Customer Reviews

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe [Old Version]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am not an architect, but I enjoy designing houses for fun. For my purposes, this software is good enough (better than I expected, actually) and I have spent happy hours laying out floor plans for various designs.

It is true that it is not entirely customizable, by which I mean (as another reviewer pointed out) you cannot customize wall heights easily, have a limited range of roof options, etc., and this can be frustrating. You can still do quite a bit with the specifications dialogues for each object and by fiddling around, and I have been able to do most of what I want, if not perfectly. There are more expensive products out there that give you more flexibilty. However, I am not planning to build from these designs myself, and am not so interested in getting all the specific details into the designs that I develop--probably because I know what I have in mind and can make a note with the text tool on the plan to remind me.

What I am interested in is laying out floor plans and seeing how they work. This I can do with this software. You can draw the floorplan by using the house wizard, which has preprogrammed rooms (that can be resized by clicking and dragging) that you select and simply place, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, into your design. Or you can draw walls with your mouse and build your design that way, as if you were drawing it on paper (which is what I prefer).

Once you have drawn your floor plan, you can see it in various views. The dollhouse view lets me see a 3D image of any floor of the whole house with the "roof off", as it were, which I really like. There are also glass house and floor camera views. The way it works is you select one of these, click on the floor plan, and draw a line of perspective. The program then converts this view into 3D to give you a view from the inside of that perpective.

The glass house view, though not a walk-through per se, gives a pretty good sense of what rooms look like from the inside from one to the next (imagine an Xray image in grey tones of a 3d house design--and like an Xray, from one perspective). The floor camera view gives you a 3D close up of a room interior from the inside. This is also from one perspective, as if you took a photo, but you can use the "camera orbit" or "mouse camera" tools in either view to move from the wall in front of you to your left, right, up and down, and can move forward and back.

This works to a point in the glass house view, but is less successful in the floor camera view. The problem is that the software is not smart enough to let you select a specific room and view it as if you were inside it turning around. While you can do this with careful mouse actions, often you will find youself pulling the point of perspective backwards as you try to control the panning view, in effect moving the "camera" into the next room (which can you give you the disconcerting sense of not being sure where you are or how you got there, particularly if you have not decorated the rooms with materials or objects that distinguish one from the next). So, it's often simpler, if more time comsuming, to readjust the placement of the "camera" on your floor plan (which means switching back to the floor plan window)--at least until you get your panning skills down.

One nice thing, though, is that you can change the dimensions of objects such as doors, windows, etc., from within this 3D room view. To do this, click on the "select" arrow (on the left side of your toolbar across the top )and then click on the object. You can then drag and click to change its size or placement in the wall (I use this, for example, to make transom windows). You can also specify dimensions to a point by double clicking on objects to bring up that object's specification dialogue, or can change dimensions on the floor plan by clicking and dragging a door, window, etc., to a different size.

You can also use the 3D tools to see the whole house with (or without) the roof from outside (and you can "spin" the whole house design to see it from all angles). It does have a walkthrough feature, but it is not a true walkthrough and basically requires that you take "snapshots" of each room in 3D and and then play them back as a movie--too much trouble for me, and I have not done it.

The graphics are as one would expect. What you "build" is a bit cartoonish (by which I mean, not photorealistic). The library of objects is large, but the selection within each category is not huge, but has been enough for me (i.e, 6 styles of queen beds, but if you want a canopy bed, for example, you're out of luck). For me--since I am not interior designing with this, per se, it's fine as I have enough objects to generally get an idea of what something would look like-which is what I am after. You do have a reasonable range of materials and colors for walls and floors and such--the greater limitation is in the options for the objects design/style.

However, the bottom line for me is that I was not willing to pay $300+ for the Pro version and even less willing to pay $1400+ for Chief Architect (though if anyone from the company is reading and wants to give me a copy of CA to review from the general consumer perspective, do get in touch). What I wanted, as I said earlier, was software to help me design and envision buildings for fun--and for the price, am really happy enough.

I was using Punch software to help me remodel my house but the graphics weren't that good and I was having a hard time getting exact measurements.
With BHG the graphics are great and getting accurate measurements it a snap. The amount of objects is outstanding plus you can make your own. I took a picture of the brick and roofing on my house and put it into BHG and now I have an exact replica of my house.
Definately well worth the money.

i purchased this product with the intention of designing a small home for myself. while the 3d views are helpful visualization tools this program seems best suited to design of the "what would my living room look like painted green" or "what would the front yard look like with some juniper" variety. sure there are some cool features, but in the end you can't produce a plan to work off of or modify the framing to suit specific design needs. the most obvious drawback for me was the inability to easily modify wall height for a simple one and a half story structure. that said, the dimensioning and the library of common household objects help to plan space usage. however, if you want to do anything besides computer assisted daydreaming you'll probably want to kick down the cash for pro, since it supposedly allows you to manually edit framing and produce dimensioned blue prints.

HD Deluxe uses the same commands for all basic functions as its expensive big brother, Chief Architect. Drawing walls, inserting doors and windows, moving things and adjusting dimensions are all very easy and intuitive. Armed with all the necessary dimensions, virtually anyone can build an unfurnished house in a matter of an hour or two. I had no problem accurately reproducing my existing house the same day I installed the software (without cabinets, wallpaper, and floor covering, etc but which this package can do very well). Then came the fun part -- I was able to investigate multiple remodeling options by moving walls, extending the slab foundation, and adding a second floor to the existing garage -- all in just a matter of minutes. The auto-roof feature adapted to every change and showed me immediately what each idea would look like. This package is wonderful! For the average homeowner, HDD will do everything you need to draw almost any type of home.
However, after three weeks of experimenting, I attended a local users group for Chief Architect and learned how some of the disabled features would affect its usability for me. As a result, I took advantage of the mfr's 30 day return policy (even though I purchased it from Amazon) and upgraded to the Pro version. The primary shortcoming for me was the inability to transfer files back from CA and resume working on them (If you send an HDD plan to someone using CA, they can modify the plan but you will subsequently be limited to read-only on that file.) With HD Pro, you can trade files repeatedly, and that could be important to some users.

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe is easy to learn and even though it has a lot of limits in it you can work around them by being a little creative to get it to do what you want. There are a few problems however, the auto roof tool goes wacky on me when I know that what I want to do can be done, I haven't figured that one out yet and it is slower than than the professional version. It is a great program and is fun to play around with. I am a retired home designer and purchased Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe to check it out. It is the best product out in this price range as it has several features as some of the professional products. You can not have it all in this price range and the people who complain about its limits should understand this.

A quick look at the first several tutorials had me up and running. I've been able to do most of the things I've wanted to do with this program and it's delivered on most of its promises. My wife loves it too.

I have to remind myself that I'm not an architect and this isn't a professional program, though. It does most things really well but it has some short comings.

I'm trying to draw my house right not which is a 4 level and haven't had any luck yet. Although I've net seen all tutorials, I'm doubtful the program can do it at all. Foundations have been difficult to manipulate at best.

My planned home addition includes a home theater and I've had to use work-arounds to get risers and sound insulated walls. (Which messes up my already difficult to use cost estimator.) But it has let me put in chairs, speakers, and a projector screen which makes the 3D views very close to what the finished product may look like.

The framing view is a dud as it appears to serve no practicle purpose.

So as long as you have realistic expectations from the program it should make you very happy. Basic functions are easy to learn and my wife and I've had a blast planning our addition. I can't imagine designing our addition/remodel without it.

I would buy it again.

I purchased this program because I was taking a CAD class that was using Chief Architect 9.5 The instructor suggested that we purchase this program to practice on at home. The program at school was flawed and I was able to produce both my mid-term and final using this product. It is easy to use, has many features and when you sign up on the internet, you will receive an email offering an upgrade from 7.0 to 7.08 plus quite a number of additional free items to go along with the many items that are already available in the material list. I recommend it highly to anyone that wants to build their own house or even just remodel one or more rooms. You can build your room as it is and then make changes and the camera will let you see exactly how it will look. Just amazing!!! Well worth the $$$ spent...

If you are looking for something that will do a fairly nice job with a traditional stick house this does pretty good. If you want to change the walls to say 11" ICF this will not do the job. It does not support changing the wall thickness and materials. The Pro 6 and Pro 7 of this program does seem to do this. They also cost more than twice as much. Support for foundations is basicly not there.

This program will give you an idea about a house design but will not be good enough to use to build a house.

I have owned this product for about two weeks, so this is a very preliminary "first look" type review. Background.. I am an aerospace engineer (not an architect) but have some experience with simple generic drawing programs (eg, Visio), and am very computer savvy. The reason for this purchase is my wife and I are buying an abandoned 10 acre farm (with a very rough, 1880s style farmhouse) and I wanted to sketch out possible floor plans for renovation and additions to the house.

Why this program? I struggled over this and really the only other option, Punch Home Design Arch Series 18 in this price range. Reviews from various sources had these two about equal. I chose the BHG/Chief Architect app simply from the website information available. While the BHG site listed all of their various home design program applications and a detailed feature list with checkmarks, I never did find the same level of information on the Punch website - it was more glittzy than informative. So I went with BHG.

OK first off, I am the type that DOES read the instruction manual :). So the first thing I did was read through the book. It wasnt that bad, maybe an hour or so to get the "jist" of how the program worked.

It installed flawlessly. My system: 2.4MHz Intel, 4GB RAM, 40GB HD, Win XP. I did not bother with the tutorials - never opened the CD case that held them. The program immediately (upon online registration) identified that a patch was available, and this also downloaded and installed without a hitch.

Since I had read the instruction manual, and also was familiar with how toolbars worked, I had no real difficulty in sketching out the outside walls of the house (I had previously taken actual dimensions of the old house). To me, it seems very intuitive. You click, drag and it appears. Interior walls are easy to create and they snap to the closest outside or inside wall. Click on a wall and drag it one way or the other and watch the inside dimension arrow until you get it where you want it.

I have spent about 16 hours with the program so far. The areas where I actually had to access the online help or go back to the manual were dealing with stairwells (they automatically generate but its a bit tricky to get them to "open" to the floor below), and the automatic roof generation (which works adequately, but not a lot of freedom to modify, but that may be a good thing). File size may be an issue. I have saved several different configurations of the overall plan, and each seems to take up about 3-5MB of hard disk space. Delete that old Sims game and all of its expansion packs before you fire this puppy up!

The 3D views are cool, but they do take a while to redraw. My simple plan already has over 50,000 surfaces, that need to be redrawn with each view. Watch out for rooms that do not start their elevation on the same "baseline" or have the same room height. This was a pain to deal with non-standard 9-foot ceilings, and changing the foundation height after the entire plan was constructed was a bad idea on my part.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this has turned out. The files generated will transfer to other more robust architectural programs. Our plan is to give this to our architect electronically so that she can "fix" the problems in my design. Four stars because I'm sure there are better, more expensive programs, but this is just the right level of complexity for me that balances with the capability I need.

I found the program to be mostly user friendly overall, the roof tool has continued to be a thorn in my side. Maybe my own fault but have not found help within the program or on line to allow me to manipulate the roof structure with any sense of satisfaction. I will spend and hour or two building a structure plan and then spend endless hours trying to get the rood the way I want it and then just start over because it never comes out.