Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer 8.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this product as a replacement for my old, OLD 3D Home Architect. Having used software of this type before, it was very easy to use right out of the box.
It comes with a tutorial which may be helpful to someone who is not familiar with how to use different features, but I was more impressed with the online Home Talk user forums. If there is a question as to how to accomplish something, chances are it has been discussed there.
Overall, I find that Home Designer software is a much more stable program than my old 3D Home Architect; (it hasn't 'crashed' yet) and gives me plenty of options to play with.
Although this version is nowhere close to the Pro version, it its ease of use and attractive pricing make this a good choice for anyone who wants to "play" with changes to a structure or landscape.

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Creating your dream home has never been so easy with Home Designer 8.0.Choose from one of over 500 sample plans to inspire your ideas or build your own. Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, furniture, create decks and landscaping. Then visualize what your project will look like with 3D models and Virtual tours. Remodeling - Move a wall, change a color, add a room, redesign a kitchen, and estimate the costs before you build. Design in 2D or 3D - add, resize, and automatically dimension your plans. Change from day to night views and create photo realistic 3D renderings. Design Planning Center provides advice, decorating guidelines, tips and techniques from the editors of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Create accurately scaled floor plans or generate new floors automatically based on your current floor plan design. Calculate square footage. Generate roofs, framing, dimensioning, foundations, and stairs. Step-by-step instructions create the various styles of roofs. Kitchens & Baths - Change colors, add windows, lighting, and choose furniture to accent and plan and decorate your rooms. Over 1,000 cabinets combinations to choose from - customize using unlimited styles and colors. Define doors, drawers, countertops, and more. Add cabinet details: hinges, handles, and pulls. Add appliances - ovens, ranges, refrigerators, hoods, and more. Landscaping - Over 500 botanically accurate flowers, trees, and shrubs. Create gardens, pathways, hills, valleys, ponds, and more . Add a pool or pond. Use the Pathway tool to design curb-appealing landscaping, driveways and sidewalks. Powerful deck and patio tools allow you to design and visualize your new deck with 3D models and can help you estimate the costs. Automatic Terrain Perimeters - customize to define your specific lot. Create terraces and retaining walls that follow terrains. Select custom fence and gate styles.

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Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 8.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I looked at a few software programs and downloaded free trials and none came close to the power and ease of use of this program.
The program offers many options that you can spend hours looking through. The plant library has a good selection. You can search for plants pretty easy, name, zone, sun requirement and about 20 other attributes. A blank search with no specific requirements showed 3,784 plants.
I found that it was good to design the landscaping in 2D so I could see the flower beds, patio, paths, etc. and where they were located with respect to the house. The 3D tools are helpful in visualizing how it should then look in `real life'. I definitely made changes to my original idea after using the software. There are built-in templates you can use - they're okay if you don't already have an idea of what you want.
I do recommend watching the tutorial videos they were quite helpful. Bottom line, I think it's a good bargain and recommend it before you take on a project.


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Better Home and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 8.0 provides even more tools for all outdoor projects including Landscaping Decks & Patios Water Features Outdoor Living Site Planning and Cost Estimating. Find your plants with a newly designed search tool.Import your own photos and arrange plants exactly the way you want. Landscaping templates quickly place pre-arranged landscaping beds.Terrain Wizard imports the specifications of your terrain.Choose from a Library of more than 5500 items for your designs including over 3500 plants.The Exclusive Better Homes and Gardens Plant Encyclopedia and Plant Hardiness Zone Reference maps are included.Format: WIN XPVISTA Genre:PRODUCTIVITY UPC:750839022444 Manufacturer No:LS80-MN-NXX1

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Broderbund 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe 6 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have come so very close to getting this program to work for me, and have even gotten exploratory value out of it, but you should know that the database is often corrupted by the tool, and requires program re-installation and design recreation.
In the words of the help file (on line at ...):
MBuilder Has Encountered a Problem...
When using the program, the following message appears:
"MBuilder has encountered problem." There are several possible causes for
this issue. The remainder of this note describes how to proceed.
Determine If the Plan Is Corrupt
1. Launch 3D Home Architect® and create a new plan.
2. Add a basic structure to the plan.
3. Save the plan and close 3D Home Architect®.
4. Launch 3D Home Architect® and open the plan created in Steps 1 & 2 above.
5. Choose from the following:
* If the error message does not reoccur when working with the new plan,
the previous plan is most likely corrupt. Recreate the plan or restore
a backup copy of the plan.
* If the same error reoccurs, continue with the following procedures.
These suggestions will help to prevent corruption in future plans
-- Further instructions tell you to turn off large displays, accelerations, etc.
As long as you have separate backups every 15 minutes or so (not just saving the file, but saving to a set of many different files) then you may be able to recover some of your work.
The problem is, you may work for a long time with the program working, but with save files written by the program that are corrupt. Once written out, it can't be read back in.
I have worked with their on-line help system, and have been referred to the instructions: just reinstall and recreate what you did.
My question to them was, "How do I know what to avoid?"
Part of the problem is that the design may be OK in memory, but when it gets written out, it is corrupt. There is a "repair database" command that sometimes works, but only if the file is still in memory, and not always then.
Identifying what caused the problem has eluded me so far (50+ hours of use, design not finished)
A hint for you if you do use the program: you should know that small pieces of walls can be left behind as remnants. When walls start to act funny, expand the area, pull all of the walls back out of the intersections, and delete the little pieces that are left. You can then rejoin the wall segments and continue. (you will need to redo roofs ceilings and floors, but you will be used to that by then.
Try it, many parts work extremely well, but make all your decisions up front, because changing is tedious.
Just a few things would enhance the utility of the program tremendously: a copy/paste that works between files, a robust database, and a format painter that can work on trim.
Good luck.

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3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe 6 makes it possible to design your dream home with a few mouse clicks! With its professional design tools and easy-to-use format, you'll create your own contract-ready plans for building or renovating your dream home!

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IMSI FloorPlan 3D Home Design Suite Version 10 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I own both the IMSI (FloorPlan 3D Version 5) and Punch (Architect 4000) software titles, and the following are my own conclusions. I have no vested interest in either manufacturer. I have a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering, and have taught interactive computer graphics, so I guess I am more than usually familiar with computers and design.
I designed my previous home using the IMSI package, and after using it to capture the design, I passed it along to a draftsman to create drawings for the permitting process. I found that the package was easy to use (although a bit weird), and that it generally worked great. When we moved in, the home was absolutely spectacular! So, when we moved to another state to retire, we decided to repeat the process. Even though I still had the IMSI software (Version 5) and it readily installed onto XP, I thought that surely there had been improvements. So, I took the time to find the "best package out there". The reviews I read said that the Punch (Architect 4000) package was rated best, had the most features, blah, blah, blah. So I bought it, in spite of paying approximately 3X what I would pay for the latest IMSI version of FloorPlan 3D. The manual is about an inch thick, but I started wading through, thinking that this was the learning cost of a really good package. The manual seemed reasonable and there are TONS of features (read complexity), but when I actually tried to use the program, I couldn't get anything done. Everything was hard to do. Then, and this was the killer for me, whenever I saved data, I could never read the file back in. I tried everything, and eventually thought that it was my fault, so I went back to my old IMSI package because I had a house to design.
I quickly got up to speed because IMSI wins out hands down for its simple user interface. I struggled with both initially, but soon found that IMSI's wall layout tool, while weird, was useable. It's ease of use (tailorable wall heights, pushing even non-rectilinear wall segments around, changing wall thicknesses, immediate demonstration of dimensions and room square footage, changing wall and floor materials, colors, and texture, etc) allowed one to work pretty quickly. I was never able to use Punch's layout editor efficiently. Ever! Forget saving the data so you could work on a design again. Even just creating a simple layout was a huge struggle. Unless you knew the design beforehand, it was very difficult to lay out a floor plan interactively. This was what IMSI was good at. Even with a fully designed floorplan, I had trouble with the Punch program.
IMSI was also the easiest in viewing your design in 3D. Again, the viewing tools were weird and somewhat non-intuitive, but eventually useful. Punch's 3D viewer was totally useless, and I was never able to control the views, no matter what I did. And, "Hey!", I taught computer graphics.
After spending many hours getting a complete design (from my working with IMSI) entered into a freshly-reloaded Punch, I again tried to save my work. When I went back to work on it some more, it was unreadable. The file was there, but there was some formatting error that made it unreadable. I was furious, but thankfully, I had the IMSI design captured. So, I had a decision- Waste more time trying to debug a program I had paid 3X more for than the IMSI FloorPlan 3D, or spend my time getting work done on my house plan. Actually, I downloaded a free upgrade to Version 5.1 and got busy. Now I am thinking of purchasing IMSI's Version 11 as I am finalizing our house plan and like some of the new features and abilities of the new software.
To be candid, neither software package was bug-free. IMSI occasionally doesn't allow you to move a wall, but that is almost always because there is some constraint that is disallowing the modification. I found Punch to be even more restrictive. While I was able to export the IMSI design as a vrml file and e-MAIL it to my son to review, Punch had the greatest number of export file options. Too bad it always lost my saved designs. Neither package really creates beautiful 3D graphics, but IMSI's simple renderings were adequate for previewing the design work. I also liked IMSI's design methods using internal room dimensions. But, neither program made it clear how to proceed in starting a design from scratch. Nowhere did they tell you whether you could design the 2nd floor first, whether you had to layout the foundation beforehand (Punch), etc.
Finally, I should mention that I wanted to input site information for my lot, but that was too costly in terms of time. Interestingly, I downloaded Google's free Sketchup software, imported my IMSI design (in dxf file format), and was able to place it on the terrain using a Sketchup to Google Earth tool, and then interactively view it in 3D on my 10 acre lot using Google Earth. I found out that I have some serious grading and fill work to do on the build site.

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FloorPlan 3D Design Suite 10 makes designing your dream home and garden simple! Easy-to-use tools give you the power to transform ideas into stunning photorealistic 3D images you can view, navigate, and share. Whether you're remodeling your kitchen or bath, planning your garden, or designing your dream home, FloorPlan 3D has it all

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Punch Home Design Studio (Mac) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)If you are looking for a program to do a 3d view of your dream home without any substance, this program is for you. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a program to help you design real projects for a do-it-yourselfer you are going to be sorely out of luck.
Punch Home design Studio is just a toy with little substance. You can put up a wall and throw down a sink but you cant run piping to that sink or electric to the bathroom lights. Its like a great big content editing program for a 3d video game with as much use as that. A toy to be experimented with but not appropriate for much more. When I querried about how to put in piping for my radiant floor I was told that you dont do that because the plumber does that. Now what if I am going to be the plumber, Im supposed to just shoot from the hip? Ditto for the rest of the details.
When it comes to the landscape editor, the joke gets worse. Of 32 plants I had planned to put in my renovated garden, PHDSP had 2. Yest, only two plants of 32 were found in the library and the interface to that library stinks.
While we are on the subject of the interface, the Mac interface is very bad. Clearly this is a bad hack port of a windows program. The user interface is not like a mac program but more like Office for Mac -- clearly a low quality hack. If that wasnt enough, when running it on leopard, it tends to crash and erase everything you did since the last save, so if you do intend to play with this thing, save often.
So why am I making this post? Well because I tried to return the software and was unable to return it even just the next day. I was told that the $149 I plopped down for a lemon with overinflated advertising was lost. Maybe I can eek out some cash on eBay for it. Yes I am upset.
In summary, I was looking for a program that was useful for helping me design my home do-it-yourself projects from installign radiant heating to planning my sprinkler system and what I got was a poorly implemented toy to assemble pre-fabricated 3d objects into a pretty picture. Advertising scores a 10 of 10 for promising much but the program will only be minimally useful.


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This isn't just a Mac-compatible version, but a complete, stand-alone product that puts all of Home Design Studio's state-of-the-art features in the hands of Mac users," says Pierce."They can quickly explore an almost infinite number of ways to improve and enhance exteriors, interiors and landscapes, and then get aphoto-realistic view in 3D, from virtually any angle.

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Punch Interior Design Suite Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This proved to be a very powerful program, but heed the warnings about how difficult it is to use. I use parts of MS office that no one has seen before and have a background in computer programming, and this suite still drove me very close to tears.
I used this just for an apartment floor plan to think through moving walls around, not for complete house construction or modeling.
Here are some tips that might make things smoother for you:
- For some reason, the default flooring thickness is 12", so my doors were getting lopped off at knee-level. Once I reset all the flooring thickness to 1", I could see the bottoms of my doors again.
- If you have a wide screen and it's set to 120 DPI, the display chops of some of the customization controls on the right side of the screen.
- The distinction between exterior and interior walls matters, and is often at the root of flooring and ceiling problems. (E.g., grass in the living room or tiled front lawn.) The wall types sometimes morph into each other by rules I never figured out. If I had to do this again, I'd do all the exterior walls first, lock them against changes, and then add interior ones.
- My performance with the undirected fly-through is exactly what you'd expect from watching me play speedracer. Better way: Click on the binoculars on the left and you get cursor you can position for a "controlled walkthrough." You can look around using the 3-d display, but no more accidentally falling through the floor.

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First Interior Design offering with custom decorating pallets. Includes thousands of color fabrics flooring window treatments.Apply your design in seconds!There are thousands of new furniture objects and accessories.Re-create your own existing furniture by simply entering dimensions.Add any digital picture like a special rug your family portrait or even a pet to your design.The Punch Door and Window designer and the trim wizard for designing intricate trim makes the design possibilities endless.System Requirements:Pentium Celeron Xeon AMD Athlon Duron Opteron Turion Centrino.64 MB of Ram.Windows 98 or higher.3.0 GB VGA card capable of displaying at least 800x600 with 16 bit color depth.(24 bit reocmmended) 32MB or higher CD Rom drive Mouse or pointing device. Format: WIN 98MENT2000XP Genre:PRODUCTIVITY Rating:NR UPC:664446811004 Manufacturer No:81100

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Punch Home & Landscape Design Professional with NexGen Technology Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I recently purchased Punch Software's Home and Landscape Design Professional. I found it to be anything but "Professional." In attempting to educate myself on the use of this software, I encountered some disappointing deficiencies. Most disappointing is the door placement and properties of the program. I first attempted to place a 15 light double french door in a plan. When it comes to double doors, there is not a more common item than a standard 15 light, double, french door. To my dismay, when I looked in the default, double door, library, there was none. The program contains a door design power tool but who wants to spend hours learning how to design a common item. Even using the door design power tool, there is no way to select the type of glass that one may require in doors and windows. Neither is there a simple way to select whether a door is interior, exterior, metal, wood type, etc. Likewise, one cannot show the door swing direction on their floor plan line drawing, unless they draw the door as open in the 3D view.

Second, I tried to place a pocket door. Other than size and location, there is no way in the program to edit a pocket door, for type, style, etc. Even in the door design power tools, there is no way to design and/or save another style of pocket door. Likewise, there is no way to alter or create more segments in bi fold doors. Neither did the program provide any accordion doors of the type commonly used in laundry openings, etc. I would note that accordion doors can usually be created in a program by selecting more and smaller panel sections in a bi fold door. A lack of editing features on the bi folds, made that impossible as well.

Most inexplicable in this software is not being able to copy and paste windows and doors. I possess a number of design programs. Even the cheap, thirty to fifty dollar basic ones, have window and door features that are missing in this software. Most will allow one to click in a default slab door, then totally convert it to what is needed. By highlighting and right clicking, a small 3-D properties window usually opens to select style, grids, glass type, hinged, pocket, bi fold, etc. For a program to be named "Professional" and not have such basic design features is misleading. Especially at this price point. I contacted Punch to see if these features existed in the software. I thought perhaps I was uninformed as to how to access them. They confirmed that such features are not in the software.

The software was deficient in other areas as well: There was no good way to edit stairway handrails. It will not do invisible walls, a common item for design reference. The ceiling and soffit features are poor. The objects library was missing many common items like a single bowl, stainless steel kitchen sink, a sump pump, a well detailed furnace, etc. The cabinet, counter top and shelf design features were extremely poor.

The program has a split, side-by-side, screen feature for viewing the working floor plan and the 3D view of what you are doing at the same time. Disappointing however, is the fact that the software will not support systems with two monitors. Thus, the split screen mode often renders items to small to be practical to use. Likewise, the limited ability to edit, resize, etc., while in full 3D mode, is probably the greater shortcoming of this software.

The program also has a number of glitches. It constantly reverts back to default settings instead of what you selected. It will not always delete selected items. It will tell you there is not room for an object when there is. It will put in items that you did not select, like a base cabinet instead of a wall cabinet. Many of the features are cumbersome and overly complicated to use. Most frustrating is the fact that the manual and/or the on-screen instructions, do not always match the software.

My intent was to purchase a quick & clean home design software that was less intense to use than my Turbocad, Autocad, type products. A program that will not even do all of the basic door types, is not practicle for anyone to use. This is clearly a piece of software that was designed by software engineers without enough input from home builders or architects. Punch Software's Home and Landscape Design Professional could not be given a positive review by anyone that is truly familiar with various home design programs.

Punch took almost a month to respond to my detailed email inquiry about the missing features of this product. I will say to their credit. They took the product back and returned my full purchase price, even though I had purchased it from an online retailer and not directly from the Punch Web site.

I hope this is helpful,

D.B. Columbus Ohio

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HGTV Home Design & Remodeling Suite Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The reviews for this HGTV home design software are quite mixed. But the consistent thing about them is that the people that don't like the program never took the time to learn how to use it.
Don't fool yourself - this is a complex program. Despite all of the advertisements that it is "easy," it is basically a dumbed-down CAD (computer-aided design) program. It is easier than using most architect-quality programs, but it is much harder than learning Word. This is not jump-in-and-design-a-house kind of program.
If you have used CAD programs before, you will probably not have too much trouble adapting to this software. Some of the mappings are odd (it took me a while to find where to access positioned cameras, for example), but they're there. If you haven't used CAD programs before, I'd guess you will need at least 2 or 3 hours simply to learn how to navigate the program (and even have an idea as to what kinds of things you can do with it) before even trying to create your own house. If you don't take the 2 or 3 hours to run through online tutorials and at least skim through the 698-page user manual, you will get lost, and you will be frustrated. You have been warned.
So if all you are interested in is creating a basic nearly-to-scale representation of your home and see what different colors would look like on the wall, expect to put 5+ hours to get to that point. If you want it to be accurate down to the inch with picture-perfect furniture, it will take you much, much longer. As an example, I have used CAD programs before, so I jumped straight in, and it took me about 4 hours to put together the structure of the house alone (although wall placement is accurate to the inch). So that's not including any floor coverings, walls, paint, appliances, cabinets, etc, which I imagine will take at least as long, if not more.
Overall, it's a fairly high quality product marketed to people accustomed to the ease of use of an iPod, and I think that's its only real flaw. If you're willing to put in the hours to learn the software, you can get exactly what you're dreaming of: a working 3D virtual model of your home, from carpet to ceiling fans, that you can redecorate at will to see how that new arrangement of furniture in your bedroom will look without having to scuff the floors.

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Take a fresh approach to the way you live with HGTV Home Design & Remodeling Suite, from the #1 home improvement television network.It's perfect for creating a new living space, adding a fireplace, making your home energy efficient with new appliances, replacing countertops, cabinetry and fixtures, enhancing any room to your house with a brand new look.

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Home Design 3D: Kitchen And Bath Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is possibly the worst software ever written. Impossible to use, The help section is worthless, zero support, totally non-intuitive. Don't waste your money.

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Punch Home & Landscape Design Suite with NexGen Technology Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this after using the Better Homes & Gardens Home Designer Suite. At first, it looked like it had potential as it appeared to be much more flexible and feature laden. Unfortunately, it has too many problems. Simple things like selecting walls and moving them, copy and paste, and 3d walk-through are either poorly implemented or bug-laden. I was hoping to find a support release that would improve on what appears to be a first run, buggy release - but there is none.
I searched their forums and they don't even have a dedicated forum for this product. I contacted support and inquired about maintenance releases and dedicated product forums (like they have for their other products) and was told they have none and suggested I contact tech support. I don't need to beta test software and spend time with tech support for basic functions that should be implemented properly - so I'm sending it all back for the money-back guarantee.
Also, the green features appear to be "thrown in". When clicking the special green icon, you just get a few tips that are mostly common sense. When you try to delve deeper, it's just a link to a page Punch! made that has categories of external links to external sites on the internet that could be found using a search engine.
As an aside, I've found TurboFloorplan from IMSI to be the best of the 3 programs I've tried - though I'm stilling learning it.

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3D HOME ARCHITECT DELUXE 3.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Outstanding product for the price. Its old but its as good as most of the more expensive "junk" for sale at home improvement and software stores.
Versions: 3d home 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 are from the same company 5.0 is NOT the same and is incompatible. The newest version is Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 6.0 (much more expensive but has materials application options)
About 3.0
------------
3d. Its stable (3d modeling works but is not "realistic"). It is good enough to get a 3d feel though. 3.0 allows 3d object manipulation (drag or "resize" windows, doors, cabinets in 3d) and its done in 2d simultaneously).
Design is Straightforward. You should read the manual though if you want hip roofs with gable ends (roofs are trickier than walls). The stair tools are fairly straightforward but do not allow curves.
It would give it six stars ;-) if it had:
>> more than the basic snap on angles forces standard variance (45, 90 and 22.5 and such)
>> more objects in its library (very limited)
>> better rendering (its rudimentary compared to cool tools available today).
>> round or curved walls or stairs (you can approximate curved walls with short wall sections but oh what a pain)
Summary:
Overall even though it's a few years old and has a few problems I rate it 5 stars because its: DIRT CHEAP, fast, easy to use, good enough 3d rendering for space planning, allows 3d view object manipulation. It gets you up to speed with home design concepts very quickly and will get you diagrams you can build from faster than any other product I have seen. + does some good basic materials planning.
Definitely 5 "value" stars, you should be able to get it for under $10.


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