Customer Reviews

Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0 [OLD VERSION]

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

 

 

I purchased "Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0" DVD-ROM after purchasing the Chief Architect BH&G Landscape Designer for our design and general contracting business.

A little background on me: I am proficient at 2020 Residential Design CAD, have a good working knowledge of AutoCAD, and as I mentioned, own and have used C.A.'s Landscape Design. In addition, I've used Plan3D and GoogleSketchUp in a pinch to create initial conceptual renderings for clients. What drew me to "Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0" was the ease and beauty of the landscape renderings from the Landscape program. For conceptual design, Landscape was very adequate to the task. What I really needed though, was a program that not only rendered images beautifully, but could create accurate prints and elevations. Bonus points if it was easy to learn.

If you're looking for an easy entry level design program, this isn't the product for you. Despite the 250+ page User .PDF manual, my own knowledge of CAD language, and my experience with crafting hundreds of plans, prints, and renderings over the years, "Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0" confounded me time and time again. I crafted a simple addition to an existing structure. Had I drafted the blue print by hand, it might have taken me 3 hours or so. It took over 12 hours using 9.0.

Why did it take so long?
I'll grant you, there's a learning curve to any new product of this type. And to C.A.'s credit, the step by step User .PDF manual was easy enough to read and understand. Problem was that every time I moved from one step to the next, it would change some thing I had already created. Specific example: My basic structure was drawn, and according to the manual it was time to move on to the exterior terrain. I input my elevation data and a helpful pop up window informed me that such a move would change the roof line and would I like to rebuild? No! But you can't click 'no'. Even clicking the little X at the top of the pop up to close it changed the roof line. What does the ground level have to do with the roof when the baseline is the 1st floor? You got me. I must have redrawn that roof a dozen times. In addition, implementing the Elevation Points, Lines, and Features is a real pain. Good luck with creating terrain for a split level with a walk out basement. Draw your terrain elevation lines a bit too long and the 'grass' appears to swallow the house, draw them too short and your house is floating in mid air. And then there's the roof thing, but I digress.

So I finally get the layout where I want it. By this time I'm really wanting to strangle some one, but I must press on. I've made a decent monetary investment, you see. As my frugal father might say, "I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR THAT!!!!!" It's now time to send the plan to layout. Basically what you have to do is set your printer settings to a .PDF creator, at which time the program creates a printable copy of your plan. Kinda handy if you need to run blue prints for a job site. So I download Adobe, I set my printer to it and.... it doesn't look like an industry standard blue print at all. I dig back into the Manual. 'The user must create all borders and title blocks.' Crap. Okay. I create a 'template' so that when I export my plan to layout and elevation it looks like a blue print should look. For the record, every other CAD program I have used has a ready-to-go templates for this sort of thing including a standard copyright notice, the name of the company, the print view name, the date, etc... None of this on C.A.'s product, however. You gotta make the thing yourself. I spent an embarassing amount of time creating title blocks that matched in size, configuration, and font size from one print to the next. A hint in the User manual tells me to check out page 500 and something for more details. Might have been helpful, but the manual is only 250 or so pages long. (Actually, this was a problem through out the manual, referring to pages that weren't there.)

Anyhoo...now it's time to create a layout! By this point I'm as excited as a kid at Christmas, I'm almost done! Unfortunately when I exported the plan to layout, the plan was so large that it covered up all of my lovely title blocks. Crap, again. Although the User manual didn't specify exactly how to solve this issue, I was able to draw on my prior CAD experience to make it work. Someone who doesn't have any CAD knowledge would have never had a chance to resolve this issue without calling the Chief Architect hotline.

So at the end of the day I had a technical blue print ready for the field. W00t! It took me far more time and faaaaaaaaaar more patience than it should have. Some of this had to do with the default settings of the program, some of it had to do with constant SEC errors, some of it due to the User manual referring to pages that weren't there, and some of it to learning curve. I have little choice but to master this program now. The investment has been made. And again, I can't stress enough how beautiful and quick the 3D renderings really are. It's just getting to that point that'll drive you to drink.

We upraded from Home Designer 7, a program we really liked and had no problems with. The weekend we upgraded to this version, we started to use this and spent the whole weekend having problems with getting the dimensions right using the templates provided. We went to their help board and could find no mention of this problem, so we started a new thread on it. When we checked back on that thread on Sunday, someone had deleted our thread. After many back and forths with the company, we discovered there was a glitch with the software that affected the dimensions using any of the templates other than default. The company had been fully aware about this since it's release last year and did not notify anybody about it or correct it. Also, apparently someone was deleting references to it on the help board. We continued to go back and forth until they agreed to put a notice about it on the help board that there was glitch so that people wouldn't have to go through what we did in hours wasted and frustration thinking they were doing something wrong and not knowing it was a glitch.
Other than that experience (which left us with a definite bad feeling for the company but there are not a lot of options out there for similar programs in that price range), I think the program is pretty easy to use and has a lot of tutorials and help available if you run into any questions. It has a powerful roof designer, has solid CAD details, and the 3-D imaging is great.

If you think you are purchasing fully functional version of this software think again!! Much to my surprise and after paying about $500 for the software did I learn that the computer running the software must 'check in with' Chief Architect at least every 2 weeks or the software is DISABLED. This is unlike any other software I have purchased, and has created quite a problem for me because I run it on a laptop that is not usually hooked up to the internet. I have already been locked out once when I really needed it when I was traveling. Once it locks you out you have to re-register and must have all the registration materials on hand. They should make it clear that you are not really purchasing it, but are leasing a sort of keyserver version. I'm sure that's somewhere in the fine print, but it needs to be made clear up front. I would not purchase anything from Chief Architect again.

Many years ago, I purchased Chief Architect to design my home in California. While the learning curve was steep, I was able to fully design a 3200 sq ft home remodel. I created a full set of plans for the San Joaquin building department which were accepted. We went on to build and complete this project.

Last year I purchased Home Designer Pro because it is significantly cheaper than the new Chief Architect. I figured that the software shouild be much improved, and while I was not purchasing their flag-ship software, it would still be good. Boy, was this assumption wrong!

Here are a few of the issues I experienced.
1) The functionality of Home Designer Pro was less than I experienced 10 years previously.
2) This time I designed a 2300 sq ft home remodel. The software bogs down when you near the completion of the plan. It can take up to 10 seconds just to try to move a piece of furniture from one side of a room to another. (I am running this on a dual core 2.41Ghz processor and 2GB of ram.)
If you try this move on a very simple design - a single room house for example, the furniture moves quickly.
3) Searching for furniture is extremely slow. The software does not have an index, but seems to need to read all the furniture objects to locate what you want. This can take up to 20 seconds to complete.
4) Composite furniture objects are not scalable. For example, a sectional sofa object, is actually made up of 4 components. You would have to build one from scratch to make it the size that you want.
5) Printing is a bear! It is difficult to size and print plans.

The software system was so bad, that I had to hire an architect to actually draw the plans, because of the extreme problems with this software.

In short, you should stay away from this software and find something else that works better. (My college degree is in Computer Science and I have 30+ years experience with software.)

I am very pleased with Designer Pro 9.0. The product is very user friendly. In addition, support, training tutorials, documentation is outstanding. The features and functionality make this product fun.

This software is powerful and yet relatively easy to learn for the discerning and determined end user.

This program is perfect for remodeling firms, the individual custom home designer/owner or the hobbyist who demands absolutely the best and see it first in 2-D and then instantly in full-color 3-D with just the click of a mouse.

Unlike the other Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Line of titles this one has the most "Bells and Whistles" to support the greatest freedom of design and creativity relative to conventional construction. The only program more able in its class is its fully Professional Grade "Bigger Brother", Chief Architect Version 12.
At a fraction of Big Brother's price it is a bonafide "steal": formatted, scaled printing output, full control roof designing, choice of rendering techniques from traditional to Artistic!

David Jefferson Potter
Austin, Texas

The software delivered all I expected and more. It is a truly a professional level product.
Easy to use and good online support.

VERY GOOD SOFWARE FOR WHAT I HAVE SPENT ON THIS. Serves the purpose for which I need.