Customer Reviews

3D Home Design Suite Professional 5

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This is probably the biggest waste of money I've ever spent on software. There are two possible functions it could serve: it could allow for visualization for the consumer with easy drop ins and home designs, or it could allow someone willing to spend more time the ability to customize their home design plans. This software allows neither! It advertises thousands of drag and drop objects, but in reality, it has very, very few. For the exterior of the house, I couldn't even get a wood siding or a stucco siding, and there definitely wasn't a way to combine the two (as I have in my current house)! Windows were also very limited, as were lots of other items that should have been a cinch. No templates or pre-existing home designs that allow you to get off to a quick running start. Be warned, if you want anything out of this program, you're going to have to literally build the house from the ground up with the exact dimensions of each wall in your house, etc.
If you want more professional software, and you are willing to do those things and spend the time, it's still extremely limited, both limited building choices and limited ability to drop/drag and have features automatically adjust...

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.

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.

I have used 3D Home ARCHITECT for years, V1, V2, V3. 3D Home DESIGN is from the same Broderbund, and costs more, so I thought it would be better. WRONG. Dimensioning is one of it's many problems. Dimensions aren't locked onto an element. You move a wall, and the dimenision stays the same. Wrong. And no way to remove dimensions all at once, Must be remove one at a time. Very slow. Needs auto-remove tool. And dims. should change as the wall is moved. Otherwise you must remeasure each move. No online help with program. Like I said it wastes a lot of time, and MY MONEY. 3D Home Design is all about sales, not function.

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.

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.

We had designed a 6,000 sq ft. house using version 3. We loved the program. But we decided to upgrade to version 5 to get some more advanced features while finalizing the design of the house. What a waste. First, it is not backward compatible so we cannot transfer any of the prior work to it. Second, while it would run on my desktop, it would not run on our laptop. It would crash the system. Their support desk could offer no solutions. Third, where the old program was very intuitive, neither my wife nor I could make any sense out of the new navigation system. She finally uninstalled the new version and went back to the old version. Skip this product.

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.

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.

This product should have never seen the light of day. I have used prior versions, but this one has forgotten all those lessons. Save your money and buy a pencil and ruler - it will be faster and more accurate.