We are in the process of designing a new home which we intend to build this year. A few years ago, we bought two acres of land in our city. We have been holding on to it and think the time is ripe to place a home on the property.
My father is an architect, so he is drawing the plans. Thanks Dad! But I thought it would be a fun thing to play with some home design programs on my computer. So I went to the store and shopped for consumer-oriented home design programs.
The first program I purchased was called Total Home 3D by Broderbund. It was only approximately $30 and it seemed to have the features I was looking for. Essentially, I wanted the ability to import a scanned bitmap of the floor plans, have the tools to select from a an assortment of views, and have the ability to walkthrough the home as though I were standing in it.
Total Home has all these features, but it is so darned buggy that I became very frustrated with it. For one thing, the program crashed regularly when I would go to save a file. So I would make a bunch of progress, attempt to save, and Boom. Back to where I was before.
Another frustrating problem was the roof line. For example, we have designed a roofed porch for the front of the house. Can you picture me and Mary in our rocking chairs greeting visitors? Well, the roof that I placed on that first floor went INTO the house and made a mess of the second floor. I could NOT get the roof OUT of the second floor. Technical support replied to me one time and never responded to my further questions. My problem was never solved and I moved on to another solution. I figured this is what I deserved for purchasing the cheapest product I could find.
Here you can see the roof inside the house through the second story windows. Grrr!
Back to the drawing board. The next program I purchased was Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 6.0, a comprehensive suite of tools designed to provide the amateur with everything he/she needs to design, build, price, landscape, etc. At a cost of $99, it ought to do everything but lay a foundation.
It wasn't until I installed this program that I realized it did not meet one of my criteria. You can't do walkthroughs of your design on the fly. To make matter more complicated, you have to "make a movie" of your walkthrough, repositioning the camera and taking one freakin' frame at a time. These can then be saved as a walkthrough movie which you can watch. But there is no real-time 3D control of the walkthrough. Blech.
Other than that, the tools seemed to be decent, but I didn't want to mess with it any further.
After returning this program to the store, I picked up a copy of Punch Super Home Suite as a last resort. The cost? $60.00.
This program seemed to do everything I wanted, but was severely lacking in textures and shapes. The window library was little more than various rectangular shapes. I couldn't even find a small round window to place. And since we are doing a victorian home, I was hoping to find some siding textures. There is plenty of brick, concrete and other traditional textures. Alas, no siding.
By the time I got to placing the roof, I was hoping things would come together smoothly. Once again, I had all kinds of problems with the roof. In this case, it insisted on cutting directly through my wall, rather than on top of it. I had problems getting all walls on a floor to be the same height.
In the end, I threw up my hands and said "Forget it!" I'll just wait for my Dad to finish the house plans, hand them to the builder and say "Make it so, please". I cannot recommend any of the software I used for anything more than dabbling with an idea for your home. Even then, each proved to be little more than an exercise in frustration.
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April 17, 2005 07:21 PM
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November 6, 2007 11:59 AM
I have only used Broderbund's top product and found the same frustration. I am a long time user of high-end mechanical design CAD programs and found this home design software useless. I need to design a house but can’t find any good software. Guess I’ll use a pencil.
November 7, 2007 05:49 AM
I'm back because I've discovered that the Broderbund product reviewed here is the successor to "3D Home Architect". I've also discovered on Amazon (and from other reviewers) that this last version is less capable than earlier ones and buggy to boot.
June 10, 2008 01:55 PM
Hi all!
I experienced the same issues as described above when attempting to choose a solid home design software.
I had used a previous version of 3D Home Architect (version 8) before and liked the software a lot but there wasnt enough flexibility in the material take-offs so we had to upgrade to a more professional package (we chose 'Envisioneer' by cadsoft).
I know that the 3D Home Architect line was taken over and all compatibility (and functionality) has been lost. However, there is a new product on the market called 'Turbo Floor Plan' being distributed by imsi. This collection of titles simply blow Better Homes and Gardens & Punch products out of the water. Much like earlier versions of 3D home architect, the only real limitation is customizing the material take-offs.. you are kind of stuck using the predefined pricing until you export the data out to quick-books or excel.
Hope this helps..
Kelly
July 2, 2009 03:28 AM
Hey Joel,
I can understand what you went through as many of these tools are complicated to work with especially if you don't have any prior experience using them. My suggestion to your readers and those who are thinking of buying a home design software is to use the free tools first as they are great for learning and drawing simple design. As you gain more experience then you may decide to use some of the more feature rich software out there. However, some of the free tools are sufficient for most folks and may never need to pay for one.
I have compiled a list of free home design software that have no time restriction. You can read the description for each to find out which is the tool that is most suited for your purpose.