Domain Name Com's Software 3D Home Design Suite Professional 5

Software 3D Home Design Suite Professional 5

Domain Name Com's - Software : 3D Home Design Suite Professional 5

- Disappointing
It simply won't work in Windows 2000. It is a buggy, hard to use, pathetic program with a lot of deficiencies. I have been trying to work with the developers of the product because there is no way to get customer service from Broderbund. So far they have no ideas! Move a line and a phantom shoots off into infinity. Move another and the program might crash or you get a permanently detached wall with about 10 line fragments hidden under it. Walls become detached on their own with object fragments. The stair generator won't create a real stair. Raised platofrms and stair segments are almost impossible to make - if you can keep the program from doing really BAD things. There are no scroll bars - go figure! Rendering is poor and is shading based rather than detail based. A walk through (like version 3) is impossible. Detached dimensioning from objects leads to SERIOUS errors that make this a useless program for serious work. This is truly a BETA PROGRAM. Not ready for sale and definitely not for the person looking to build their own house.

Rating:

- Buggy, difficult to use, not-intuitive
I just tried to design a garden for our new house using "3D Home Design - 3D Home Landscaping version 5". Despite what the box says, the software contains no templates of gardens that you can modify, just shapes (circles, rectangles, squares) with pre-programmed lot sizes (such as 40' x 110'). I tried to edit the dimensions of the 40' x 110' rectangle to mimic our new lot. Forget it. You cannot edit the sizes even if you follow the steps in the manual.

So, I tried to create a new lot from scratch. Instead of a flat plane to show our new lawn, the program created a cylinder. The cylinder could not be modified no matter how I tried.

I finally decided to accept the incorrect dimensions of the rectangular plot (40 x 110) and just insert sample plants (trees, climbers, etc) from the toolbar, to get an idea of what would look good next to what. The program crashed. When it did allow me to add the plants in outline view, they did not show up in 3D view, which means you can't see what they will look like in your garden (the whole point of the program!) The program crashed again when I toggled from 3D view to outline view. (My system surpasses the system requirements, so that was not the problem).

I am not a software neophyte, and I followed both the manual and the tutorials step-by-step to create a diagram, but the software did not work. I don't believe Broderbund tests this before releasing it to the public.

If anyone has found a quality landscape design software program, please tell me. Right now, I'm ready to turn to Powerpoint.

Rating:

- Worst Software I Ever Purchased
I was very disappointed in 3D Home Design Suite Professional 5.0. It is the worst software purchase I have ever made. I am a very happy user of prior versions of 3D Home Design Suite, and I looked forward to this "upgrade." It turns out that this is not truly an upgrade, but a product with an underlying CAD engine by a different company from prior versions. This fact is obscurely disclosed on the back of the box in very fine, inconspicuous type, that for many of us, would require a magnifying glass to read. This problem with the underlying engine CAD engine means that you cannot import or open your plans that you created in prior versions of the software.

In spite of the above problem, I decided to bite the bullet and simply re-create some of my designs using the new software. I found this new version to be clumsy and very user unfriendly and after working with it for a while, decided that a switch is not worth the effort. Executing what was a simple operation in prior versions became complex and time-consuming with this version. Using it is torturous, and I could never be happy with this product, so I reverted to using my prior version.

Under the terms of Broderbund's 90-day "complete satisfaction guarantee," I shipped the product to Broderbund and requested a refund of my purchase price. It is the first time I have ever returned a software product due to poor performance. To their great credit, my money was promptly refunded, so I was out only the sales tax and shipping charges, a total of about $15, plus a lot of valuable, wasted time. I recommend you save your time and money.

Rating:

- Don't waste your money
It's a good thing that Broderbund has a money back guarantee, I'm going to need it.

This software was obviously written by people who have never tried to use it. The two complaints I have after spending only 2 minutes with it: First, it is painfully slow - I have a 2.8 GHZ machine with 512 MB of RAM and it takes several seconds to repaint a wire-frame of an empty plan with one wall. Second, you can't import designs from the old version - probably because Broderbund decided it would be cheaper to write this version themselves unlike the previous versions which were developed by Art Inc.

After spending a little more time trying to see if there are any redeeming qualities I've discovered that there aren't any. It's just pathetic. It crashes, it moves objects by itself, it's frustrating to use, it's making me hate my computer.

Don't give these turkey's a cent, this thing's a lemon. Broderbund, go back to writing games. You were at least good at that once.

Rating:

- If you like hair shirts, you'll love Home Design
- Hard work

All the books say home design is hard work. So why don't they warn us about Home Design?

To be fair, "total waste of money" is putting it a little strongly. With much cajoling, Home Design will actually produce a usable floor plan and model. But you'll sweat buckets if you want more than the simplest of floor plans. Bringing us perilously close to the "total ..." threshold, because if what you want is simple you can use any old freebie drawing package.

- No substance to "crash" rumours

The word "crash" implies that an object was travelling at speed. It's not quite the appropriate term in this context. We're definitely talking whimpers here, not bangs. Of course, I've suffered regular ... err ... whimpers, as have others who've gnashed their electronic teeth on this site and elsewhere. But I suppose I shouldn't grumble about having to reboot every time Home Design decides it's tired of life, because the program gets slower and more unstable the longer it's been running. Hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del is really rather akin to putting a suffering animal out of its misery. "What kind of animal?" you ask. Hmm. I guess it's a toss-up between a sloth and a skunk. I have to shoot, err, reboot my Pentium III/660 MHz/384 MB machine at least once an hour to get back to an acceptable speed and remain airborne.

- Render unto seizure ...

And don't talk to me about the much-vaunted "photo-realistic rendering". After an hour, I knocked the rendering process on the head (for want of access to any member of the Broderbund development team) because it was still just 30% finished. I'm only planning a little log cabin in the mountains, but I really would like it built on schedule. Or at least in my lifetime. OK, the target date for breaking ground is over six months away, but I had visions of having to leave my PC behind because Home Design was still trying to render the model when the removals van pulled away from the front door at the end of next year.

I did think of setting up a user forum on Yahoo, but came to the conclusion that what users of this software needed was not a forum but a self-help group and a 12-step plan.

- Back to the drawing-board

If I could afford it, I'd invest in Chief Architect. That comes from Art Inc., the people who wrote Home Design's predecessors, which is to say the versions of Home Architect numbered up to and including 4.0.

I've tried a demo of "Chief". It's intuitive, rock-solid stable, does far more than Home Design -- and Art Inc. only praises its product in averagely glowing terms, not like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Just a shame Chief Architect costs almost $500, even for the entry-level "Home Edition".

- And finally ...

Wisely, Amazon don't allow reviewers to post their e-mail address, but if you want to contact me about Home Design, send a message to community-help@amazon.com and they'll pass it on to me. [Amazon: remember to delete this if it ain't so!!]

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