- Platform: Windows NT / 98 / XP / 95
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
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Product Description
Amazon.com Review
Design a dream home right at your desk, or just work out the details of your new landscaping plans. Either way, Instant Home Design offers to take the guesswork out of a proposed building project.
The concept behind Instant Home Design is a simple one. Users evaluate a planned renovation to a home by scanning in a photograph of the house. Once uploaded, the photo can then be altered and expanded upon. You can change the exterior of a home from wood to brick, add a skylight, or build an additional bathroom. Viewing the altered photograph, you can then make informed decisions about whether a contemplated change is worth the expense.
Unfortunately, a host of minor glitches will probably leave eager renovators frustrated with Instant Home Design and still in the dark about the merit of their design scheme. The most fundamental of these problems is the interface, which is non-intuitive to the extreme and makes the process of using the program hard to learn. True, clicking on almost any screen object will trigger a lengthy video, one which purportedly explains how to use the features of the package. However, instructions on the basics--how to draw a house or room from scratch, for example, or how to single out part of the roof for alteration--are all but lost amid cheerful video chatter about more esoteric options.
Instant Home Design is also prone to system crashes, and though it works in partnership with a Web page that allows users to download interior and exterior wall patterns and other home décor elements, the site tends to have errors and it loads very slowly. The program also lacks features that add to the appeal of its competitors. In particular, users cannot get automatic price estimates for their renovations, or move easily from room to room in a simulated 3-D tour. Finally, drawing a new home from scratch with this program is an intensely slow process.
To some extent, Instant Home Design suffers from a flaw common to most current home design software. It is extraordinarily difficult to take a flat picture of a home and then provide information about its three-dimensional features. In this respect, Instant Home Design merely reflects the weakness of similar programs. However, Instant Home Design has been less successful than others in combining the techniques available for merging digital photographs with images of home furnishings and finishes. --Alyx Dellamonica
Amazon.com Product Description
The four CD-ROMs that comprise Instant Home Design make designing andremodeling your home fun and easy. You can scan in a photo of your own hometo design and build on instead of tediously re-creating your existinglayout. Simply follow the enclosed instructions on how to put a photographof your house onto a disk (or use a scanner or digital camera). In lessthan 30 minutes you'll be able to start designing both the interior andexterior of your home.
- Instant Remodeling lets you visualize renovations to your homebefore you spend any money. Start with an existing photograph of your home,and simply explore the various functions and possibilities with a click ofthe mouse: see how remodeling your kitchen will look, or what your bedroomwould be like with a new paint job before actually starting such projects.
- Instant Interior Design has over 10,000 photographic images of realproducts from popular brand names and designers. Experiment with differentwallpaper styles and paint colors, and bookmark your favorite selections. Asearch function is included for fast reference and to locate objectseasily. Or start from scratch and design a new, empty room with thedimensions you supply. Discover how easy and fun it is to design theinterior of your home, without having to move furniture around or buysamples of paint.
- The Instant Dream Home CD-ROM lets you navigate through thousands ofreal-life products like garage doors, window treatments, paint colors, androofing varieties, and test out features you might not have considered.Bring your elevation plans to life, and see how easy it is to constructyour dream home with a click of the mouse.
- Instant Deck, Pool, & Hot Tub helps you identify and solve difficulties prior to construction. You can experiment with different poolshapes and see how they will look with your home. This is an idealsoftware program for anyone thinking of adding a deck, pool, or hot tub totheir home, and helps with all the planning that needs to be done beforedigging up the backyard. The 30 tutorial videos also make navigating andusing this CD easy and fun to work with.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Instant Home Design Isn't,
By Mike Bowman (Annapolis, MD United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Instant Home Design (4 CD-ROM) (CD-ROM)
I'm getting ready to have a house built and I wanted to do some planning for options, upgrades, and furniture placement. I was looking for an inexpensive software package instead of having to draw the house with pencil and graph paper. I ran across this as a cheap alternative to the more expensive "CAD" type programs. "You get what you pay for" is very true in this case. My first complaint is in the packaging of the product. While the product tells you it can perform many functions, it really doesn't inform the buyer of the extent of it's functionality. I should have realized something was amiss when the comparison chart includes the stat that this product has 4 CD-ROMs while the others only have 1! It claims you can start a room from scratch, but don't even try starting with a 2D floor plan. If you don't have a photo, this program is pretty much a boat anchor. I decided to try and model a room first. The installer program installs the first disk and then runs the program. There are no follow on links to install the rest of the CDs. After loading the first CD, I searched for the room design function and couldn't locate it. Realizing it must be on CD#2, I tried to install it, but the autorun program for installing #2 crashed. It installed fine using the start menu Run command. This program is very non-intuitive. For instance, once you set a room size, there is no indication of where to go and change the room properties. While searching for it, every time you click on an icon, a movie-tutorial starts up, which really doesn't seem to explain what you want to do, but what you are doing. Even the help index brings up a movie. No wonder it takes 4 CDs. Most of learning this program seems to be mouseclick trial and error. This program doesn't even have a mouseover explanation of what the icon does prior to clicking. I'll be returning this and spending a little bit of money on a better package.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT,
By A Customer
This review is from: Instant Home Design (4 CD-ROM) (CD-ROM)
I bought this software (at Best Buy) thinking it was going to have many of the features that it advertised such as "instant" home design. I just wanted to have fun and build my fantasy dream house. Boy, what a lemon product. My computer froze EVERYTIME I tried to embark on a project. None of the disks worked. Directions were confusing. It was such a disappointment. DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT. (Note: Best Buy has the WORST return policy of all. Avoid shopping there. In addition, their credit card department is a sham. Bad customer service.)
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too Simple For Home Design,
By April A Doyal (Hobbs, NM United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Instant Home Design (4 CD-ROM) (CD-ROM)
This product says that it can perform, but it isn't worth messing with unless you're willing to sacrafice your ideas of what a "dream home" should be. All the rooms have to be square or rectangular, and if you want one of another shape, you can dream on, it won't do it for you, nor will it let you do it yourself. The 3rd of the 4 discs says that you can build your dream home, if your dream home looks like everyone elses home, then this product may be useful to you, but if your dream home is unique I would avoid this software like the plague. ON the back of the packaging, it states that it has "state-of-the-art" features, "Computer Aided Drafting" programs. I don't see anything that even remotely resembles a cad program (on any of the discs for that matter) I highly suggest saving your money for a software program that can deliver what it promises, and that doesn't use FALSE ADVERTISING to sell and promote its product.
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