Customer Reviews

Total 3D Home Deluxe 4.0 (Old Version)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This looks like a great product, but unfortunately it's not quite there. On the input and display side, it's quick and not too quirky. I was able to input my yuppy home in a couple of hours. The 3D effects are amazing, including Aerial and walk thru modes. Unfortunately, it crashes frequently. I have several different floor plans saved, and they all crash the program (on 2 different PCs) in a matter of seconds, when changing modes. I'm hoping tech support can bail me out - if not I just wasted my weekend. Not recommended - yet ....

I set out to design a decent floor plan and thats about it. Many people gave this software bad reviews but they failed to mention that this software is NOT a 3d rendering software as you would expect from Lightwave or 3ds max, but instead it is software for designing floor plans.

As far as changing scale ALL home blueprints in the us are typically 1/4 : 1 so it's pointless to want to change it.

With a little preplanning a slight knowledge of drafting, anyone should be able to use this software to design a house.

Hint: If you need to add a component thats not available, print it out and add it yourself with a pencil and a ruler.

This program is so full of bugs I couldn't complete any design I tried. I spent hours trying to make it work. I finally called Individual Software and was told that they are on Version 8 now and are liquidating Ver. 4 for 99 cents. Yes, 99 cents!! (as of Jan. 2005) They assured me that they had fixed all the bugs in Ver. 8 and would I like to try it for a discounted price. Unfortunatly, I said yes. Beware of Ver. 8 as well!! These programs might be useful for a design dreamer, but they are useless for actually trying to build something from the plans you make. This program does not print in 1/4inch scale and is therefore very difficult to use as a working building plan. The Broderbund program I bought for a buck at a garage sale years ago works better than this program. Luckily, I bought Ver. 4 from a local computer store that gave me a full refund when they heard that Individual was liquidating the program for 99cents. By the way, Individual was not about to refund me the total price I paid for the program. BEWARE and RUN!!

I thoroughly enjoyed modeling my home with this program. I did a really cool rendition of a cabin from Disney's Fort Wilderness, and the photo renditions were very close to actual photos my family took. Like stated in the title, this program had GREAT potential, and now the "but"

but-

The downside is that it was incredibly buggy. I had several instances where the program would crash, and the file I was working from simply would not reload. Also, being able to type in dimensions instead of dragging them would have been nice. I believe it was 3.0 that allowed you to easily import textures of your actual wallpaper, etc. Also, placing items inside the programs made no sense. I'd spend half an hour placing a computer on top of a desk, only to have it magically hover a few feet off the floor next to the desk when I reloaded the file.

I used to think, if the company would only start over, and debug this, it would be absolutely fantastic. Now I see that from version 3.0 to 8.0, the reviews have only gone downhill, I have to write it off as a lost cause. Too bad. Maybe the open source Linux types may take something like this under their collective wing, assuming whichever corporation owns the rights to this will let go. Reminds me of David Letterman's advice to Judge Bork- "Never start a beard you can't finish".