Rating: 
Summary: Most UNINTUITIVE product ever used
Review: I've been in software development and sales for almost 20 years. This product qualifies as the most unitiutive product I've ever used (going back to DOS days). I've sold very sofisiticated software products that were 100 times easier to use. I can't believe Broderbund trys to sell this as a consumer product. In addition, after working on a design for an hour or so the software would crash and corrupt the file forcing me to recreate my work. Never mind saving your work every few minutes. It didn't matter as it would still corrupt the file. I would highly recommend finding a different solution.
Rating:
Summary: What A Piece Of Garbage!
Review: Can't add much that hasn't already been said...hard to use, completely counter-intuitive...and the help index and instruction manual are useless. If you type in "soffit," "beam," or "fireplace" there aren't even entries with corresponding instructions! Also, where are commands for crown molding, baseboard, etc? I'll stick with Version 3, which is a much easier-to-use product and offers more features.
Rating:
Summary: This is a HUGE step backward from version 3.0
Review: I've used 3D Home Architect 3.0 for years with great success. Even though it's 5 years old, it beats the pants off of version 5.1. Actually, 5.1 appears to be a completely different package, and you can't open any projects that you created with the older versions. Tasks that were so simple with 3.0 are ridiculously difficult and frustrating with 5.1. For example, if you add an interior wall that is not connected to an exterior wall, you have to drag it to where you think you want it, then measure (with a very difficult to use tape measure), then move it again, measure, and repeat until it's where you want it. What happened to automatical visual dimension lines that were in 3.0!!!? The primary problem with this version lies in it's lack of usability. It takes hours to do what took minutes in the previous version. I was grateful for Broderbund's money back guarantee - I took them up on it. This product stinks. The biggest dissapointment is, there's no upgrade path for fan's of 3D Home Architect 3.0, which was (and still is) an exceptional product. I STRONGLY recommend against this product.
Rating: 
Summary: If you like hair shirts, you'll love Home Design
Review: - Hard workAll 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!!]
Rating:
Summary: Updated but not better
Review: I designed a 3700 sf. home in 3.0 and am currently living in it. The vector generated graphics of 3.0 were Spartan, but looked three dimensional. And the interface was intuitive. The new version (5.1) is cute and very detailed but appears to be object based and looks like printed paper cutouts - no true 3-D realism - including the (so-called) photo-realistic renderings. It is EXTREMELY hard to master, frustrating to use, and illogical. Hey people at Broderbund - where did you put the SCROLL BARS? The walk through controls are poorly designed, too sensitive and don't allow you to record - at least I haven't found out how to do it. I never tried to print since I went back to 3.0 before finishing my current design. If you have 3.0 and like it, keep it and skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it
Review: I write this review sitting in the study of a house that I designed entirely myself using the broderbund software. It took me two years, but I was able to make floorplans that a local builder was able to work from and get permits from. My house is exactly as planned and the 3-D model generated by the software is a spitting image of the house. When I show it to people and tell them that it was all done before the house was built they don't believe me. I get the impression from the reviews that people think being an architect is something one can learn in an afternoon from a book. Not so. If you really want to design something that will be built, the amount of time you will spend mastering this software is nothing compared to the time it will take you to understand how all of the various local and national building code rules are going to force you to do this or that with your plan. I am not an architect, but I was able to use this software to enable me to have a house built exactly to my specifications. If you aren't willing to invest a lot of time in it, you should hire a professional.
Rating:
Summary: If you like hair shirts, you'll love Home Design
Review: - 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!!]
Rating:
Summary: What A Piece Of Garbage!
Review: Can't add much that hasn't already been said...hard to use, completely counter-intuitive...and the help index and instruction manual are useless. If you type in "soffit," "beam," or "fireplace" there aren't even entries with corresponding instructions! Also, where are commands for crown molding, baseboard, etc? I'll stick with Version 3, which is a much easier-to-use product and offers more features.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: 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:
Summary: Buggy, difficult to use, not-intuitive
Review: 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.
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