Customer Reviews

Broderbund 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe 6 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I have come so very close to getting this program to work for me, and have even gotten exploratory value out of it, but you should know that the database is often corrupted by the tool, and requires program re-installation and design recreation.

In the words of the help file (on line at ...):

MBuilder Has Encountered a Problem...
When using the program, the following message appears:
"MBuilder has encountered problem." There are several possible causes for
this issue. The remainder of this note describes how to proceed.

Determine If the Plan Is Corrupt
1. Launch 3D Home Architect® and create a new plan.
2. Add a basic structure to the plan.
3. Save the plan and close 3D Home Architect®.
4. Launch 3D Home Architect® and open the plan created in Steps 1 & 2 above.
5. Choose from the following:
* If the error message does not reoccur when working with the new plan,
the previous plan is most likely corrupt. Recreate the plan or restore
a backup copy of the plan.
* If the same error reoccurs, continue with the following procedures.
These suggestions will help to prevent corruption in future plans

-- Further instructions tell you to turn off large displays, accelerations, etc.

As long as you have separate backups every 15 minutes or so (not just saving the file, but saving to a set of many different files) then you may be able to recover some of your work.

The problem is, you may work for a long time with the program working, but with save files written by the program that are corrupt. Once written out, it can't be read back in.

I have worked with their on-line help system, and have been referred to the instructions: just reinstall and recreate what you did.

My question to them was, "How do I know what to avoid?"

Part of the problem is that the design may be OK in memory, but when it gets written out, it is corrupt. There is a "repair database" command that sometimes works, but only if the file is still in memory, and not always then.

Identifying what caused the problem has eluded me so far (50+ hours of use, design not finished)

A hint for you if you do use the program: you should know that small pieces of walls can be left behind as remnants. When walls start to act funny, expand the area, pull all of the walls back out of the intersections, and delete the little pieces that are left. You can then rejoin the wall segments and continue. (you will need to redo roofs ceilings and floors, but you will be used to that by then.

Try it, many parts work extremely well, but make all your decisions up front, because changing is tedious.

Just a few things would enhance the utility of the program tremendously: a copy/paste that works between files, a robust database, and a format painter that can work on trim.

Good luck.

I had purchased "Punch! Professional Home Design" and found it too indepth for what I needed. "3D Home Architect Design Suite 6" seemed a bit more for the lay designer. I built the outside layout of my tri-level easy enough and was impressed by the ease of setting the different levels of floor height for different areas of my home. I found colors and textures for my home's exterior that closely matched my actual home. All was well until I tried to put a roof on. It wasn't the different levels that threw off the software but the fact my home isn't rectangular. My home has a bit of character. The software has an auto 'roof by perimeter' option and a manual 'roof by picking points' option. Do not be fooled, there is no manual option. As soon as the edges of your roofs get close enough together the software merges them as it pleases. It resets angles and/or creates new and/or deletes existing edges as it sees fit, no matter how many times you reset them using the 'custom' option. Another undocumented feature is somtimes when you change the settings on a wall another wall on the other side of your project will disappear or may elongate through the boundaries of your project and off the screen. When drawing internal walls if one wall intersects a second it divides the existing wall into two and resets the both wall behavior values (i.e. 'elevation' or 'extend to roof') to defaults forcing you to go back through and redo all your settings. I run an AthlonXP 2200 1.8 GHz machine w/ 512 ram and a GeForce4 Ti 4600 w/128mb ram, well above the system requirements listed on Broderbund's website. The program crashes about every hour and a half which, by the way, is covered in the t-shooting guide. It says turn off hardware acceleration. This will then slow down 3D rendering to a painfully slow pace. Maybe this is because NVidia is such a small-time chipset manufactuer. If something happens often enough to be covered in the user-guide maybe it should be fixed? I rated two stars vice one because there are features in the software I didn't get to see and can't judge because the disc now protects my coffee table (along with a plethora of discs from AOL) from water rings and no longer is in use on my PC. I am disappointed in this Broderbund title and it will be some time before I purchase another. If you want to design a square house, this software has all you need. If your home has any character at all, do not buy this software.

I've seen some of the reviews on this forum. They range from very bad ones to excellent remarks. The last one from "A Software used from Seattle" is exagerated and obviously he did not take the time to read the manual. When you render a 3D image with the 3DTrueView option, the BMP file with this image is saved in the "Samples" Directory under "Program Files/3D Home Architect/Design Suite Deluxe6/Samples". Also, if all you want is a snapshot of the 3D image on the screen, you can press the Alt key, hold it and press "Print Screen" on your keyboard, then you simply "Edit-Paste" the image into Word, excel, etc.

Now to the review part:

RESULTING IMAGE
I've used Punch AS3000 extensively, and while the rendering of shadows is much faster than with 3D Home Architect, AS3000 lacks the ray-tracing engine therefore cannot render surfaces that reflect such as mirrors, glossy marble, etc.
The resulting images from 3DHA Design Suite are VERY, VERY close to a photograph. The ones from AS3000 tend to look Dull because of the lack of reflective surface support.

Also, 3DHA allows for many different views, 2D with textures, 3D from top view, real-time editing in 3D of the location of objects, etc.

FLEXIBILITY OF THE TOOLS
First of all, Punch's software is VERY limited in the configuration of items such as Doors, Windows, Kitchen Cabinets, Fences, Stairs, and all pre-loaded objects in general.
3DHA has all the dimensions and features of each object available for change.

Punch AS3000 offers a built-in 3D object editor but cannot import popular industry-standard formats such as 3DS files, whereas 3DHA does, giving access to thousands of free objects available on the WEB.

Textures are all pre-defined on Punch AS3000, meaning you cannot easily (without messing with file sizes, pixel counts, directories, etc.) add textures. On 3DHA you can add a texture from a BMP file with a few clicks and apply to object on the screen. Also, Objects have their surface groupings defined so you can for example, change the color of the wood of a Sofa without going leg-by-leg.

3DHA can also export to DXF AND 3DS, allowing your design to be used / rendered on industrial / professional level software. Punch AS3000 can only export to VRLM in 3D and to DXF on 2D.

I sincerily believe 3DHA is a more professional software (actually it is a down-sized version of a professional package from CADSOFT).

This is to me the best VALUE for the $99 retail price.

Marco.

If one wishes to design a simple dwelling, this program can provide some enjoyable times. It is fairly easy to learn and its user manual is clear. One can even design rather complex designs, so long as you don't exceed the program's limitations. But those limitations make it unusable for even some very basic design features. There is no way to make a wall fit under just one side of a staircase or make the top of a wall serve as a banister. (Trapezoid and triangle shaped walls are not possible.) Separate treatment of gables and the walls beneath them is not possible. Creating gable roofs where each slope has a different pitch and the ridge is off center is very cumbersome. Sometimes the program behaves as promised by the book, sometimes it does not. There is no way of producing exposed support beams -- at least not that I can find for the house proper; perhaps there is a way for porches. I have yet to find a way to create intersecting gables with a vaulted ceiling. Walls "customized" to heights less than the full height of the story are rendered at full height. It seems that in an effort to make things easy for the non-professional, the programmers took control away from the user and tried to make some architectural features automatic. But what the program comes up with is often unpredictable. (For example, strange additional pieces of roof attached to a dormer. Some walls extend to the roof, others do not, even when "customized" to do so.)
Such simple design features should be easily possible in a program whose base cost ranges from $70 to $100. For me, the investment was a complete waste. I have no practical use for a program that does not include such simple things, regardless of what extra "gingerbread" may be included. I want to design what I design, not merely what a program permits.

Posted Nov 4/04 - Currently 3D HA Design Suite is on sale for $49 by phone order direct from Broderbund! This includes Home Design Deluxe 6 and Landscape Design Special Edition. I had mixed feeling about the purchase.

For starters, I certainly didn't apprecaite the 8KB/sec download for the 160MB HA Design trail version. However I was pleased to find that this version is a big improvement over HA v3 ... and miles ahead of the Punch! competition which I've also tried and came away with the realization that this is a hodgepodge of programs cobbled together in a glittzy interface.

That said, there are lots of areas that need improvements. I'm concerned about the weird wall fragments and especially the potential database corruption. Also, I don't understand why floors can't be added after the fact. It's especially frustrating if a floor is lost if the room is "opened" due to removal of the aforementioned wall fragments. Even grabbing the floor to change properties is a chore. It sure would be nice if Bruderbund had their own user forums so that users could have a place to go for advice from other users. God knows the Bruderbund tech support is next to useless with their glib "cookie cutter" response to problems.

I could come up with a long list of suggested improvements. Among them would be the ability to tab between layers, elevation views, and sections. Speaking of sections, why annotations and the like are mosstly disabled is a head-scratcher. That's exactly where I'd like to make notes and add additional graphics. Something like that would result in a framing view suitable for building permit approval. One other missing item is a property line tool that would allow me to place the structure(s) on the site, again required for building permit submission.

In summary: A lot closer to what I need as a basic house design tool but missing on a few counts. Hopefully the database instability won't bite me but the price was too good to resist! ;)

I upgraded to this program assuming that the new roof tools and better wall angles would allow me to design the simple modern concrete home with loft that I was interested in creating. NOT SO, especially in terms of the roof option. Try designing a simple A-frame like structure and the roof wizard continually creates a roof with 4 surfaces instead of two..Once you get the gables on right you will then discover that every break in the wall creates a break in the roof line even if the wall is straight. The floor tool works only some of the time and the "curve tool" that was supposed to allow for curved walls has a big draw back....The program keeps thinking that the line is straight even though it looks curved. This means that you can have a curved wall as long as you don't want to put ANY furniture in the curved area. Forget round houses. This glitch will make you crazy.

And where did all the furniture and ability to create fences and patio's with a click go? They were in the earlier version. This one is actually stripped down for more money!

Other annoying quirks are problems adding a half bath or laundry area under a stairwell and the inability to put an appliance against a wall with an electical outlet on it. I had to remove all my electrical outlets in order to put in my cabinets, stove and laundry room appliances.

Ask it to do to many atypical things and walls suddenly began to disappear altogether. Other strange events haunt this version, like sinks that suddenly decide not to go against certain walls. If you have the older version...keep it and don't buy this one.

3D Home Design is simply horrendous...no other gentle way to put it. One bumps into flaws everywhere one turns. This software really brought me back to the early Broderbund Apple IIe and PC/XT offerings...it's that primitive! First problem is the non-standard user interface that Broderbund insists on using that unnecessarily complicates the learning curve. Then there are the countless display glitches, the worst of which erratically redraws your work just when you are trying to make a crucial modification or measurement. Perhaps worst of all is the limited and error prone output, which makes it virtually impossible to produce a quality print approaching anything like that on the screen. I tried to use the export function to get my 2d plan into a "well behaved" format, but the resolution is so limited that the resultant jaggy image is next to useless. Whereas the program itself properly uses vector graphics for most of the drawing (this makes the drawing appear nice and crisp no matter the zoom or maginification), apparently the output simply bitmaps the display, sort of like a crude screen copy function. Last, but not least, this program is virtually unsupported, especially if you bought this retail. The best that the makers can do is refer you to a chat room, in which multiple agonized users seem to confirm that most of the flaws have no easy remedy (or indeed no fix at all).
On the positive side, I found the 3D rendering capabilities quite useful, and the preparation of straightforward designs is relative simple. In addition, it's instructive to use the building materials catalog....it gives one a good idea of the possibilities for color and design.
However, I suspect that most users are like me in that they wish to produce a quality 2D plan that will pass muster for permits at the local building department. In this application, 3D Home Architect is certain to reduce users most to a sweaty, swearing lump.

I found this software to be absolutely faultless. It does have the same drag around interfaces as before, which allows houses to be designed at lightning speed; only your menu choices are not put into two menu systems which allow more comprehensive choices. Once you figure out to click the top row as before, and then choose your comprehensive choice on the right, as not before, then you are off and running.

The programmers for this software are much better than the instruction book writers. For example, you can eliminate 98% of the problems with this product by "opening up" outside walls and then "closing" them again to make floors that have disappeared reappear, and to make walls that aren't attached all the way up to the cathedral ceilings, all of a sudden attach themselves.

The only drag around interface that seems to have been lost is that you can no longer resize windows in 3D mode by grabbing their edges, however, you can still click into them while in 3D mode and resize them, which is not quite as convenient as before. However, in return, you now have more options. You can now add skylights, curved walls, curved staircases and irregular windows.

The program has also been enhanced to allow true construction details. If you want a beveled footing and an actual buildable foundation set to various heights, you can now have it.

Furthermore, one of the most annoying features of the previous releases, which was having to set "invisible" walls to get staircase openings to appear in the second story floors (which always crashed the plans) has been revised and you can now simply draw in an opening into your floors.

The 3D walk through is an absolute joy to use with the product and you can zip your view height up and down and walk around and zoom in and out with perfect ease.

Having the ability to do true rendering, wherein the sun shines through the windows is my favorite new feature, as all good designs take into the account where the sun shines. For example, an awning over a south facing window will allow the sun to shine into the room in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky but block the sun in the summer when it is hot.

I don't much care if older plans cannot be imported, as I am busy on new plans with curved staircases and skylights which were not possible before.

Any roof can be made with this product. But you have to draw the roof on first, before you put in the interior partition walls, otherwise it will distort the automatic roof centerpoints, which are needed to change roof types which is annoying. But this is all due to their not well documented feature in which the roofs and floors automatically attach themselves to everything, which saves a lot of time. And you do have the option to draw your roofs "out in space" and then drag them into place to eliminate this automatic attachment feature. Therefore, just about any roof can be created, and easily at that.

I suspect that the people experiencing crashes do not have updated computers. It works perfectly on a Pentium 4 - 3.00 GHz with 512K RAM.

I have tested a lot of programs for house design, and this one is one of the easiest to use, it is remarkable that there a lot of functions missing like copy and paste objects in the usual way , but it have the duplicate option (what im talking here is that some standarization is missing) you canot change the attributes of multiple objects, so you need to change the color of every single piece of wall one by one.

Apart from theese little interface details, the resulting images in 3d are very nice and realistic, the product is discontinued by the company which is now selling all the components separately, so there must be a limmited quantity of copies of this package remaining.

To end my review let me say that between all the programs i tested i decided to buy this one and im happy with my choice

I've just completed reading the reviews on various home design software deciding which one to purchase. While they all seem to leave something to be desired (not to mention their confusing names and software lineage), you can make a variety of roof types with this software. I have the demo for "3D Home Architect" Home Design Deluxe 6 by Broderbund as it says in the About dialog. I assume this is the software included in the suite.

Today I made a standard gable roof using the default 20 or 45 degrees, a standard hip roof, a low angle ranch style gable roof of 15 degrees, a "shed" style gable roof with two pitches 15 and 20 degrees on each side, one of 15 and 5 degrees. I tried to make a flat roof, but either I missed something or you need to make a gable roof of zero degrees, but it would not accept anything below 5 degrees.

The slope can be specified in 1 in N style, N in 12 or percent instead of degrees.

The roof tools are a bit counter-intuitive and obscure. It took me a while to figure out how to use them. Although the Wizard is limited to a choice of 20 or 45 degree pitches, if you look at the roof properties, you can specify ANY ANGLE once a roof is constructed. Also, in the roof list there are only 20 and 45 degree pitches listed standard for Hip roofs. But you can change these to any angle.

One of the difficult things to notice and get your head around is that these tiny blue squares on the roof selection marquee are how you affect changes to just one section of the automatically generated roof. So to create a gable roof, you need to first create a Hip roof, then select the roof, select the blue square for the end you want a gable, then click Properties, then change the roof type for that section to gable. I know, it is weird, having to change the roof type for just a section when "gable" usually refers to the whole roof.

If you don't select the blue square you will change the whole roof and just get frustrated.

Making a curved roof is also strange. It creates one with Hip style ends. You must select and convert the ends to Gable, oddly enough to create an arched roof with "gable" ends where the siding is exposed beneath the curve. You have to get used to working with each end of a roof individually. The end result is unfortunately a kind of "barn" style roof that is not really curved. By increasing the radius on sections, I was able to get a smoother curve without flat spots. If you think about it, the radius of a curved roof is wider at the base than the building, so the default radius is not enough. By fiddling with the roof data I was able to make a downward curved oriental gable roof. I still was not able to make a satisfactory curved roof or for it to display truss framing for it. I may try adjusting a double slope.

It always crashes when I try to TrueView render the scene, from the diagnostics it apparently is my ATI drivers or more probably the OpenGL drivers. Crashes have been rare otherwise.