Customer Reviews

3D Home Landscape Designer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I read the reviews, but I was desperate for a landscaping program. You may be ok with a simple, rectangular lot. Most of the plants and trees that I have are not in the plant encylopedia. The program is not user-friendly.

Do not purchase this software. Unless you have already designed a house using 3D Home Architect (a wasted process if you already live in a house), then you should be able to add landscape design with this product. If you want to add landscape design to the house you already own, using this as a piece of stand-alone software, simply do not waste your time.

- This is really a companion product to 3D Home Architect, it does not stand alone well.

- I'll bet you are looking for a product in which you can 1. Draw your lot (fairly straight forward with this product), and then 2. Add the house you live in (forget it, you can only pull from a library of houses, or import the house you designed in 3D Home Architect); then 3, add landscaping (perhaps that's doable, but with effort).

- Forget using the Tutorial. It is on-line and a fairly robust product, however, the tutorial is not for this product, it is for 3D Home Architect. You have to wade though pages of stuff that does not apply to what you want to do, then the portion dealing with Home Landscape is weak at best.

- The documentation is impressive, IF you purchased 3D Home Architect. Out of a 396 page book, 3D Home Landscape is not treated until page 259. Then you are presented with a gillion tools to define terrain, create hills and valleys, create plateaus, create slopes, create paths, create pads, create fills, insert edging...the list goes on and on, but is very short on 'create a flower bed,' 'plant a tree...' etc.

- I asked for on-line help. I sent an e-mail. The web site said I would be answered in 4-6 hours. 20 hours later, I got a canned answer to a question I did not even ask. It was as if someone cut and pasted an answer related to my question, but with no personal interest in my problem. My question was: "Can I draw in a plan view of my house on the property?" The answer was, "we have a lot of sample houses you can import from a catalog of houses..." Bottom line, is No, you cannot start out with your house.

Wish it could be better news. Broderbund needs to put this in the hands of a software designer who has just moved into a new house which has no yard. It is fixable.

After many hours of frustrating work I finally gave up on this product. I couldn't even find a way to draw a plot plan that wasn't a rectangle. My wife tried also and gave up. The manual is very sketchy and of little value. There are a limited number of objects to place in your design so you have to substitute token items for real structures. I highly recommend you do not buy this product. Look for something that has reasonable documentation and enough capability to describe something more than a rectangular patch.

I found this software to be quite versatile once I learned my way around. I was able to create a surprisingly realistic 3-D scape of my house and yard and it certainly has helped me to be able to visualize what I wanted to do. The program will never make your garden look real, but to expect as much would be ridiculous.

Having said that, there are two issues I have with the software. First and foremost, the program restricts you from placing trees that exceed the "typical" height of the species - in my case I have two rock maples that must be over 60' tall, but the program won't let me make them big enough.

Second, the program does not do a good enough job with the plant encyclopedia. Common names are often inaccurate and it was only after much searching that I was able to find many common plants listed under bizarre names. Also, some obvious species are missing. No oregano or coriander, for example! Broderbund needs to make the architecture open enough to allow open exchange so users can create and share new plant species.

Still, it's easy to "fudge" something like coriander, and there's a wealth of great data in there. I enjoy it thoroughly!

Simply put the home wizard is piece of junk unless your house is box. The plant database is somewhat useful. The objects are lacking, they should of included more textures and objects.
Definitely returning this sucker.

... The graphics are extremely crude and inaccurate. You can't get a decent close up view of the garden.

The plant encyclopedia does not work properly. You can't do a proper search and the filters do not work very well.

I was very disappointed.

To be fair, this software has some good stuff in it. The part dealing with design and layout of the landscape is all right. The 3D walk-through is not so bad either, although the plants could be a bit more realistic looking.
Two things bothered me though, Lack of common plant species, and home design.
I live in Colorado, and the software did not have any of the common trees and bushes in my backyard. Cleveland Select Pear, Purple-Leaf Sandcherry, Miss Kim Lilac. So I couldn't really do any sort of representation of what my yard already looks like. The software does let you enter new plants, but I want to design, not waste my time compensating for the software. To double-check this, I also entered the plants from Colorado State Universities Plant Select 2000 list. Nothing.
The house design was rudimentary, the grid was completely inaccurate, my house would have been 300 feet tall if I had been going by the grid. Also, the lack of window and door components was really depressing.
All in all, disappointing software.

This software will work for you if have a simple landscape and moderate expectations. The multiple camera feature is great, and the walkthrough works well. If you have a flat lot and a simple plan, you should be able to put it together fairly quickly.

I live in a quad-level on a grade with a walkout sliding glass door in the back of the house. I spent hours on the house and grading and they're only close to right. I'm still having difficulty adding beds and other surfaces (sidewalks, driveways, etc.) It takes a lot of trial and error work, and even then it doesn't look quite right. Also, you can't put plants in planters, raised beds or on any other structure. I spoke with product support, and they told me the software only supports placing plants on the ground.

I agree with the previous reviewer who was disappointed with the variety of plants and objects available. I used to own another landscaping package that had much greater variety, but the 3D features didn't work well at all, so I replaced it. I'm hoping Broderbund will add objects I can download from their website to make my plan more realistic.

Not what you would expect, even for $$$. After many hours, I have a house model that still doesn't look like mine. You can't type in your house dimensions. Instead you have to rely on dragging the corners, a process which is way to coarse. The fence options look like something from Disneyland. They don't mention that amongst the 7000 plants, there are numerous varieties of carrots, melons, etc. Come on folks, that is just plain misleading. I have a 70 year old Douglas Fir tree in my front yard, which doesn't look like an overgrown Christmas tree, the only option offered by this program. There is no way to edit the models or introduce your own. Don't expect to do any serious work with this program. It is just a video game

I purchased this software because it was the only software I could find to do 3D landscaping. I thought I got a great deal when it was discounted from $54.95 to $6.98, but I found I paid too much. Its not even worth the hard drive space it takes up. The software feezes up frequently, the drawing features are very limited...only lets you draw your yard and home in retangular shapes. Not intuitive at all. Very limited plant encyclopedia. I'm sorry I wasted the postage.