Customer Reviews

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 9.0 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I bought this product this week and overall, I'm very happy with it. I'm an interior designer who already has extended experience with autocad. I've also worked with 20/20 for kitchen design and I'm familiar with Google Sketch-up, but haven't worked with it. I bought it because we're planning to build a house and I thought this would be a fun way to design our new house. I also thought it would be great to use with clients to show them 3D views of the rooms I would be designing for them. If you're familiar with autocad, this program is about the same difficulty to use and the tutorials are helpful, but don't go into too much depth. So far, I've found it easy to get started, but there are a lot of small details that you need to experiment with in order to get what you want. The best thing about this program that I've found, is it's ability to draw a 3D picture directly from a floor plan. (From my experience with Sketch-up, that program requires you to build the walls, doors, etc.) This program allows you to put windows and doors in very easily -- almost like cut & paste. Because I read quite a few reviews of this product and others, I wasn't sure if it would be as good as I would like. It's not professional, of course, but it does enough for my purposes. The only thing that I would like is if it had more furniture styles to choose from, so that if I wanted to use it with clients, I could show them a closer replica of what their room would look like. I have to experiment some more, but for now it only gives me a general idea of what the room would look like. It's a good planning tool. I'm happy with my choice. I think I got a lot of progam for a relatively small cost. One thing I would like to reiterate is that if you're not familiar with any other autocad products, you may have difficulty learning to use it.

[...] Go through some of the many training videos on the Chief Architect web site, [...]. Click on the TRAINING VIDEOS tab. The videos will also help you decide which version of this program you should buy, Suite, Architectural or Pro. The Chief Architect products are less expensive at Amazon compared to buying directly from Chief Architect. I respectfully disagree with some of the other reviewers. I find this program to be very intuitive. It is easy for a beginner (which I am) to learn and use.

I'm new to architectural software. I was looking for something to visaulize a remodel of a house we're about to buy, to see how our furniture would fit, and to viualize artwork on the walls. The house I modeled is a square-ish structure with a daylight basement, dorma, two slab-based additions (screened-in porch and sun room), and a detached garage.

I initially tried [...] and paid them $75 to build the basic floorplan for me; however, once I tried to use it, it was a disater. I couldn't even figure out how to move from floor to floor in blueprint mode and the online help wasn't very good. Moreover the plans they supplied were wrong: they showed french doors instead of regular windows in the sun room. I e-mailed them about this and got no reply. ($100 wasted)

I then did some more research and downloaded a trial of Home Design Suite 9.0. I very quickly had my floorplan laid out and by the end of the day had most of our furniture installed, artwork containing my photography on the walls, and movies on the plasma tv's with scenes from my favorite movies.

The only negative thing is that I spent a couple of hours on the trial and got a lot of the floorplan completed, but couldn't enter the key I'd just purchased and save my work (the trial version cannot save, print, import, export, etc.). So I basically had to do it all over again.

The online help is great and there are a ton of online tutorial videos. I found answers to all my questions except 1 (adding driveways, sidewalks and roads) using the available online resources.

I plan to use it to remodel the kitchen, plan furniture layouts and to draw electrical plans for permits when we finally move.

There is a large tree in the yard of the house we are buying and I tried to find it in the plant library, but none of the trees in there were anything like it. Unfortunately, I know little about trees so I've no idea what species it is, but none of the pictures were anything close.

I highly recommend it. For under $100, it's a great deal.

Mark

This probably the best CAD home desinger I ever used. For a novice its a quick learn with tons of tutorial videos that Keep things simple and to the point. It has over 5000 items to decorate you place with (not to mention the updates you get from the website for free). From gym equipment to 20 different cars this is a blast for home design. So why not 5 stars well 1) they don't have a 4-floor version whch sucks since I live in a four floor house and 2) it tends to pop up with useless warnings about the project your working on that you already know. (I.E. The wall is facing outward). All in all its completely worth the money..unlike others (i.e. PUNCH) which tries its best to confuse you in everway possible. This is simple and easy to use within minutes of opening the box. A MUST BUY!

This was my third attempt at using home design software to visualize changes I want to make to my house. It has turned out to be the best of the three. (I tried a "Best" package from a rating of 10 different programs in an article. Boy were they wrong. The one they recommended just wasn't worth the effort or cost.) They provide a very good Users Manual and an equally good Reference Manual. They include a lot of features that truly simplify coming up with a comprehensive plan. The controls are fairly easy to use but you do have to put in the time to learn how to use them. Not difficult and becomes easier as you use the features and learn to look for those elements that you can change. Does it do everything I want it to do? No. But I am assuming I would be able to do those things with their next level package. However, I am not a professional architect and have been able to figure out ways to accomplish what I want done. (Had to do with orientation of the wood flooring in a room. Picky, picky) This is not for someone who wants a simple, pick and place type of design program. You do have to spend some time learning it but that is just several hours of going through their User Manual and finding out what they have and where you have to look for it. They have made home design very easy but the results are very sophisticated. (The other program, no manuals but you could buy training.)

There's a relatively steep learning curve for this software, but once you get it it's very useful. There are quite a few "quirks" too, snapping can be frustrating and new rooms can pop up when you dont want them to. Forums say there are specific ways to fix these things, but a better solution would be for the software to be a little smarter and more forgiving. Overall i did find it helpful though in remodeling our house.

The way that Chief Architect Designer Suite was described, it sounded exactly right for my needs - I need to try various elements in a design, and see which would be the most effective for what I wanted to do. I have used AutoCad in the past, and didn't need to get into the detail that that software requires to prepare a drawing.
I found the tools in Chief Architect easy to use, but I was quickly frustrated by the lack of control over simple details I wanted to include in my drawing. For example, a couple of posts at the entry supporting a small gable roof could not be rendered - perhaps there is a work around, but I kept wanting to give up and just draw the darned thing on paper. The same for drawing a simple gable roof - I had to set the wall type as a gable wall for a roof profile to work. Then i had a tough time setting the overhangs and pitch of the roof.
The packaged textures were also a chore to use, if I wanted something specific. Plumbing fixtures were difficult to match, and I could find nothing to use as a hot tub.
This program was a lot of unnecessary work to get a simple result. For all the tools it makes available, it actually takes more time to manipulate the software to do what you want than AutoCad does.
To make things worse, when I tried to apply the available upgrade, my firewall reported a series of viruses and potential problems and refused to load it.

I gave up on the Chief Architect Designer Suite. Graph paper and a scale rule are easier to use. I wouldn't recommend this product.

I loved the program, but ended up returning it to Chief Architect for a refund and buying the Architectural Home Designer. For the extra few bucks it costs on Amazon, it's worth having the more flexible program.

I'm moving soon, and wanted a product to help me visualize furniture placements. I had another product that didn't run on by vista operating system. This product took a bit of learning time, even though I thought myself to be experienced in CAD. Still, once I got it down, it's been a lot of fun, playing around with placements and types of furniture. I found the "camera" function, that lets you look at your product in graphic form, to be quite realistic and helpful. Overall, it would have gotten a "5" if it was more user-friendly, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is computer-savy.

Having read some of the reviews below I find it hard to believe that so many could have so much trouble using this program. I bought this to design a kitchen addition to the rear of an old colonial I just purchased and couldn't stop once I started! I've never used this type of program before, but after a few hours I had not only replicated the old plan of my current house within the inch, siding, terrain, roof-line etc., I had added my desired addition, including full interior mock up. The instant 3-D visualization aspect was incredible and allowed me to change colors, textures, tiles and countertops at the click of a button. Perfect for those of us that have an idea of what we want, but need to see it on the wall first! I have since used these plans to present to local contractors, with all the detail they need to do the job, and they've been very impressed. Since hiring an architect would've cost around $3000 for this project, and the program cost $79.99, I couldn't be happier!