get professional feedback then hire someone who can draw up plans detailed enough to get planning.

I'm planning a project and I'm determined to stay on budget. My profession is a Software Designer and Project Manager. For a software system we plan everything about the design and the budget and use software tools to help us. I'd like to approach our house project in the same way. We're using an architect but I want to try fiddling with the floor plan myself. I want to decide the location of outlets and lighting and furniture before we start building. I want to know the impact on the budget of ordering high end outlet covers rather than just basic ones. I want to be able to communicate with the contractors effectively, just like I communicate with the programmers effectively (using a workflow tool) on an IT project.
I'm just wondering if there are any tools that everyone uses, or if it's just a question of working up an Excel sheet.

Well you can't go wrong with a spread sheet ! Might be the easiest way !

I've had a look at free offerings for floor planning software. It depends on the level you want to go to. Sweethome3D http://www.sweethome3d.com/ is truly free because it's open source (no fees if you want to draw more than one plan etc). I've found I can get reasonably detailed with it from layout perspective but I doubt it would be good enough for a drawings for a building permit (although I'm not certain of this). As a graphic designer you'll have an affinity for graphics software. If you want to be able to draw more detailed drawings Id take the time to learn Sketchup. I know some architects use this as their software of choice.

I'm definitely with you @Jason Carter - the only way to really control your budget is to plan ahead and choose and price everything that you can think of before you break ground. Otherwise you're in a situation where you have to make quick compromises during the build which leads to mistakes etc.

In my work we use requirements tracking tools. I think it would be really helpful to communicate to the contractors exactly what is going to go on in the room - why the extra outlets are there and in the position they're in. That way they have a deeper understanding of why the specs are the way they are and they don't make decisions that detract from the design - they might even come up with suggestions that support the ideas behind the designs.

Thanks @mescott for the reply. We're working hard to have a highly involved architect/builder from beginning to end. Hopefully, that person will be communicating our plans well enough since we're building from a remote location. Your details regarding outlet, lighting, and furniture placement sounds solid. I may also give Sketchup a shot, in order to narrow down some basic sketches. On the other hand I don't want to stifle the architect's ideas either. We just need to find that key moment in the process (probably between schematic and construction drawings) to nail down these details.

hi mescott we have a tool that helps u visualize different flooring on any photo you upload. It might be something of interest to you? Its free and all online! here is our promo video and some photos i edited with the tool: